Page 76 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

You Know You Don’t Know Enough • 57

visit Google Earth, or at least subscribe to American Express
Departures magazine.
If you’re a minority, understand the majority. If you’re a majority,
understand the minority.

ƒ

I don’t want one of those employees where everything he knows about
the world he read in the local paper and saw on CNN. If his world
is his house, he’s not for me.

A recount of one CEO’s international reminisces:

While based in Argentina, I kept physically sharp and fit by
learning Latin dance and drinking red wine, which kept me in a
positive mind-set, and as a result, the company I managed had a
positive outcome.
In Nigeria, I learned African dancing, interacting with 500 tribal
people, resulting in a positive mind-set that helped in long-term
financial decisions that affected the oil market with the United
States—that and playing golf with international leaders. My life
changed forever in Brazil, where I stopped watching television or
surfing the Web. They call it the devil’s curse there.

As much as you know—and I’m sure it’s a lot—gather more and more
and more information. You don’t have to memorize a Greek tragedy, but
you can garner one point here, another one there, and another—and all
of a sudden you have a chunk of information that no one else has—
information not garnered from the usual sources.