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Here's my anecdotal-experience-driven theory of what's going on with the golfing-CEO companies underperforming the non-golfing-CEO ones: it isn't a matter of lo

Here's my anecdotal-experience-driven theory of what's going on with the golfing-CEO companies underperforming the non-golfing-CEO ones: it isn't a matter of lost productive hours while golfing instead of working. It's that the golfing CEOs are, as a population, different from the non-golfing ones. The golfing ones are a bit more extroverted and charismatic than the non-golfers; they "look like CEOs". They are more likely than the non-golfing ones to have attended a top-tier MBA program. Their average height is significantly greater than the non-golfers. And so on; you see where I'm going. Certainly there are plenty of introverted, socially challenged golfers out there. But within any population whether CEOs or lawyers or cops or musicians or whatever else, the subset of people who golf is going to be, on average, more extroverted than the subset of people who don't. I think this somewhat ties in to Taleb's argument that you should trust surgeons who don't look like surgeons, since their achievement of professional success despite their tendency to create a negative first impression is a robust heuristic of professional competence[0]. The population of non-golfers, averaged out as a population, were held to subtly higher standards that required better performance out of them. This means that non-golfers, as a population, tend to be more challenged at work over the course of their careers, and that it was less likely that individuals could "fail up" -- the Peter Principle extends further for extroverts. Anyway that's my theory. 0: https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surgeons-23b0e2cf6d52 https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surg...

cjhopman 8y ago
Interesting theory. Do you apply it to men in predominantly female occupations and vice versa?
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  That's a good question. Best stab at an answer is that I think it's true for most companies where it's possible that the next CEO will have gone to HBS and worked for McKinsey. Would be a fun topic for research!
- kybernetikos 8y ago
  I think it's entirely plausible that the median woman in a coding job is better than the median man in a coding job because of this effect. That's why vague claims (like in the google debacle) that women are biologically less suited to coding than men might not be relevant to your organisation even if we were to believe it true in general. A similar effect may explain some of this: https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-comprehensive-case-for-investing-more-vc-money-in-women-led-startups https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-comprehensive-case-for-investing...
itronitron 8y ago
This reminds me of when I read about Steve Jobs' having to be dressed up as a CEO for the cover of some business magazine in the '80's (Fortune, or Inc. I think). I distinctly remember as a young person seeing that magazine and thinking he's some conventional business dude. So of course I, and probably everyone else, assumed that to be at an innovative high-tech company you needed to be a conventional business dude. I didn't realize how wrong I was until I read his biography, needless to say I think the 'look like CEO' stereotype needs to be dropped finally.
- discordance 8y ago
  Sounds similar to the theory that to be a successful CEO you need to be an asshole
  - kickling 8y ago
    Speaking of Steve Jobs..
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    But do you need to be an asshole to become a (successful) CEO, or does the job turn you into one?
    - afarrell 8y ago
      In order to meaningfully answer this question, we need a much more well-articulated definition of "asshole". People's definitions vary widely. For example, suppose you see someone broadcast online about being very distressed about a problem and your response is to point them toward resources that might be useful to solve the problem -- some set of people would consider you an asshole for that pattern of behavior. Some would consider it very helpful. Is it? Not my point. The point is that there is disagreement. In order to become a successful CEO (or team lead or spouse...), you do need to be able to muster the emotional backbone to have tough conversations with people. One thing that can hold you back from this is the internal worry about being an asshole. Unless you are able to say to yourself, "I hear a voice on my shoulder telling me I'm a terrible person. But this topic needs to be discussed and I need to do advocacy here. This is uncomfortable and I don't like it but I'm going to do it anyway", you will under-communicate and issue won't get resolved. However: 1) It is possible to err. That difficult conversation? Might in fact just be you being an asshole. We are not lucky enough to live in a world with a 100% surefire way to avoid this. So, good communication involves being willing to risk some probability of being an asshole. 2) People without that "maybe you're being an asshole" voice are not going to have this problem.
Bromskloss 8y ago
> you should trust surgeons who don't look like surgeons What _does_ a typical surgeon look like, then? I didn't know they had a look.
pfd1986 8y ago
Another theory (possibly complementary) is networking. Golfing / frequenting private clubs can greatly improve CEOs visibility among other CEOs.. I believe Mark Newman's network theory book mention exactly this example.
- leroy_masochist 8y ago
  I agree, I think the networking aspect is central. Extroverted people are going to be drawn to sports that serve a networking purpose like golf, tennis, skiing, hunting quail, etc.

cjhopman 8y ago

Interesting theory. Do you apply it to men in predominantly female occupations and vice versa?

leroy_masochist 8y ago
That's a good question. Best stab at an answer is that I think it's true for most companies where it's possible that the next CEO will have gone to HBS and worked for McKinsey. Would be a fun topic for research!
kybernetikos 8y ago
I think it's entirely plausible that the median woman in a coding job is better than the median man in a coding job because of this effect. That's why vague claims (like in the google debacle) that women are biologically less suited to coding than men might not be relevant to your organisation even if we were to believe it true in general. A similar effect may explain some of this: https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-comprehensive-case-for-investing-more-vc-money-in-women-led-startups https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-comprehensive-case-for-investing...

itronitron 8y ago

This reminds me of when I read about Steve Jobs' having to be dressed up as a CEO for the cover of some business magazine in the '80's (Fortune, or Inc. I think). I distinctly remember as a young person seeing that magazine and thinking he's some conventional business dude. So of course I, and probably everyone else, assumed that to be at an innovative high-tech company you needed to be a conventional business dude. I didn't realize how wrong I was until I read his biography, needless to say I think the 'look like CEO' stereotype needs to be dropped finally.

discordance 8y ago
Sounds similar to the theory that to be a successful CEO you need to be an asshole
- kickling 8y ago
  Speaking of Steve Jobs..
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  But do you need to be an asshole to become a (successful) CEO, or does the job turn you into one?
  - afarrell 8y ago
    In order to meaningfully answer this question, we need a much more well-articulated definition of "asshole". People's definitions vary widely. For example, suppose you see someone broadcast online about being very distressed about a problem and your response is to point them toward resources that might be useful to solve the problem -- some set of people would consider you an asshole for that pattern of behavior. Some would consider it very helpful. Is it? Not my point. The point is that there is disagreement. In order to become a successful CEO (or team lead or spouse...), you do need to be able to muster the emotional backbone to have tough conversations with people. One thing that can hold you back from this is the internal worry about being an asshole. Unless you are able to say to yourself, "I hear a voice on my shoulder telling me I'm a terrible person. But this topic needs to be discussed and I need to do advocacy here. This is uncomfortable and I don't like it but I'm going to do it anyway", you will under-communicate and issue won't get resolved. However: 1) It is possible to err. That difficult conversation? Might in fact just be you being an asshole. We are not lucky enough to live in a world with a 100% surefire way to avoid this. So, good communication involves being willing to risk some probability of being an asshole. 2) People without that "maybe you're being an asshole" voice are not going to have this problem.

Bromskloss 8y ago

> you should trust surgeons who don't look like surgeons What _does_ a typical surgeon look like, then? I didn't know they had a look.

pfd1986 8y ago

Another theory (possibly complementary) is networking. Golfing / frequenting private clubs can greatly improve CEOs visibility among other CEOs.. I believe Mark Newman's network theory book mention exactly this example.

leroy_masochist 8y ago
I agree, I think the networking aspect is central. Extroverted people are going to be drawn to sports that serve a networking purpose like golf, tennis, skiing, hunting quail, etc.