Recent Articles from Todd Ordal
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.
Why difficult employees are worth the trouble
I started writing this piece with the idea that Ike was a good example of someone you didn’t want on your team — stretching, if not breaking, the rules. But I think my example perhaps proves just the opposite.
Looking for strategy in the most unusual places
I’m a fan of looking for examples of great strategy and leadership in unusual places. Although I focus on for-profit business leaders, I’ve seen some great examples from other venues.
What leaders need to know about emotional intelligence
It’s not good enough to be smart. That may get you into a leadership role, but it is emotional intelligence (often abbreviated “EQ” or “EI”) that will allow you to succeed. As an executive, there are some things that you should know about emotional intelligence.
The best leaders embrace conflict to create change
Conflict is one of the topics with which CEOs most often struggle. Unfortunately, the prevalent mindset is that you should minimize it. That is wrong—you should optimize it. Let me explain.
Who do you need to be as a leader?
I have been fortunate to work with some great leaders, and over the years have identified that they all had some common capabilities.
The actions of a successful CEO
There are lots of exhortations from the sidelines as to what CEOs need to do, but what do you actually do? What activity makes it onto your calendar?
Here are the top five things a great CEO must know about business
The questions I asked myself years ago as a CEO, and the questions I see my CEO clients ask themselves now about improving, usually fall into three buckets: What do I need to know? What do I need to do? Whom do I need to be?
How to become the Michelangelo of business
What if you took a chisel to your business and tried to carve out the essential elements, those things that made it more David than Paul Bunyan and his blue ox. What would you cut?