"Leadership is what gives an organization its vision and its ability to translate that vision into reality."
Bennis and Nanus, Leaders; Strategies for taking charge, HarperCollins, 2003., p. 19


  We can't avoid weaknesses.  In more than 50 years, I have never seen an organization of human beings that had no weakness.  I include small and large businesses, social service agencies, churches, Boy Scout troops, fishing lodges, colleges, health salons and, certainly, government departments.  So long as you operate in an attractive field, someone will compete with you and that organization will have different or better strengths.  Therefore, both you and they have competitive weaknesses.  Even if you improve your performance in areas of perceived weakness, you will then have other weaknesses.  That's the way free enterprise works.  The only system I've seen that permits static and continued strengths and weaknesses is a government-controlled economy where police power is used to prevent competition - until the inevitable revolution happens.  When we get right down to it, taking advantage of our strengths and minimizing the disadvantage of our weaknesses is what business - for profit or non-profit - is all about.  If you can't play that game you'd best get out of it.
    
    Weakness Defined.  For our purposes, just as we defined a strength as a competitive advantage, we'll define a weakness as a competitive disadvantage.  You must overcome (not just tolerate) them somehow.  Some examples:
    You have a set of strong service technicians who can solve almost any customer problem, but their supervisor is the best of them and you have no other support for marketing and promoting your service function.  Your techs are a strength; your lack of marketing capability is a weakness.
    An independent social service agency has a reputation that commands strong support from traditional, oriented funding sources - primarily government agencies, but does not have strong approaches to other possible sources.  In tough times, when government revenues follow business down a recession path, those funds become scarce.  
    Here's another:  A few years ago I was given a business plan draft by a person who wished to start a new service business.  The plan was very expansive when it talked about the outstanding people that would be hired to perform its services.  It included a complete description of the facility and equipment it would employ.  But there was not one word about the role of the entrepreneur, or of any other manager.  To me, that omission signaled a probable weakness in leadership. 
    If you have an old and worn place to do business, or if you are very cramped for space, that is a serious weakness that you must somehow overcome in the future.
    What have you?