Recent Articles from Todd Ordal
When was the last time you tried your own dog food?
Too many executives don’t eat their own dog food. Unless you experience your product or service from the customers’ perspective, you probably have a rosy view of what you’re offering.
Crossing the T: Battleship strategy for business
The fleet that has “crossed,” however, can fire all weapons at Ship 1 then 2 then 3, etc. It has at least six times the firepower. I can draw two business lessons from this military strategy. Perhaps you’ll have more.
Wells Fargo ignored the single most important question
Regulators recently pinched Wells Fargo, the country’s largest bank, for “scamming” some customers. Lots of folks have already predictably jumped all over management, and they’re right to do so. But what else can we learn from this?
Leaders need to consider how best to communicate
We might all agree that using too many words to make a point is imprudent and prone to irritate others. We should differentiate, however, between verbosity, frequency and efficacy.
In business, like karate, some things are basic to success
You’d no more put someone into a mixed martial arts competition without training than you’d put me into a flamenco dance contest. Yet homegrown entrepreneurial organizations get into fights they can’t win because they never learned how to correctly punch and kick!
Are you a confident leader ― or a certain one?
Believing your own version of events can cause you to make foolish decisions as a business leader. Being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple doesn’t make you a great baseball player.
Two Italian restaurants: The value of consistency
Is your strategy consistently executed? If your vision and strategy aren’t clear to your team members, they’ll get confused and frustrated.
Walking the fine line between burn-out and couch potato
If you, as a leader, push your people to their limit over a long period, they’ll burn out. But if you don’t challenge them, you have a bunch of corporate couch potatoes.
CEOs: You'd better watch your language
We often get hung up in business because we don’t get on the same page regarding language and definitions. If you’re a surgeon and are told to take out that gelatinous red thing, do you remove the liver, heart or gall bladder? Precision counts.
If you believe in it, fund it!
Like Congress, if organizations devise good measures but don’t fund them appropriately, they waste their effort and add a few more pages to the company operating manual or HR policy binder, causing cynicism and wonder at “how stupid they can be.”
How much should you rely on intuition in business?
It is natural for action-oriented CEOs to want to move from ideas to action quickly. I appreciated this. It is sometimes necessary, however, to slow the game down and think hard before you take action.
Great leaders need to work on the hard stuff
No one wants to hire a downhill specialist to run a business. They want someone who may descend well but knows how to climb like an angel.