Accelerated Growth Consulting

As a leader, you want to believe your people are telling you the truth–but are they? Though some of us as entrepreneurial leaders have always been our own bosses, chances are you were at some point an employee. So, when you were an employee, did you always tell your boss the truth? I’m not talking [...]

If you’re like most of my clients, chances are you regularly get frustrated by the performance of your people. Sometimes it’s because they’re not executing fast enough. Sometimes it’s because they’re not thinking clearly and anticipating issues and problems. Etc. But one of the more common frustrations is “They just don’t execute at a high [...]

If you could speed up the pace at which your people implement and execute your ideas and plans, what would that be worth to you? For years, I’ve looked for catalytic mechanisms to do just that and have found few. One of the few ideas I had heard about was the idea of holding a [...]

How many times have you thought about doing something that you know would be helpful or good or beneficial–and then not done it? I know, probably somewhere north of ten thousand times (at least that’s my running total). Well, this week, I’m on vacation at one of my favorite places on planet earth, Sea Pines [...]

It’s more important than you think! When I work with senior executives, and we’re one-on-one, they tend to be defensive around critique and accountability in general. But when I’m with them, and they need to be critiqued in front of their executive teams (Note: in a session designed for critique and evaluation. I normally provide [...]

Now, I don’t know if you saw the Fortune magazine edition entitled, “The Best Advice I Ever Got” (7.6.09) but it’s an interesting read. For example, in very shortened form, Eric Schmidt (CEO, Google). John Doerr told me to, “Get a coach,” even though I didn’t think I could learn anything from a coach. Tiger [...]

I was at a conference this past week when one of the speakers, a copywriter by the name of Ray Edwards, nailed me–in a positive way. The way he got to me was by asking two simple questions. Showing a picture of a MacDonald’s hamburger, he asked, 1. How would you describe the quality of [...]

Forget whether you’re a “trekkie” or not, the series (from the original onward) has been a great vehicle for observing and evaluating both positive and negative leadership–and this latest edition is no slouch on that account. I’ve never been a big trekkie fan (though I did think Jean luc Picard was a phenomenal leader) so [...]

I remember hearing Dan Kennedy (a marketing expert) say, years ago, “What’s interesting about entrepreneurs is that they won’t pay for the soft stuff (like dealing with their fears or lack of confidence), but they will pay for the hard stuff (like how to use some new technique on the internet to attract more customers), [...]

If you were in charge of GM, what would you do? Even if you’re not leading a large company, there are still a few lessons you can draw from CEO Fritz Henderson’s playbook, that could make a big difference in your business if you want to grow faster and be more profitable. In an article [...]