Got Bobbleheads for Business Buddies?

Here is an important question for all you CEOs out there: – just who are your key business buddies? Are they your high school or college friends, your past work associates, your current corporate directors, your executives that work for you, or that tax accountant / auditor on your account who all too many of [...]

Debt Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Today’s online newspapers have real drawbacks. First, they don’t let you to scan all the news. Second, all too often important articles in the print edition never make it to the paper’s website. And let’s not forget how fewer and fewer people are getting real newspapers delivered these day. As a result, there is a [...]

Matt Barrett & the CEO Mindset

After a very distinguished and sometimes controversial long career in international financial services, Matt Barrett finally retired three years ago. That’s when he stepped down from being Chairman of Barclays Bank PLC after having been a long serving CEO of both Barclays in the UK and Bank of Montreal in Canada. Here are some career [...]

Failure to Adapt Kills 2 Many Companies

When everything from wealth to glory is on the line, athletes aren’t the only ones who freeze, choke or come up short. But in business, that shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be ‘just the way it is’. It’s entirely normal, if you’re normal, that to some extent for some period of time your brain’s higher-level [...]

[Recession Recovery] ‘VW’ Ride Coming?

“What kind of recovery does the group expected now?” – this was the key business question asked by a Partner in a Toronto based mid-sized accounting firm in the group discussion phase of the TEC Trusted Advisor meeting I attended earlier this week. Here’s what came back from the employment lawyer, commercial landlord, retirement pension [...]

Lehman Bros: What Failure Felt Like

It’s been a year since the bloodshed on Wall Street took Lehman Brothers down. Finally, stories about what really caused their downfall are starting to filter out. And oh boy, what juicy business lessons there are to learn in all of it. September 15, 2008 was the date of Lehman’s demise. Their bankruptcy filing came [...]

Why CEO’s Are Blind To Trouble!

With all the ‘buck stops here’, ‘chain of command’ and ‘celebrity CEO’ rhetoric going around, it’s pretty clear today what politically-correct modern business theory demands – your wholehearted support of the following notion: CEOs should be all powerful. And for ego accommodation, scrutiny avoidance, and ease-of-management reasons, most who hold these positions and those who [...]

Turnaround Recipe|fire the salesforce

There’s a cautionary tale for sales people and a recipe for turnaround success in the story of Descartes Systems Group (TSX: DSG). Descartes has gone: from (i) huge success, for once it was a high-flying stock that soared to $130 per share during the dot-com bubble; to (ii) almost total failure, where its share price [...]

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Posts by:

Tony Johnston
President
Compass North Inc.

Tony provides executive management and advisory services that help companies get MORE !!

sales / profits / cashflow
financing / exit valuation

Tony delivers the leadership or leadership support needed that can make remarkably outstanding results happen operationally, economically, financially and in the eyes of customers, lenders & transaction counterparties.

If you are a decision maker in a company that wants MORE, give him a call at 416-342-5652 or check out the Compass North Inc website [click here].

Tony's ability to help companies achieve important/challenging goals is well demonstrated by his long record of success, which includes:
- 4 successful turnarounds lead
- $66 mil+ increase public
  company's value
- $34 mil value harvested
  from biotech cofounded & lead
  as CEO
- $12 mil/3x investment gain
  in 2 years delivered for
  VC partners
- $2.5+ bil in public & private
  market debt, equity and
  M&A deals done
- 1 successful company IPO
- 4 new businesses organized &
  grown: Biotech; Securitization /
  Mortgage Servicing; Third-Party
  Logistics (3PL); & Consulting