HOW TO BECOME CEO by Jeffrey J. Fox

• CEO is the acronym for chief executive officer. The CEO is the person who has strategic responsibility for the fortune and the future of the organization.
• The surest way to become president or CEO of a corporation is to buy a business or to start a business.
• Perhaps the biggest problem in business is that while environments and markets change, managements do not.
• WACADAD, pronounced wack-a-dad, is an acronym for “Words are cheap and deeds are dear.”
• If you say you are going to do something, always do it, or do your utmost. If you give your word, keep it.
• The world is full of people who say they will do something, and don’t do it.
• People who create positive outcomes are rare.
• Prove your worth with deliverables, and do so again and again.
• Ideas are nothing without execution.
• So few people in a corporation actually execute ideas that the person who does becomes visible, and is often sought to do more.
• Here is the simple gist of it: If you say you will do something, do it. If you say you won’t do something, don’t do it. If you see something that has to get done, make it happen.
• Always Take the Job That Offers the Most Money
• After you have decided what you want to do—whether it is banking, advertising, manufacturing, or something else—go to work for the company that offers you the most money.
• If you are in a corporation, always take the transfer, promotion, or assignment that pays the most money.
• There are several important reasons why you go for the money. First, all of your benefits, perquisites, bonuses, and subsequent raises will be based on your salary.
• Corporations give all extra compensation in percentages.
• Second, the higher paid you are, the more visible to top management you will be.
• Third, the more money you are paid, the more contribution will be expected of you. This means you will be given more responsibility, tasks, and problems to solve.
• Fourth, if two people are candidates for a promotion to a job that pays $60,000, and one person makes $40,000 and the other $50,000, the higher-paid person always gets the job.
• Finally, in business, money is the scoreboard. The more you make, the better you’re doing. Simple.
• Avoid Staff Jobs, Seek Line Jobs
• Line jobs make money for your corporation. Line jobs bring in money or have a direct relationship with profits and losses.
• Line jobs include salespeople, sales managers, product managers, plant managers, marketing directors, foremen, supervisors, and general managers. Staff jobs include lawyers, planners, data-processing people, research and development scientists, and administrators of all types.
• Line jobs directly help the company get and keep customers.
• Jobs that don’t get and keep customers are redundant.
• Take a staff job only if it is clearly temporary, a stepping-stone, and if it pays more money.
• Don’t Expect Human Resources to Plan Your Career
• Your destiny and your career growth are your responsibility, no one else’s.
• Get and Keep Customers
• When the phone rings, twelve people ought to dive to answer it.
• Keep Physically Fit
• Your brain will make you money, but your body carries your brain. The better your physical condition, the greater your capacity for productive, unrelenting work.
• Do Something Hard and Lonely
• Regularly practice something Spartan and individualistic.
• Never Write a Nasty E-Mail
• Think for One Hour Every Day
• Spend one hard hour every day planning, dreaming, scheming, thinking, calculating.
• Keep written notes in your special “idea notebook.”
• Keep and Use a Special “Idea Notebook”
• Buy a notebook you like. Keep it in one place—in a desk drawer or in a briefcase pocket—and leave it there. Write down all your ideas, plans, goals, and dreams.
• Good ideas always have their time. When they do, commit them to action via your “To Do” list.
• Don’t Have a Drink with the Gang
• Never get tipsy with anyone connected with your company. It is a sign of weakness. It shows you are out of control.
• Don’t Smoke
• You probably haven’t yet earned the right to smoke a victory cigar.
• Skip All Office Parties
• Friday Is “How Ya Doin’?” Day
• Friday, take one of the people you need out to lunch and ask, “How ya doin’?” These are usually not people in your department. They are important gears in the machine: people who help you get your job done.
• Find out who you need, no matter how low in the organization, and let them know you know you need and appreciate them.
• Make one good ally in your company every month.
• Allies of Your Peers’ Subordinates
• Your peers are rivals for your next spot. The support of your peers’ teammates is important. Their support of you will help you get your job done even if your peer deliberately or unintentionally acts to scuttle you.
