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Recent Articles from Todd Ordal
Thinking of working for a founder? Read this first!
The founder — someone who birthed several companies but never got any of them to profitability — has turned from “The Creative One” (he developed the first product) to “The Critical One,” now more boat anchor than cheerleader.
Want the magic solution for executing strategy?
Like someone committed to losing weight, once management teams or visionary founders/CEOs identify where they want to go (vision) and roughly what they need to do to get there (strategy), the question is, how do they do it?
Why it's important to ask the right questions
As a business leader, sometimes you need to be more thoughtful in your approach. It is very easy for an individual or a team to respond to a question that leads down the wrong road!
Why emotional intelligence makes a better CEO
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.
Why the best leaders value heart and strength
The best leaders in the world care deeply for the people they lead. They trade open door policies for open ear practices.
How to embrace conflict to create change
If there is too much conflict in your organization, you will not have productive conversations. People will worry more about winning the argument than moving the business ahead.
Try this leadership success secret
Great leaders are both seen and heard through the manner in which they communicate. To build great leaders, we need to create fantastic communicators.
The first mantra of successful leadership:
When we lead and manage others, being nice isn’t always the most effective approach.
Big moves: Six steps for a hard right turn
Sometimes, an organization is either looking for significant enhancements to their growth rate or knows what worked for them in the past is not going to cut it going forward.
Three questions to figure out what's next
I’d run a large division with 7,000 people, but this was different. It was not just about execution; it was about the ideas that had to be executed, the team that had to do it and my specific role.
Trust your gut
Entrepreneurs in startup situations don’t have a large team of people to help make decisions. They probably don’t have a well-developed, systematic approach to vet ideas. They need to trust their gut.
Three great tips to accelerate success
Although leaders frequently engage me to help them find a shortcut of some sort—to more effective leadership, to a better strategy, to a more highly functioning team—we rarely find a solution that involves little work. Shortcuts to wealth are generally illegal. Shortcuts to leadership are typicall...
