Is the problem your strategy, execution or both? Todd Ordal A friend expressed frustration with his company the other day. When I queried him about his frustration, he summed it up by saying that they had started to focus on “metrics over mission.” In this particular example, concern for improving the lives of their customers […]
“Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.” —Carl Sandburg Former Veterans Affairs chief Eric Shinseki was the whipping boy for the public issue of veterans waiting too long for health care. I believe he’s a very honorable man and a great American […]
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 […]
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! […]
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 […]
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 […]
“I prefer a confident president to a certain president.” —Madeleine Albright I like this quote a lot. It reminds me of our now retired family medical doctor, a down-to-earth guy with many decades of experience. Although he had the silver hair and degree that allowed him to answer most questions with certainty, he had the […]
Learning from the rest of the universe Years ago when Kinko’s was growing rapidly, our founder took the senior people to the graduate business school at the University of Southern California for an annual week of development. If you have been through an MBA program, you’ve likely encountered the case study format of learning—nothing new […]