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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
“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 […]
A friend sent me an email the other day with some quotes from Will Rogers, the famous cowboy cutup from the early 1900s. My father-in-law, whom I admired, used to say things like, “Let’s mount up!” when we were supposed to get in the car to go to dinner, so it struck a chord with […]
Meryl Streep once famously remarked in a commencement address to college students: “You have been told that real life is not like college, and you have been correctly informed. Real life is more like high school.” Remember the important stuff you used to worry about in high school, such as where you sat, with whom […]