Fun is a crucial part of business “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” —George Bernard Shaw I’m testing the theory that if I don’t act my age, I won’t grow old. When I look in the mirror, it appears that my theory is bunk, but damn […]
Get it on the calendar by Todd Ordal My wife is an artist and works primarily in clay. The pieces are very creative, many bordering on bizarre. (When our children were young, they thought they had the coolest mom ever when she had a piece depicting a hyena devouring a zebra removed from a show!) Her […]
Top four language barriers Todd Ordal I recently read that only 6 percent of teenagers check email daily. For those of us who are middle age and in business, it’s still a primary communication tool. I always wondered why my kids (in their 20s and 30s) respond to texts immediately but rarely reply to email. […]
Can collaboration in decision making go too far? Todd Ordal Most enlightened leaders understand that talented people won’t work in environments where their every move is choreographed and their decisions are second-guessed. They also know that with every pair of hands they hire, a brain usually comes along and they can leverage their team members’ […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
You likely have multiple “bosses.” These might include your spouse, a religious leader, the neighborhood homeowners’ association, the IRS, building inspectors or perhaps a fire chief if you’re a volunteer firefighter. I’d argue that, to a point, shedding bosses is as healthy as shedding pounds (keep the spouse). Nowhere is this more important than at […]
Investments in “growth” don’t always pay off in the year the investment occurs “For the farmer the calendar year is indeed much more than a convenient measurement; his production cycle actually runs from harvest to harvest. But to apply the farmer’s unit of economic life to an industrial economy, except as a conventional measurement, cannot […]