Page 47 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)
P. 47

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

               At the top, you become a generalist among specialists. You make bets
               on behalf of investors and employees. You pick leaders, override lead-
               ers, listen to them, and at some point you’re the one who gets to say,
               “Okay, saddle up.”

               Empathetically step outside your own work, your own situation, and
           grasp the interests, objectives, and frustrations of peers, bosses, and sub-
           ordinates in and out of your specialty. If you figure out how constituents
           and components play into your and others’ successes, you can focus,
           align, and build effective groups, liaisons, and partnerships beyond your
           office walls to the industry, the country, and out to the world.
               Getting too specialized—too technically brilliant—will limit
           your upward movement. In fact, it will limit progress totally past a certain
           level. Instead, you must simultaneously continue getting better in your
           specialty while you take on generalist skills too. There is no specialist path,
           alone, to the top, only combined with being a generalist. You will make
           better decisions, fewer mistakes, and be better able to lead, evaluate,
           attract, and retain a diverse group (functionally as well as culturally)
           as a generalist. If you only understand one area (over even two or
           three), you’ll be underdeveloped and unprepared to take on a total lead-
           ership role.

               You better not be the best of anything except the best at getting your
               team to do productive things.
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               The day they made me CEO, I knew I was in trouble. The biggest
               shock to me was discovering that I had to give up being one of
               the finance boys. When I was the CFO, I didn’t have to treat the sales
               guy well; as the CEO, I have to treat him well. I could be judgmental
               of other departments as the CFO, but as the CEO, I had to make
               them my ally. I went to the different heads and told them I was going
               to work on their behalf with the rest of the company. Most didn’t
               believe it.

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