Page 69 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

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

times, just be sure that each time you are practicing a little bit better exe-
cution than the last.
Every task you do, from the most menial to the most significant, can
be improved with this conscious preparation: voice-mail messages, report
writing, cocktail-party small talk, public speaking, selling, negotiating,
and so forth.

I always feel I can do just a little bit better.
ƒ

Every time you step onto the court, you have to do better. It’s like the
Olympics.

When you see yourself improving, it becomes interesting. Big
changes don’t happen overnight, but change can happen from this minute
of practice to the next minute, from this day to the next.

Take On Individual and Group Learning

and Hang with Good People

Making time to read is not a luxury. Try to do it as voraciously as possi-
ble. (And I don’t mean your e-mails.) There are only two places where
you can read all day without doing much else: school and prison. Since
you’re in neither, you have to grab what time you can to make sure that
you browse something beyond what’s required for your job every day.
Listen to (and read) books, and go through local, regional, national,
and international magazines and newspapers; blogs; the comics; customer
newsletters; your company product brochures; and the World Wide
Web—inside and outside your areas of interest and specialty. (According
to Forbes.com, 51 percent of C-level executives say that their most impor-
tant source of information is the Web, whereas 22 percent say that it’s
newspapers.) If you go on Amazon.com, you can buy a subscription to
Skeptic, Free Inquiry, Small Business Technology, African Business, Sci-
entific American, Mental Floss, Reason, Bits & Pieces on Leadership, Man-
agement Today, Financial Management, Art Business News, Good Stuff,