Everyone thinks they are hiring the star, not the fraudster, or just the lucky one. That's how we end up with overpaid execs.
Hiring is really hard and its relatively common for someone to look good on paper and do really well in interviews and completely bomb on the job.
The difference with hiring a CEO is that the blast radius is much larger for that role
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.
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?
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.
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.
Bring it more local. Does how you manage your household or work matter? Where does scaling that up break?
Yes, yes they do. Especially these days where the systems are completely failing an entire generation before they can even get a foot in the door.
I go to plenty of homes and their dishes are perfectly clean.
Are there people who could do more and are happy where they are at? Sure. But that’s also not going to work for CEO.
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.