Qualifications

Qualifications

The best chicken farmer in the world probably wouldn't also be the best poultry production CEO. For starters, slashing the budget is way different than cutting up a chicken into nice, neat pieces. A CEO needs to be a whiz at identifying industry trends, increasing market share, building the value of the company, and basically just keeping everything going full speed ahead.

An MBA is a good place to start if you're aiming for the CEO's chair. While it's possible to get there without business school or even a college degree, the odds of actually making it happen without either one are slim.

Once you have your MBA in hand, pick an industry—probably food production, for an aspiring poultry executive—and start climbing the ladder. About half of today's Fortune 500 CEOs got their start in either finance, sales, or marketing (source). We're not saying it's the only way to start building your poultry empire, but it seems like the best way to start.

Chief executive is one of those jobs for which the prime qualification is adaptability; you need to just be able to handle whatever curve balls are thrown your way. It's hard to pinpoint the exact qualities that lead to that can-do attitude, but they'll probably involve a mix of interpersonal skills, confidence, and capacity for abstract thinking. None of those guarantee success, but it wouldn't hurt to have them.