The CEO in the story had no clue what he was doing. But he was facing the same problem everyone has when the outcome of your actions takes time to manifest. Much too often society expects that results change immediately after a change in leadership. But the small changes a leader can make take time to ripple trough the organization and manifest in results. Often people are not patient enough to wait for this.

A real life example for that is Paul O'Neill CEO of Alcoa from 1987-1999. His main change was putting worker safety in Alcoas plants to first priority. The business outcome of this action manifested years later.

During the first 6 years of his CEO career the stock only doubled. In the 6 years after that the stock prize rose to almost 10x of the prize where he became CEO.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this big effect also was related to the Dotcom double.