Page 233 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

214 • CEO Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization

True, there are some sleepless nights. It can feel like you “have hand
grenades in each hand” when you get responsibility for people’s lives and
investments and whether your employees’ kids get braces on their teeth
or not.
Few of your days are alike; you won’t get bored. The diversity of
challenge is significant, with you constantly experiencing things you’ve
never had come your way before.
One day you’re working “26 hours standing on your head”; the next
day you have a ribbon cutting with the Queen of England as you open a
new location; you attend the company picnic where you have to “kiss
babies”; you have to tour Prince Andrew around your plant or golf with
Supreme Court judges on one of the greatest private golf courses in the
world; you take an invitation for the U.S. presidential inauguration; you
stand on the track at the Indy 500; you play tennis with Monica Seles,
and so on.
Yes, there will be days when you ask yourself, “What have I gotten
myself into?” because you also have to deal with worker disputes or struc-
turing or restructuring of the company, choose who to hire and who to
fire, develop new products, decide which countries to distribute in, deter-
mine whether to invest in upgrading your offices or bringing information
technology (IT) into your stores, and set prices, as just a sample day at
the office.
There is no slam dunk. You won’t get to do all that you want. You
have to recognize and accept that you will never get it all done and get
comfortable with that.

Chiefs are A Cross Section of Society

Some you admire; some you abhor.
There are few idiots who are CEOs. It’s hard to be a dummy and be
in that position.

ƒ

Some are so dumb that I wouldn’t hire them for a job at minimum
wage.