I have been repeating these three things over and over lately everywhere I have an opportunity. What are the 3 most important things you need to get right in order to sell your company? Not only to sell it, but to get a premium? 1. The management team 2. The management team 3. The management team Yes, the top three things are all the same. As a matter of fact, this is so important, an entrepreneur from Egypt told me a week or so ago, he changed his business card from managi

One thing I have learned over the course of my career is the value of having principles. I have learned that most successful people in any area, field or endeavor are successful because they operate by principles that help keep them on course to whatever success destination to which they are traveling. Without principles, you become forced to be in reactionary mode when situations arise to which you are not prepared. This gets in the way of you being as successful as your pot

May what you most love be stronger and more powerful than anything you fear-Dawna Markova This may seem a little unusual for a leadership article. On the other hand, the first person you must lead is you. The person you have the most influence with is you. I’d like to start by telling you a short story about a leadership act by my Father to illustrate my point and without which, I would not be here today. I was 6 years old in 1969. We had a family tradition every 4th of July

Here are my recommendations for the best leadership & business books this month: Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus: How Growth Became The Enemy Of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff When protesters shattered the windows of a bus carrying Google employees to work, their anger may have been justifiable, but it was misdirected. The true conflict of our age isn’t between the unem­ployed and the digital elite, or even the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Rather, a tornado of technological

Over the course of around 56 BC to 51 BC, Julius Caesar led a massive invasion of Gail conquering the Gallic tribes. Over the course of this campaign, it is said that Caesar’s army had fought against three million men, killed one million and enslaving one million. They brought in subject to Rome 300 tribes and destroyed 800 cities. In the DISC model we use, the D stands for dominant behavior. In this pure behavior, people have a need to direct and if they have a job that lose

Here are two traits you can work on immediately to accelerate your leadership development and influence. 1. Talk less, listen more Leaders often get promoted because they are great talkers. They articulate and express themselves well. While it’s good at being able to transmit the language well to others, it’s equally if not more important to receive well. In today’s fast-paced, change-oriented environment, you may be telling yourself you don’t have time to listen. It’s possib

Rapid change in the marketplace can put you in a dilemma. Often, others put you in a dilemma. Sometimes, customers may put you in a dilemma. A dilemma is a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives. Possibly, equally undesirable ones. You may be urged to action. Rather pause to anticipate all the possible consequences, work through the risk/reward scenarios. Be pro-active and seize the situation rather than having the situation seiz

Managing change is very difficult. Actually, Peter Drucker said “one cannot manage change, one can only be ahead of it.” He followed by saying “The most effective way to attempt to manage change successfully is to create it.” We are living in a time of continual disruption in business today. We are living in the fifth techno-economic revolution, which is rapidly exiting the Transition Stage and entering the Deployment Stage. This means the full economic and transformational p

The way we see and think about people is often the difference between manipulating them and empowering them. If we don’t want to help people but we want them to help us, we are headed for troubled times. Manipulation occurs when we try to use them for our personal gain and advantage. Empowerment happens when we value them, and we try to help them for mutual advantage. When we choose the empowerment and value path, we both win. Ask yourself: how do you see people? Are they pot

There are no bad businesses, only bad leaders. People don’t leave organizations, they leave leaders. Many companies know how to win the game of business, but they don’t make their people feel like winners. Yes, today you can find companies that look successful on the outside, but are filled with people who are depressed, scared and nervous. These feelings create bad culture within an organization and companies rot from the inside out, In a company with a healthy culture, you

Albert Einstein walked everywhere he went. He said that walking helped him think. Steve Jobs took walks every day. Even right up until the end of his life, Jobs walked regularly. In a recent interview, his best friend, Larry Ellison said they walked every time he visited Steve, throughout their entire friendship. The only difference was, toward the end of his life, the walks got shorter and shorter. Exercise has been shown to release Endorphins, chemicals which get released i

It’s almost impossible to take an intense emotion and detinsiify it. It’s like driving a car at 100 mph and then trying to come to a complete stop. It’s somewhat easier to swerve that car in a slightly different direction. You have to re-position or re-direct the intense emotion. If you try to shut it off, you will encounter resistance and possible even more intense emotion. One tactic an angry person will use is control. Almost all anger is a desperate attempt to gain contro

Here are my recommendations for the best leadership & business books this month: The Industries of The Future by Alec Ross Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what’s next for the world: the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next ten years, and how we can navigate them. While Alec Ross was working as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State, he traveled to forty-one countries, exploring the latest advances coming out of every contine

Great leaders hire people who have the potential to be better than they are. Not every leader has the passion and drive to develop other people. Leading or perhaps, managing is enough for them. What makes a leader want to develop other leaders? It nay be the parental component which has been placed inside each of us as human beings. Once you make the transition into leadership in relation to teaching and coaching people, you start to hunger for their success. You feel that pa

Here are our top picks for the best leadership & business books for January 2016: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport “As automation and outsourcing reshape the workplace, what new skill do we need? The ability to do deep work. Cal Newport’s exciting new book is an introduction and guide to the kind of intense concentration in a distraction-free environment that results in fast, powerful learning and performance. Think of it as calistheni

Everything you do is your choice to do. It might not be your fault, but it is your responsibility. It is your responsibility to understand and accept that every choice has consequences and rewards attached to it. You might think you are being forced to do this and that, but in truth, you are not being forced. There are simply rewards and consequences to action and inaction. It might not be your fault if it doesn’t turn out like you thought it would. The responsibility of the

Here are our top picks for the best leadership & business books for September 2015: 5 Gears: How To Be Present & Productive When There Is Never Enough Time by Jeremy Kubicek and Steve Cockrum Be present, connect more effectively, all while being as productive as possible 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There’s Never Enough Time teaches you to shift into the right gear at the right time so that you can grow in your relational intelligence and increase your influ

Here is a list of the Top 10 most viewed, re-tweeted or favorited tweets Tony put out in the month of June: 1. At every rising level of growth in developing organizations, new, more efficient levels of communication are required 2. One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs making is assuming their employees are just like them 3. The pain associated with leadership development is the strain of pushing yourself to learn new things & change what is comfortable today into w

The reason leaders are so important and powerful in organizations is because we all take our cues from someone else, usually those in charge. Research indicates that 30%-40% of organizational outcomes are effected by the culture of that organization and leaders can effect up to 20%-30% of the organizational climate and culture. Why? Because we all take our cues from leaders or the people we believe are in charge. If an associate is afraid of telling a leader they are in the p

Any kind of growth has a pain that accompanies it. I just had shoulder surgery last Friday. I had a torn rotator cuff and a bone spur on my left shoulder removed. So now I am on the road to recovery. And…it hurts. It hurts because it is in the process of healing. Just as this is the case with my physical shoulder, we all hurt while we heal. We all hurt while we grow. As I am exercising my shoulder, it feels like it’s not supposed to bend or extend that way. The same thing is