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Recent Articles from Todd Ordal
The rate of change balance
If you sell beer like a good friend of mine, you recognize that you need a good menu of craft beers to supplement the Budweiser or Coors. If you sell books like a favorite client of mine, you may wonder and plan for how to sell your content in the new world order (if you haven’t already turned the...
Profiting from play
I was fortunate to spend 20 years helping grow Kinko’s. In our “formative” years, we had lots of fun. Perhaps too much fun. However, many of us were willing to work obscene hours partly because we had so much fun with our co-workers. We had an annual event called “The Picnic” where we flew thousan...
The beauty of a routine
Routinized work has gotten a bad reputation. I readily admit I couldn’t spend all day on an assembly line and be happy. Even a trip to a guru on a mountaintop wouldn’t persuade me. I worked in a warehouse in college doing manual labor (the same task, night after night) and made good money but hate...
Making pigs fly
A friend expressed frustration with his company the other day. When I queried him about his frustration, he summed it up by saying that they had started to focus on “metrics over mission.” In this particular example, concern for improving the lives of their customers is starting to take a back sea...
If you have a strategy – tell me what it is!
“Why will people buy from you versus your competition?” I asked a CEO. He recently went through a “strategic planning” process, so the question seemed reasonable. He couldn’t answer it. Some of you reading this can’t either. More often than not, CEOs believe they have a strategy, but when asked to...
What the heck are you talking about?
I recently read that only 6 percent of teen-agers 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. It’s like I’m speaking Ital...
Job opening: Captain of a sinking ship
A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the challenge J. C. Penney, Target and American Eagle are having in recruiting new CEOs. They are all large, well-paying, prestigious jobs. Why is this a problem? All three are experiencing significant declines. J. C. Penney recently fired its CEO,...
Leading and leveraging talent
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’ intellig...
Watch out for the killer asteroid!
This was my fourth conversation with this CEO. A mutual acquaintance, someone with lots of experience and a bird’s-eye view into this business, suggested he needed help developing a clear strategy. He can’t identify why his customers buy from him versus competitors and isn’t sure if he should try...
Don’t Dodd-Frank your business
The best business environments are self-regulating or as close to self-regulating as you can get them. Ten-to-one reporting relationships are manageable and profitable when the rules are few and common sense prevails. Well-designed organizations take into account the weaknesses of humans, and they...
Feeling powerful?
The anecdotes to feeling powerful all involve some pain. (Please note, those of you who suffer from lack of self-esteem or confidence need another course of action!) You have to get your butt kicked occasionally (though utter humiliation has very negative impact). You need some people on your team...
Top 10 habits of effective executives
I’ve yet to meet a senior executive or business owner who just puts in his or her eight hours. At that level, the question should be, “How much value can I add in the shortest amount of time?” (Frankly, in a well-run organization, that’s the question people at all levels should ask!) That questio...