• Know Everybody by Their First Name
• most people, there is no sound sweeter than their name remembered and pronounced correctly.
• Learn everybody’s full name, and know something about them. Find out what they do and why their job is important.
• A very good technique is to take visitors (customers, job candidates, friends) on an office or a plant tour. Introduce them to people, telling the visitor what it is these other folks do that is important to the corporation.
• “One-Line, Good-Job” Tours
• Every once in a while get the highest-ranking person you can to tour and visit your department. Before the tour, write out a single 3-by-5 index card for every person. On the card write a one-or two-line report of some achievement or contribution—business or personal—that the person made. Use the cards as “cue cards” for the top guy, so that he can personally and specifically thank and compliment each person.
• Don’t let anybody in the company know you do this.
• Make One More Call
• The difference between the successful person and the average is inches.
• Arrive Forty-Five Minutes Early and Leave Fifteen Minutes Late
• If you are going to be first in your corporation, start practicing by being first on the job.
• Don’t stay at the office until ten o’clock every night. You are sending a signal that you can’t keep up or that your personal life is poor.
• Leave fifteen minutes late instead. In those fifteen minutes organize your next day and clean your desk.
• Don’t Take Work Home from the Office
• Your home hours are for listening to your family, studying, planning, expanding your interests, and pitching to your kids during batting practice.
• Earn Your “Invitation Credentials”
• In every corporation there is, at the top, a cosa nostra, an inner, special family. This is the group that ultimately decides on who becomes CEO and for how long he or she will be in office.
• Avoid Superiors When You Travel
• You should spend your travel time working. Airplane time is work time, so fly by yourself.
• Hotel time is also work time.
• Eat in Your Hotel Room
• Dinner in your room saves time and money.
• Have breakfast in your room. Arrange for an exact service time. Get up early, do your exercises, get dressed, and start working. Don’t waste time in a breakfast line with a hundred businesspeople.
• Work, Don’t Read Paperbacks, on the Airplane
• Have a specific work objective for each trip.
• Keep a “People File”
• Get a good contact list development program. From the first day on the job, start keeping a file of all the people you meet, work with, and get to know.
• Always ask people for their business card; inevitably they will ask for yours.
• Send Handwritten Notes
• Handwritten notes stand out.
• There are endless occasions that warrant a handwritten note:
• Go to a good stationery store. Order a box of exceptional-quality cards and envelopes with your name on the cards and your address on the envelopes.
• Send one handwritten note a week… for starters.
• Don’t Get Buddy-Buddy with Your Superiors
• You and your superiors are business associates. You are not friends. There is a necessary line between you. Don’t cross it and get buddy-buddy. Don’t let your superiors cross it either.
• Don’t Hide an Elephant
• Big problems always surface. If they have been hidden, even unintentionally, the negative fallout is always worse.
• When you know there is a problem, a goof, a snafu, and it is important, let your supervisors and colleagues know right away.
• Always Take Vacations
• Always plan your vacation far in advance.
• Always Say “Yes” to a Senior Executive Request
• People who get the job done are the ones who get the top jobs.
• Never Surprise Your Boss
• Your boss wants to appear in control, on top of things. It is a discourtesy to him, and to the organization, for you to keep your boss in the dark.
• Make Your Boss Look Good, and Your Boss’s Boss Look Better
• Getting real promotions usually requires a vacancy up the ladder. Your best chance is to succeed your boss.
• Your boss’s boss is always the key. He is often more interested and influential in your career than your immediate superior.
• Never Let a Good Boss Make a Mistake
• A good boss trains you to take her place, and when she ultimately gets promoted, you have a chance to progress.
• Go to the Library One Day a Month
• One good, uninterrupted workday in a quiet library will enable you to accomplish ten times more than you could with the same number of hours in your office.
• Add One Big New Thing to Your Life Each Year
• To be qualified to be a chief executive officer of a corporation, you must be broad-gauged, widely read, and have many diverse interests.
