What I am not seeing in this discussion is any calculations showing how much of these outcomes are down to dumb luck, sample bias and correlation.

For example:

> Furthermore, research using our CEO database found that the top decile of high performing CEOs are 35 percent more likely to dynamically reallocate capital than average performers.

Maybe they stumbled into an opportunity that the rest didn't. That's luck.

> To move “boldly” is to shift at least 30 percent more than the industry median. Making one or two bold moves more than doubles the likelihood of rising from the middle quintiles of economic profit to the top quintile, and making three or more bold moves makes such a rise six times more likely.

So if your random walk takes you upwards, you wind up having walked upwards. Brilliant.

> In the largest research effort of its kind, McKinsey found that CEOs who insist on rigorously measuring and managing all cultural elements that drive performance more than double the odds that their strategies will be executed.

Measured number rises, unmeasured number remains unmeasured. Scientists baffled.

Remember: these are the best and the brightest. They are taken extremely seriously.

Edit: they do give a source for their 45%-explained-by-CEO claim ... and it's a pop-business book written by the same authors. Oh well.