I’ve been obsessed with the Tour de France for years. Thanks to recording devices, I’ve only missed a couple of televised stages since Greg LeMond’s dramatic win on the Champs-Élysées in 1989 on the final stage. While driving across Utah once with my wife and kids on vacation, I had a friend call me every […]
Know the difference between bad luck and poor performance By Todd Ordal “If y’all just go out there and execute, everything will be fine!” my CEO said to me many years ago, after I pointed out that our business model was losing relevance. The fact that he was a big-hat, no-cattle kind of leader was apparent […]
Well, maybe some of you have By Todd Ordal This guy never made the cover of The Wall Street Journal and had few financial resources, little to no technology and many hurdles. Yet he ignited a huge growth spurt and united a disparate organization into an empire. He built infrastructure to facilitate more efficient distribution, developed a complex […]
You don’t need to be a super hero to survive and thrive By Todd Ordal “Obamacare will kill us!” said my client, the co-owner of a labor-intensive business. “We might have to shut the doors.” Although this particular company had some significant hurdles, my client’s partner and the executive team luckily weren’t ready to throw in […]
The success secret you can’t see, smell or taste But you’d better be able to define By Todd Ordal I was once involved in a turnaround situation that required quick action. I looked at the company’s major accounts (ranked by revenue) and then had the CFO do a net (not gross) profit analysis by account. It […]
By Todd Ordal “What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the […]
Clarity of vision, strongly held beliefs and consistency in action are exactly what we want from our leaders “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.” — Colin Powell It’s nice to be liked and loved; it’s just not an effective goal for a leader. If more leaders worried less about pissing people off (that’s the […]
New ideas and directions aren’t always easy to come by To prepare for a trip to Peru and the Amazon, my wife and I headed over to Passport Health in Boulder for shots and pills to avoid as many ailments as possible. (Great service at Passport, by the way!) My wife was recently in Indonesia, […]
Clients often ask me to help them diagnose and solve organizational dysfunction. In my observations, here are the top 12 reasons for dysfunction: No healthy conflict. Most people worry about too much conflict, but my experience is that there’s too little “healthy” conflict. If executives cannot speak their mind and disagree — about issues, not people […]
CEO leadership attributes… “If there is one central truth to be collected from the history of all ages, it is this: that the people’s rights and liberties, and the democratical (sic) mixture in a constitution, can never be preserved without a strong executive.” – John Adams (from “John Adams” by David McCullough) speaking about the […]