• Practice being presidential all the time, and that includes the business uniform.
• Buy a book on how to dress for success, or note how successful people, leaders, and winners dress.
• Overinvest in People
• Hire the best people. Attract, motivate, train, and reward the best people.
• Leaders of organizations know that people make things happen. They never forget this elemental truth.
• When hiring, look to three I’s: Integrity “I can do it” attitude Intelligence
• Overpay Your People
• Get rid of the mediocre, the slackers, for they take money from the real workers. One nonearner’s salary can be spread among many.
• You can’t cut people costs and save money. People are an asset, a contributing return on investment. You make money on people.
• You are much better off having fewer exceptional people all making more money than they should, rather than having the same or lower payroll costs with more people.
• To become a president, you must master the art of and the ability to stop, look, and listen. Listening is very difficult, especially for aggressive, energetic, bright people. You must train yourself to always be on “high receive.”
• Be a Flag-Waving Company Patriot
• If you want to be president of your company, you must commit yourself totally to your company and to its products or services.
• Do not go to work for a company if you cannot, unabashedly, shout the virtues of their products.
• Find and Fill the “Data Gaps”
• Identify what you don’t know and what your organization doesn’t know. These are “data gaps.”
• Most people in business never really work hard. They manufacture a busy look by bustle and busywork.
• Dig deep, do the prep work, and success will follow.
• Never Panic… or Lose Your Temper
• If you have ten seconds to make a decision, think for nine.
• Learn to Speak and Write in Plain English
• You must learn to communicate. You must be articulate.
• Business communications must be precise, complete, and totally comprehensible.
• Treat All People as Special
• Be a Credit Maker, Not a Credit Taker
• Give everybody 100 percent credit for the work they do.
• Give proper credit and you will become known as a credit maker, as somebody who gets things done, as a person to work for. Your people will work very hard, as they know they will be fairly recognized.
• Give Informal Surprise Bonuses
• If someone does an extraordinarily good job on something, particularly something that is not part of his regular responsibility, give him a bonus.
• Please, Be Polite with Everyone
• Use good manners, all the time, with everyone. Be gracious. Never pull rank. Never wear your boss’s stripes. Don’t swear or use coarse language. Don’t put your feet on office furniture.
• Always be on time for appointments.
• Always introduce yourself, your spouse, and anyone else clearly and slowly.
• People who feel good about themselves and their jobs will contribute at high levels.
• Saying nice things to people makes them feel good.
• It is the gruntwork that counts and begets the glory.
• If you begrudge the gruntwork, you will not get the glory.
• In business, failure costs so much money that almost every satisfied company with more than a thousand employees avoids the risk of innovation.
• Not many things work perfectly the first time.
• There are two kinds of decisions: revocable and irrevocable. Knowing the difference is a hallmark of the good manager. Revocable decisions are changeable decisions and can be made relatively fast, because their impact is less, and if they’re wrong, there is time to redo. The organization has to live with irrevocable decisions.
• You must always think fast and study fast to be able to decide fast.
• Don’t change the formula for success. Rather, pour the coals to it.
• Always be on the lookout for ideas. Be completely indiscriminate as to the source.
• Stay Out of Office Politics
• Rampant office politics is symptomatic of a weak leader. The reward system is probably not fair or clear.
• Spend your time creating and accomplishing. Let your actions be your politics. In good companies, contribution counts.
• Never Be Late
• Being late is not a winning career strategy.
• Look Sharp and Be Sharp
• A little vanity is good. Look after yourself, and keep an attractive appearance.
• Don’t Go Over Budget
• Get your job done on time and within budget. Senior managers promote people who deliver what is expected.
• Tight budgets promote creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness. Look upon a tight budget as a challenge.
• Never Underestimate an Opponent
• One of the most dangerous impediments to one’s career is the character assassin.
• The “should’ve club” is full of nondoers, the risk averse. They never go for it.