As the gap gets smaller the extent to which management is motivated to stay involved declines. The end result is that the the gap's, and management's, promotion of the activity declines. Management's attention is distracted by other situations with larger gaps, resources are reassigned to other projects, and in time the current state tends to drift further and further from the desired state. This drift continues until the gap gets large enough to attract someone's attention, and then, probably in a panic, attention is shifted from some other project making progress back to this one. I propose that leadership differs from management in that it fosters the development of a very different structure for creating results.
Leadership promotes the development of reinforcing structures rather than balancing structures.
In this structure the results produced by the activity promote more the same activity that produced the initial results. In this way the focus of activity is driven by the results which simply produces more results. The leaders involvement is in the design and implementation of the structure, not managing the activity in the structure, so there is no explicit representation of leadership in the diagram. Leadership is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The leaders most valuable contribution once the structure begins to operate is seeking out potential limits to growth and then working to dissolve them before they have a chance to hinder the growth of the results of the structure.