These companies are always improving their present situation—and always looking forward. For leaders, and everyone else at these organizations, excellence is a way of life.

These organizations are nevertheless vulnerable, because they have not yet created a management culture in which organizational excellence is second nature, regardless of personnel changes.

These businesses are doing well enough to reasonably satisfy the owners and management, but they are vulnerable to regressing back to the at-risk level .

These businesses typically revolve around their leader, without this leader the business or department may suffer greatly.