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Recent Articles from Todd Ordal
As CEO, how do I pull my team back together?
Regardless of how many Zoom cocktail hours you’ve held, that slight fluttering sound you hear might be the magic seeping out of your team. Broken leaders and dysfunctional teams must be reinvigorated to achieve success.
When it comes to goals and targets — Is more better?
It might be an Excel spreadsheet, a disciplined CEO with a list, a project management office or a whiteboard — that’s almost immaterial. What’s important is that you reinforce it and resist the urge to do more. Do less, do it better, and move on.
CEOs: It’s time to get rid of your bad apple
To succeed, healthy executive teams require that either all individuals provide input to reach a successful outcome or that one member of the team performs well.
Why your company may need a visionary leader to succeed
Without a vision and commensurate strategy, a business is just a set of random acts. Eventually, the vision becomes tarnished or faded, or the future changes and won’t allow for the previously described destination. It is then that you must have a visionary leader.
Organizational effectiveness: How do you provide value?
Your job, your family, your co-workers, the shareholders, the economy and the country depend on people producing a return on the investment that the owners make in them.
CEOs: Learning from the chaos
Take a different path for a few days, a harder one that you aren’t used to. Leave your phone at home. Eat lunch with a different crowd. Talk to a pissed off customer. Go help a loading dock worker. I bet you’ll learn a few things.
How to stay relevant in a disruptive marketplace
A fascinating thing about disruption and innovation is that the underlying need is often unchanged. People still ride bikes, take pictures, watch movies and listen to music, but how they do it has morphed to more convenient (not always cheaper) solutions.
Is there a place for draconian leadership in business?
Leaders who put their heads in the sand and wait for disaster to strike create a lot more misery than those who are future focused and willing to make tough decisions early. In the end, they are much less draconian.
CEOs: Start with purpose, values, vision and strategy
When leaders have no governing principles (e.g., values, vision and strategy), decision-making is random, and chaos ensues.
Organizational Effectiveness: Working on the Wrong Problem
Organizational challenges often have symptoms that don’t readily illuminate the underlying issue. In order to solve the problems truly plaguing your organization, it’s time to do some digging and problem-solving.
Hey Private Equity: Are you really the smartest guys in the room?
If you won’t allow (and perhaps push) management to develop a crisp strategy and the plans to execute it, don’t think that your overused practice of making nonaligned, tactical decisions will save the day.
CEOs: It’s time to talk turkey
Although it seems implausible that many people would prefer indirect, dishonest conversation, the truth of the matter (perhaps the turkey of the matter?) is that much of the dysfunction in organizations is due to a tendency toward the latter.
