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It takes a variety of skills.....not the smartest, or the brightest, or the most personable, or the most cut-throat, but a balance of all of those things.
Coming from a 'good' school helps--it gets you noticed, and allows you membership in the 'club'. This helps, doesn't work for everyone, but is a plus.
You pay attention. To everything. You learn skills, and convince people by your actions that you are capable when challenges arise, be they project, task or location in nature.
You schmooze. Not to the point of becoming a kiss-a$$, but enough so that your name and qualifications are always on someone's mind.
You keep moving. You don't get bogged down in one job or one division too long. You demonstrate all of the 'honeymoon' attributes, and you don't stay around long enough for a TSHTF moment.
You socialize...job, industry, community. You are everywhere.
And finally, it sometimes comes down to luck. Look at Jack Welch, Sandy Weill, Hank Greenburg or Ken Thompson. These guys were horrible managers and left behind incredible disasters, but they did all of the above...AND they rode the wave of leverage and free money. They built huge pyramids based on free money and enjoyed the accolades that go with that. Skill? Or just good timing? Maybe they were bright enough to seize the moment, and let their followers figure out how to deal with the mess. GE still has barely recovered, Wachovia got sold in desperation, AIG got bailed out, and Citibank got some of all of the above--mostly a bail out. The guys who ran these shops into the ground are lauded as being geniuses because they were lucky, and got out before TSHTF.
Most of all, it takes hard work,. Not necessarily ethical or 'dedicated' hard work, but hard work as in 'my goal is to be a wealthy CEO' and I will do what I have to do accomplish that goal.
The best answer of them all is this one.
You need to move constently and keep moving. you have family, you are moving 6-10 times in your career.
We just had the sr. vice president visit our site and he went over all the details. He had to move 6 times to get to the position he is in. He isn't a super smart individual and honestly, demotivated a lot of people in the room with his little speech and how he answered the questions. I was surprised at how closed minded he was, but oh well.
These guys do work 12-14 hr days...and sometimes weekends. it consumes them. They are complete slaves of the company.
Some of the things I disagreed with that he said.
- We could move all of production to India and save 20%. The problem I see in the trenches as an engineer is, The quality of their assemblies suck. they also don't know the basics about manufacturing. They are not very bright. We get crap back with loose screws, missing hardware, stuff installed backwards, they can't even machine off the sheath from a thermocouple. I mean come on.
- He said that they can't afford to pay people well because they would become uncompetitive. I agree in the sense that the 30-40% crappy people they carry at the facility who are worthless shouldn't get raises at all, they should be fired. The lions could easily make 10-20% more, and they need to hire less people to replace the 30-40%, but hire good smart people at higher wages. trade in 3 hyundai elentra's for 1 porsche type of move. I disagreed with him whole heartidly. I also think management sucks at understanding our problems and how they deploy the resources. I know things won't be perfect, but we have some huge holes in the line up. People need to be fired and new bright individuals brought in.
from my point of view. moving up is all about networking and getting in front of the decision makers and kissing ass to them. Every young person who is up in the ranks either went through the leadership program (networking), or knows someone higher up and hangs out with them in off work hours or travels with them. I know no one at my company or the ones I have worked for who made it high up and didn't do any of these.
You need to move constently and keep moving. you have family, you are moving 6-10 times in your career.
We just had the sr. vice president visit our site and he went over all the details. He had to move 6 times to get to the position he is in. He isn't a super smart individual and honestly, demotivated a lot of people in the room with his little speech and how he answered the questions. I was surprised at how closed minded he was, but oh well.
These guys do work 12-14 hr days...and sometimes weekends. it consumes them. They are complete slaves of the company.
Some of the things I disagreed with that he said.
- We could move all of production to India and save 20%. The problem I see in the trenches as an engineer is, The quality of their assemblies suck. they also don't know the basics about manufacturing. They are not very bright. We get crap back with loose screws, missing hardware, stuff installed backwards, they can't even machine off the sheath from a thermocouple. I mean come on.
- He said that they can't afford to pay people well because they would become uncompetitive. I agree in the sense that the 30-40% crappy people they carry at the facility who are worthless shouldn't get raises at all, they should be fired. The lions could easily make 10-20% more, and they need to hire less people to replace the 30-40%, but hire good smart people at higher wages. trade in 3 hyundai elentra's for 1 porsche type of move. I disagreed with him whole heartidly. I also think management sucks at understanding our problems and how they deploy the resources. I know things won't be perfect, but we have some huge holes in the line up. People need to be fired and new bright individuals brought in.
from my point of view. moving up is all about networking and getting in front of the decision makers and kissing ass to them. Every young person who is up in the ranks either went through the leadership program (networking), or knows someone higher up and hangs out with them in off work hours or travels with them. I know no one at my company or the ones I have worked for who made it high up and didn't do any of these.
Funny how they never say they can save money by eliminating the overpaid parasites at the top. There is no way that underpaid foreign workers can have the same pride in work as a domestic worker paid commensurate with performance. CEO's are only thinking short term to line their own pockets, regardless of how it hurts anyone else. Trouble is they are running out of productive industries to kill. If domestic workers are unemployed, who will buy their foreign made consumer crap?
I mean, it's a highly desired position. How did they beat the competition and climb to the top seat making 8 digits? And more importantly, how do they maintain their seats and compensation packages even when their companies make negative profits?
Long story short:
Its who you know not what you know.....
Like really all these long ass examples for this simple question reduced to this lol
I mean, it's a highly desired position. How did they beat the competition and climb to the top seat making 8 digits? And more importantly, how do they maintain their seats and compensation packages even when their companies make negative profits?
A good question, especially since I recently read an article (in The Economist?) about how mediocre most CEOs are.
I have an uncle that retired as the CEO of a company that did 27 billion in annual sales and had 40K+ employees.....not bad for a guy that worked there over 40 years and started in a very low level position after dropping out of college his sophomore year......Only worked for one company from that dropout time until retirement!
I mean, it's a highly desired position. How did they beat the competition and climb to the top seat making 8 digits? And more importantly, how do they maintain their seats and compensation packages even when their companies make negative profits?
A combination of luck, ability, hard work, and ruthlessness.
1. You start a company that becomes a fortune 500 company (Like Bezos for Amazon)
2. You start in a less desirable position and grow within the company (like Tim Cook did in Apple)
3. You have a leadership role at another fortune 500 and join another company as CEO (like Marissa Mayer of Yahoo)
Now for the statistics that are meaningful at increasing your chances of being CEO:
1. Bachelors degree from a decent university (Penn, Harvard, Columbia, etc. represent a large number of CEOs today)
2. Advanced degree from a top business school (Harvard, Booth, etc. represent a large number of CEOs today)
3. Strong financial background/acumen (this can be through studying finance or learning through leadership roles)
4. Become COO of the company (majority of CEOs get promoted from being COO)
5. Serve on the board of public companies
Just curious have you known a big shot CEO actually went to a business school? I cannot think of any, Jobs, Buffett. Zuckerberg..even these you listed Bezos, Tim Cook, Marissa Mayer ... none of them went to business school whereas more than 50% went to engineering school like computer science. So I think it's more important to get a real skill like computer science or finance etc.. rather than go to some bauble business school.
(3). And some, of course, are at the helm because daddy was CEO. These people can be dumb as a brick, but why not continue the family tradition?
If you are talking about a publicly traded company or a company of meaningful size a weak CEO will not last long no matter who his/her daddy is.
If daddy ran the local lumber mill - sure his son or daughter could run it for a long time without interference.
Can you name a big CEO that obtained his job because of his parents?
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