Keep the big picture in mind in business planning Just when you thought you had enough to worry about in your business, according to USA TODAY (April 23, 2014) it now looks like the chance for a “killer asteroid” is a bigger threat that we believed. I’ll bet you didn’t capture that as a possible threat in […]
According to the Northern Colorado Business Report, there are now 1.2 compliance officers for every loan officer in Colorado banks. (I was tempted to put three exclamation points behind that sentence, but if its content doesn’t blow your mind, they wouldn’t help.) Imagine the cost of health care if every doctor had to have 1.2 […]
Get your butt kicked! by Todd Ordal A bit of recent research confirmed what I’ve seen for many years: Power corrupts thinking. As reported in the Harvard Business Review, “feelings of power prompt leaders to verbally dominate and to resist others’ ideas,” resulting in a 17 percent decline in goal attainment. That’s a big deal! […]
By Todd Ordal A cynic says time is short. I don’t buy that. It is, however, predictable and constant. Perhaps when you were younger, you worked somewhere where you just “put in your eight hours.” You were likely not engaged and frankly not providing much value to the organization. Hopefully that phase of your work life […]
March, 2014 “On Saturday night, Coots was handling three rattlesnakes at his small church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, when one of them bit him on his right hand. He lost consciousness and was taken home, where his family refused antivenom treatment by an emergency medical crew. Jamie Coots was pronounced dead about […]
Stop little problems before they get bigger By Todd Ordal The day I wrote this, I had two interactions with a company that sent a shiver up the CEO’s spine when I told him about them. In both cases, a relatively “junior” person (I don’t like the word “junior,” but it gets the point across) took […]
February, 2014 I’ve been asked several times whether there’s a logical progression in business strategy as a company ages. I’m talking about a company’s global strategy, the aligned set of actions to create a competitive advantage. I have no hard evidence that a sequential strategy shift is anywhere near universal, but I can tell you […]
Their people will follow them anywhere By Todd Ordal “Steve, the Iraqi interpreter, summed it up best. On our last day in Fallujah, he shook my hand as we were heading out of the city, and with a prideful tone in his voice, he said, ‘When the bombs and bullets come at us, we run and […]
January, 2014 “What they are doing is making themselves dysfunctional by taking all this data.” —William Binney, former senior NSA official talking about his previous agency I was fortunate many years ago to visit Trinity College in Dublin with my children and see The Book of Kells. My wife is a talented artist who has […]
Almost 2014 “Business is sure not what it used to be!” said a nonbusiness friend the other day. She was implying that it used to be less complicated, less global and, in her mind, have fewer scoundrels. She has, unfortunately, bought into the theme that business is evil and unpredictable. I replied that I didn’t […]