How to Act Like a CEO: 10 Rules for Getting to the Top and Staying There - Review

HR Magazine, July, 2001

D.A. Benton

McGraw Hill, 2001

204 pages

List Price: $19.95

ISBN: 0-07-135998-2

What sets CEOs apart from other people? Executive development and career consultant Debra A. Benton says CEOs approach their careers differently than the rest of us. In How to Act Like a CEO, Benton identifies behaviors exhibited by CEOs in their climb to the top. Benton, who also wrote How to Think Like a CEO, studied such high-profile executives as Apple's Steven Jobs, Danita Hughes of Edgewater Systems and Nabisco's Doug Conant.

In the first chapter of 10, the author identifies personal integrity as the most important characteristic of a successful CEO: "Be yourself, unless you're a jerk." How you do your work, she writes, is more important than what your work is. A commitment to self-improvement also is key. Benton advises readers to think of a project where the results were "just okay" instead of "great." Then ask, "How could I have handled it better? What negative impact did I have on people? What do I want to remember when it happens again? What can I do about it now?"

In the succeeding chapters, Benton details nine other rules to help land you in the executive suite. So certain is she of their universal truth that she wryly suggests you tattoo them on your forearm:

* See around corners (vision).

* Make dust--or eat it (strategic planning).

* Make the big play (operations).

* Keep good company (people).

* Be the number one fundraiser and fund protector (money).

* Act like a good CEO even when you don't feel like it (leadership).

* Evangelize the world (sell).

* Go big or go home (social citizen).

* Cut through the crap (balance).

Two sections at the end of the book give special advice to the "grays" over 40 and the "punks" of undefined youth.

Benton's advice to the "grays" includes: Don't object to new things too much; don't consult and analyze too long; don't accept mediocrity in yourself; and do make friends with young, up-and-comets. To the "punks" she says: Build up habits, good habits; pursue opportunities to really make something in this world and make a difference; hope and dream; and go not for pleasure exclusively, but save some for later.

Her 10 rules notwithstanding, Benton acknowledges that the ability to make it to the top depends on your own determination. "The difference between good and great," she concludes, "is that you've got to want it.... Some people just don't want it enough."