In Praise of Dullness

July 6, 2009
miproconsulting
Blog

David Brooks, writing for the New York Times, on what characteristics help a CEO succeed:

C.E.O.’s with law or M.B.A. degrees do not perform better than C.E.O.’s with college degrees. These traits do not correlate with salary or compensation packages. Nor do they correlate with fame and recognition. On the contrary, a study by Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate found that C.E.O.’s get less effective as they become more famous and receive more awards.

What these traits do add up to is a certain ideal personality type. The C.E.O.’s that are most likely to succeed are humble, diffident, relentless and a bit unidimensional. They are often not the most exciting people to be around.

For this reason, people in the literary, academic and media worlds rarely understand business. It is nearly impossible to think of a novel that accurately portrays business success. That’s because the virtues that writers tend to admire — those involving self-expression and self-exploration — are not the ones that lead to corporate excellence.

For the same reason, business and politics do not blend well. Business leaders tend to perform poorly in Washington, while political leaders possess precisely those talents — charisma, charm, personal skills — that are of such limited value when it comes to corporate execution.

As interesting as this is, it puts someone like Steve Jobs squarely in the statistical outlier category. Which, somehow, isn’t surprising.