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Recent Articles from Todd Ordal
For Effective Leadership: Do the Work!
Comparing leadership and athletic performance is tenuous at best. You cannot bluff your way onto an Olympic team. People can, however, sometimes bluff their way into leadership roles without the essential talent or experience.
Why a Clear Strategy Should Drive Your Business Behavior
Chasing shiny objects is dangerous, and leaders who fall prey to this almost always have one thing in common: There’s no clear strategy driving their behavior.
Top 7 Questions to Align Your Company
Without alignment, you’re wasting energy in the form of capital, payroll, confusion in the market and opportunity costs. You most likely don’t see it. It’ll slow you down and eventually kill you if you don’t eliminate or reduce it.
CEO Coaching: Strategy Is About Being Different
Many of us are too fearful of looking different, of making mistakes, of trying to achieve wild things. We self-edit our great ideas. Maybe we should blame our parents, but perhaps we ought to own it and create a different definition of success.
Don’t Kill the Meetings — Make Them Better
A CEO client of mine recently realized that he was the reason he hated all the meetings he called. After adopting a few new rules and changing some behavior (much of it his), he felt like he had a new lease on life.
CEO Leadership Traits: Think Like a Pilot
I’m a fan of hoping for success, but in business, if you aren't prepared for the crises that may develop (and they will!), you’re in trouble. Do you have a plan?
Don't Be Like Dilbert
There’s something universal about having incompetent leadership that we can all understand — ergo the success of the Dilbert cartoon. I doubt that any of you can get through your career without Dilbert’s boss appearing. Sad but true.
In Business, Can a Family be a Team?
Many years ago when I was on the board of Kinko’s, we had a pointed conversation about our future initiated by John Davis, a board member and Harvard professor who specialized in family business. He believed we needed to change our culture from family to team.
Unlearn the need to be liked
If there’s one thing I’ve seen handcuff more executives than anything else, it’s the need to be liked (NTBL). Most of us want people who like us so we can share time together, be comfortable and be able to let our hair down.
Effective Leadership: Is Failure an Option?
I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. —Thomas Edison
Can Your Company Thrive with a Weak CEO?
Can your company culture function and be successful under weak management? Not for long.
Organizational Effectiveness: Working Faster
You might that this is a dull, project management type skill, but if you are a CEO and don’t have a good understanding of where, when and how to apply resources, you are undoubtedly wasting lots of time and money.
