The abcs of becoming a ceo.

• Author: COUCH, JAN
• Position: Chief executive officer

IS IT TRUE THAT THE MOST powerful letters in the English alphabet -- at least from a business standpoint -- are CEO? Looking at the numbers of popular books devoted to corporate achievement, one might think so. Log on to Amazon.com and type in CEO. Hit enter. The titles of 168 books pop up, including "How to Become CEO: The Rules for Rising to the Top of Any Organization." "The Mind of the CEO." "Elizabeth 1, CEO." "CEO Logic: How to Think and Act like a Chief Executive." Credibility notwithstanding, few of the authors purport to be CEOs. One tome is written by an historian, another by a business columnist. Another writer merely elicited the opinions of a few dozen executive recruiters.

Given the array of dubious advice, how does one truly master the ABCs of becoming CEO? ColoradoBiz decided to ask several Colorado CEOs, bona fide top dogs of five major Colorado-based corporations, about their tried and true secrets of success.

Among the subjects: Sam Addoms of Frontier Airlines, Larissa Herda of Time Warner Telecom, Jeff Selberg of Exempla Healthcare, Doug Morton of Gart Sports, and Lanny Outlaw of Western Gas Resources Inc. Their perspective?

Forget the sure-fire formulas. All discovered different paths to the top. And most of them never set out to become a CEO. They determined early on to do every job well and eventually found themselves, as Frank Sinatra once crooned, "king of the hill ... top of the heap."

"I never aspired to be a CEO," says Herda, who at 43 is one of the youngest CEOs of a major public corporation, and one of the few females who have rapidly ascended to the summit of the male-dominated telecommunications arena.

"The day I was offered the position, I didn't want it," Herda admits.

After much coaxing and encouragement from her predecessor, she took the leap.

"I came up through the sales chain," she explains. "I was very competitive. I always wanted to win the sales awards."

Sales leverage is a strategy Herda advises students to utilize when she speaks to university classes.

"I tell students, 'Make sure you spend some time in sales. Even if you don't think you're a sales type, at least get involved at some support level in a sales organization."'

For Morton at Gart Sports, selling is also "the thing." The importance of developing sales skills and customer service techniques have been ingrained in Morton since he began working in his family's business. His father built a successful chain of sporting goods stores in Salt...