Best Background for A CEO - Not Business and Not Law

Clarence Otis, Jr., CEO of Darden Restaraunts(which runs the Red Lobster and Olive Garden chains)in an interview in the New York Times:

Q. Anything in your background that, looking back, prepared you for the art of building a team?

A. The thing that prepared me the most — where the team was front and center — was theater, which I did a lot of growing up, in high school, during college, law school and even for a couple of years after law school. I would say that probably is the starkest lesson in how reliant you are on others, because you’re there in front of an audience. It’s all live, and everybody’s got to know their lines and know their cues and know their movement, and so you’re totally dependent on people doing that.

You could have your piece down, but if one person on the team doesn’t, you’re in trouble, and it’s embarrassing because people aren’t used to seeing errors in theater. Theater is seamless every night.