But a lot of "proven" talent with a huge price tag is also no good, really achieved what they did elsewhere due to sheer luck/help from a product that couldn't go wrong, and will drag you into a hole with their comp. I have seen this over and over again: Big pedigree, top of the line personality, zero results.
Everyone thinks they are hiring the star, not the fraudster, or just the lucky one. That's how we end up with overpaid execs.
The folly is thinking that getting hiring right is the solution at all.
As has been pointed out a) leaders matter, b) the difference in impact between great and mediocre/poor leadership is massive, c) even if you hire a great leader you can get poor results.
It follows then that spending more effort to find just the right person is not enough. You must also examine your overall organizational culture, your investors culture, your unspoken assumptions about the goals of your organization, etc etc.
And yes great leaders do all of this - of course - it becomes obvious upon reading my comment. But the point is great leaders doing this is not enough. The organization must be on the same page. You can lead a horse to water etc etc. And yes the leader can "Re-organize" but at that point you may find yourself faced with throwing the baby out with the bathwater unavoidably.
Leaders are necessary. And hiring is hard. But there is no one golden calf like "hire the perfect leader" that will solve a problem.
As with most things worth doing: you have to do it. Doing it is hard. And you might still not get the results you want.
They spend 18 rounds over six months vetting a developer with silly puzzles that must be solved from memory, with an audience. It's about as far from the job as possible.
This happened by trying to find capable people that didn't come to you through nepotism and paper mills and such.
The strange thing is that nobody has developed a hiring battery for the naturally hyperconfident employee you met through the grapevine, who costs you millions, and as often as not, irreparably damages the company.
Sure, where would be biological lifeforms today if hadn’t been driven by some visionary leaders. Ooops? But I mean, now that humanity provide great leaders, biosphere is thriving like never before. Reooops?
The guy who took over JC Penney's after leaving Apple's Retail division is a good example of this. On paper great pedigree. Success --but did not understand a different, albeit retail, market so well and things tanked horribly.
Yeah, JC Penney was not Apple Stores (which by the way probably looked awful to a lot of people on paper--see Microsoft's attempt to clone). But JC Penny was a discount brand whose shoppers absolutely weren't looking for an expensive Apple Store experience.
> really achieved what they did elsewhere due to sheer luck/help
This world view is not falsifiable. Regardless of success you can say it was luck.
But I just don’t understand this. In my work we are constantly giving people chances to take on more responsibility, and often they don’t want to, or it doesn’t work out. Why would you expect that you could drop them in as CEO?
Are CEOs always the cause of success or failure? No. Are they good at avoiding blame? Yes. Are they also extremely skilled and competent people? Yes.
> In my work we are constantly giving people chances to take on more responsibility,
In my experience, this means one of two things:
You're asking people who already have too much to do, to add even more to their plate.
Or
You're throwing the projects which are doomed to failure and nobody else will touch at them.
In basically every job I've ever had this has been the case. There is nothing like being given a shit sandwich and being told it's delicious ice cream.
I'm saying this more from the perspective of an IC though, who is dealing with the next 2-3 levels of management. Perhaps it's a different story in the C-suite, but I'm dubious.
IMO it's more often a problem of training and support. Throwing people into the deep end and standing back while they sink or swim seems like a myopic strategy to me, but maybe that's why I'm not a CEO.
Of course! For example, luck may be the difference in being in good health or not, or having people that depend on you being in good health or not. If you are suffering from a depression, or (undiagnosed/untreated) ADHD, or a broken leg, or blindness, or you have to take care of a sick loved one, those are all things that you have little control over but they affect your ability to do household chores. And if you are disabled but you also happen to be rich due to a large inheritence (so luck), then you can hire a housekeeper. There are so many factors that can influence your ability to complete household chores that are outside your control, that we should surely include luck as a factor.
I hate this new cult of personality thing many are trying to cultivate.
But to that point most of the time, poor performance is attributed to "the market" and strong performance is attributed to "leadership". There is some clear cognitive dissonance going on.
I’m asking for clarification because if the answer is no I’m afraid we are in psychologically different worlds and people feel out of control of very basic parts of their lives.
It also depends on whether you're providing appropriate compensation for the responsibility that you're offering. I see several cases where managers offer more responsibility for a peanuts' worth of pay hike and then say the same stuff you said.
I feel like we should consider the opposite as well. What if you actually hire someone who is great but they achieve zero results because of sheet bad luck and “help” from a product team that couldn’t go right.
CEOs are basically dice rollers. "Proven" are just formerly lucky gamblers. The only control that CEO has is whether they roll the dice themselves or let their underlings roll. It's entirely possible that the only CEOs that are winning against the odds are the ones that roll themselves the least.
Everyone thinks they are hiring the star, not the fraudster, or just the lucky one. That's how we end up with overpaid execs.