…or South Park kids? Todd Ordal If you’re like me, perhaps a certain musical piece can send your mind to a wonderful place. I returned home recently from a business trip where I saw a particularly engaging company with a bright, tight-knight leadership team that focused on doing business the “right” way. As I thought […]
Beyond the entrepreneur: Building business intelligence Todd Ordal I’ve been fortunate to work with some great business leaders over the course of my career, many of whom are much smarter than I am. IQ, however, isn’t the defining characteristic that I’ve observed in successful leaders and managers. Moderate or higher IQ is necessary but not […]
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! […]
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 […]
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 […]