By all accounts, this presidential election is the closest in decades. Experts estimate that 80 percent to 90 percent of voters have already made up their minds.

The two primary challengers are playing a huge game of tug-of-war for those undecided voters. The heated contest has mobilized forces on both sides.

For businesses, it is important to define the right standards of conduct during election time. These standards should balance our First Amendment rights to free speech with the business interests of the company.

Is your company ready to handle a diehard volunteer who posters his office with campaign material? What if a manager is aggressive about promoting the interests of a particular party during staff meetings?

Here are some thoughts:

• Be specific about standards. Whatever you communicate about electioneering to associates should be clear and concise. Make sure that you do not create more confusion.
• Appoint an arbitrator. Find a trusted, respected person in the office to be the official arbitrator of company policy.
• Host a debate. Sometimes, people just want to be heard. Giving the most vocal supporters a venue to do so could help eliminate electioneering in the office. Make the debate optional and relative for associates by focusing on issues that are important to your business.
• Focus on the importance of voting. At least, voting is an issue on which everybody can agree and work together.

Tom Peters hit on it long ago. Excellence is a huge advantage in today's competitive business climate. In fact, now is the time to think excellence over differentiation when defining your company's product or service.

Let's look at how excellence compares to differentiation.

Excellence is the result of core values and hard work. Differentiation is the result of market research.

Customers define excellence. Marketing departments define differentiation.

You can celebrate excellence. You can only explain market differentiation.

The best part about excellence is that nobody can take it away from you -- if you are excellent at something, then you are excellent at it. By contrast, a savvy, meaner competitor can steal differentiation in a heartbeat.

Finding your company's area of excellence is not hard, but it takes a little time. You just have to go ask your customers three questions:

• What are we doing that you like?
• What are we doing that you don't like?
• What do you wish we were doing right that we are not?

The profound answers to these simple questions will astound you.

Pressure and good decision making rarely mix well. Next time you have to make a difficult decision in a short timeframe, try using Secretary of State Colin Powell's 40/70 formula for success.

Powell will act on a decision once he has enough information to have a 40 percent to 70 percent chance of success. He doesn't wait until he is 100 percent sure because often that is too late for the decision to impact the opportunity or problem.

Vision becomes more important as you move up the corporate ladder. While the average for "forward-looking" is 71 percent, it rises to 88 percent for senior executives. Kouzes and Posner found that corporate leaders consistently score the lowest in inspiring a shared vision.

James K. Polk by John Seigenthaler

John Seigenthaler, former publisher of The Tennessean and founding editorial editor of USA Today, has written a poignant perspective on the life and presidency of James K. Polk.

According to Seigenthaler, "James Knox Polk surely is history's most underappreciated president. Few Americans have any awareness that in four years he engineered the annexation of Texas, bluffed the British out of Oregon, waged war with Mexico to take California and New Mexico, enlarged the country's land mass by a third, and made the United States a continental nation."

Polk went into the Democratic National Convention in 1844 with three strikes against him. He had not been able to deliver Tennessee for the Democrats in 1840, he had lost two bids to be Tennessee governor, and he had come out in favor of annexation of Texas -- a move opposed by both Van Buren, the Democrat's leading candidate, and Whigs' candidate, Henry Clay. When public sentiment swelled in favor of annexation, Polk rode it all the way to the nomination and eventually the White House.

Seigenthaler's work is particularly timely to read in the midst of the 2004 presidential campaigns. We found ourselves continually drawing comparisons -- how much has changed in the world of politics but also how much is still the same.