I have been thinking about some of the business advice I have given lately to clients and friends. One in particular sounds out of place. It doesn’t fit neatly in the “business” category but in my experience it has more to do with business than most any other nugget of help I have both given…
Good leaders are good communicators. There’s no way out of it. Happy talk is their way of casting vision but not accomplishing much. One of the primary functions of a leader is to sell a vision, a destination, or a future to his or her followers. You can’t do that without good communication skills. But…
As a consultant, too often, I feel I’m telling my clients the obvious. After all, it doesn’t take me long to figure out what they should do next. I forget how immersed I am in my professional career and how much it has become second nature to me. In my years of consulting I have…
My friend Wayne Elsey is an extraordinary guy. He has built one of the most successful non profit organization in the world. During the last 5 years, Soles 4 Souls has gone from 0 to over a 70-million dollar annual budget organization. I’m thankful to have been a partner from early on. My company, The…
The pace of change has picked up. Not only is the world flat, the world adopts technology, new standards at a much faster pace than ever before. Just look at what Google and Facebook have done for business and cultural expectations. Yesterday Facebook introduced a new profile feature and Google introduced an ebook store. Millions…
More than any other time in my career, I have had more people ask me how I started The A Group. These are entrepreneurs who for a variety of reasons find themselves in transition. Look around you. A lot of us are in transition right now. Jobs are going away or morphing into something completely…
The most important work I do as a consultant is to help my clients with strategies in communications, business systems and even creative output. A lot of very cool tools and initiatives come from the work and many of these, my company, The A Group, gets to produce. Recently during an interview, I was asked:…
The man to my left leaned in and with intensity in his eyes asked the question: “I’m contemplating a strategic business partnership; I want to lead my business into outliving me.” Across the table from us sat a veteran CEO with years of experience in multi-billion dollar business. The answer surprised me, but, again, it…
A few years ago, social media was mostly an annoyance to most businesses IT directors who tried to keep employees from accessing social networks during working hours. Well, that still goes on today. However, most organizations have began tapping into the power of online communities. Dell has made millions from its Twitter account over the…
It’s happening all over the place: leaders are hijacking critical projects from their internal teams and implementing a “bypass” play in order to get things done. While you might question the non-conventional leadership style, the wisdom or the potential fall-out inside the organization of such tactics, these leaders are more worried about missed opportunities, missed…