Survivor bias is really at work with "leadership" books or books about why x company is amazing. A lot of times, companies get ahead by dumb luck. In your hypot

Survivor bias is really at work with "leadership" books or books about why x company is amazing. A lot of times, companies get ahead by dumb luck. In your hypothetical example not only would the CEO be wrong, he'd chase off the decent talent, historical knowledge, kill morale, etc and we'd be reading a different article about bad CEO's. But for whatever reason, this was possible. No one did a study or talked to experts. It was just a gamble from above. We shouldn't be rewarding that.