
Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives - jfaucett
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/02/the-seven-habits-of-spectacularly-unsuccessful-executives/
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davidkatz
Seriously? How many more decades are we going to see people mistake
correlation for causation as if this problem had not been thoroughly
understood? This article reads like one long speculation presented as fact.

Kahneman and other psychologists have long established that we color character
traits into stories that fit the result. If a CEO is pursuing his beliefs
strongly and the company succeeds, we call him a visionary. If the company
fails, we say 'he never listened'.

If you really wanted to check the influence of a certain character trait,
you'd need to try to (carefully) compare how CEOs with the trait performed
compared to CEOs without the trait, and make damn sure your sample sizes and
methods are sound before making any confident assertions. What you definitely
don't want to do is look at a handful of failed companies, find some common
traits among their CEOs and call it 'The 7 Habits Of Spectacularly
Unsuccessful CEOs'. That's intellectually negligent, and it's a testament to
something that is fundamentally broken in journalism — we have publications
that pretend to educate when they in fact serve misinforming entertainment.

Shame on Forbes for publishing such ill supported claims, they should have
more respect for their readers.

~~~
jfaucett
"This article reads like one long speculation presented as fact."

Though this might be true about the article itself as posted, this is not a
bit of bad journalism. The author Sydney Finkelstein, is a Professor of
Management and spent 6 years studying 50 companies and conducting some 200
interviews, here's a link to the journal article :
[http://www.jacksonleadership.com/pdfs/7Habits_IveyBusinessJo...](http://www.jacksonleadership.com/pdfs/7Habits_IveyBusinessJournal.pdf)

So to answer your "If you really wanted to check the effect of a certain
character trait, you'd need to try to (carefully) compare how CEOs with the
trait performed compared to CEOs without the trait, and make damn sure your
sample sizes and methods are sound before making any confident assertions." It
seams like 6 years, 200 interviews, and research in 50 companies would seem to
be a fairely extensive study IMHO.

~~~
brianchu
Just because a sample consists of 50 companies and 200 interviews hardly makes
that a sound sample, given no information about how those companies were
selected, and given no attempt to compare those companies to successful
companies. For example, 5/7 of these traits easily describe Steve Jobs.

Furthermore, just because someone is an academic authority hardly makes them
less liable to fall for the cognitive biases that davidkatz mentions (that we
color character traits into stories that fit the result). It goes without
saying that we all have a strong bias to attribute other people's actions to
their _personality_ rather than conditions in their _environment_ over which
they have no control
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>). We generally
don't apply this error to ourselves.

The classic example is that if someone trips over a rock, you'll tend to have
the impression that they're clumsy. If you trip over a rock, you won't think
you're clumsy, you'll just say to yourself that the rock was sticking out.

~~~
jfaucett
I suppose I should have been more verbose above. Basically, I don't want to
say that davidkatz's and yours notes about the possible errors and biases of
the study are unfounded. IMO, every study or report should be approached with
these precautions in mind, if simply because all data has to be interpretted
at some point which makes it subjective. But the main point I was trying to
get across is that a study of this size conducted by someone of academic
authority should not be simply waved off as a piece of bull b/c of possible
errors, which was the impression that davidkatz's post made on me.

~~~
davidkatz
I'm sorry to say that I've had personal conversations with faculty researchers
in diverse fields that gave me the distinct impression that these people
really should not be doing research. It's very easy to go through the 'form'
of good research. Interview a lot of people, look at a lot of data, but that's
no guarantee for good research.

When someone says: 'here are 7 habits of unsuccessful CEOs' and does not even
attempt to account for the problem of 'how do we know it's really these habits
that caused the company to fail?', but rather just flat out assumes it in the
face of decades of findings that suggest that this is an easy trap to fall
into, I for one can't take them seriously, and academic credentials have
almost nothing to do with it.

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ncallaway
I haven't read the book that he linked to, but in the blog post or the journal
article I didn't see any true exploration of causation vs. correlation.

What if these are 7 habits that make people likely to become CEOs? It would
follow, then, that CEOs that failed would also exhibit these habits. I'd like
to see the article provide some evidence that these are habits specific to
"spectacularly unsuccessful" CEOs as opposed to CEOs at large.

Without having to provide such evidence, I would propose an 8th habit common
to all spectacularly unsuccessful CEO: they all breathed air. If your CEO or
senior execs breath air, it may be a warning sign.

~~~
nostrademons
This may be the factor behind the success of Shark Tank. By backing CEOs who
are gill-endowed, they remove air from the equation. OTOH, it does open them
up to accusations of fishiness behind the scenes.

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cwbrandsma
I've been in companies whose CEO exhibited all of the items on the list (two
in particular has a good 5 of them). They became CEO by convincing people with
money to invest in their "vision" (it always starts as a vision sale).

Now both companies are under new management where the CEO only has one or two
of the items on the list and are doing ok. In both cases, neither CEO could
understand why they were being removed and were certain the company would
totally fail without them -- as they were the most important person in the
company!

Another favorite of mine: Feel they can do everyone else's job better than
them. Also, You are an expert until you hire on -- then you are just another
body.

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eduardordm
I might be wrong, but I think the title should be 'The Seven Habits of Steve
Ballmer'

~~~
rednukleus
My first thought was Steve Jobs, but I guess this could apply to a lot of tech
CEOs both successful and unsuccessful. Or to put it another way - the article
is complete nonsense.

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prostoalex
All corporate biographies are written by people who know the end of the story
and now have to retrofit some facts and omit the others to backfill the story
so that it seems like a straight line leading to success/failure.

I present to you a set of quick templates for writing business advice where
you know how the story turned out.

\-----------------

CEO failed: They see themselves and their companies as dominating their
environment.

CEO succeeded: They expressed confidence in their leadership and weren't
afraid to explore riskier opportunities.

\-----------------

CEO failed: They identify so completely with the company that there is no
clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s
interests.

CEO succeeded: Laser focus is what differentiates them from other [loser]
CEOs. Ability to identify major problems and relentless pursue them instilled
energy in top management team and eventually led to success.

\-----------------

CEO failed: They think they have all the answers.

CEO succeeded: Successful CEOs have to be quick at their decisions. Sometimes
the underlings will deliberate too much, as rarely there are obvious
strategies, and some elements of risk are involved in pursuing any new
opportunity. A CEO is someone who's able to cut to the core of the issue and
make a decision, so even when failure happens, it happens faster and lessons
are learned.

\-----------------

CEO failed: They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them.

CEO succeeded: There's no "i" in the "team". Avoid detractors and those who
try to play politics. Focus on execution, remove all obstacles to flawless
implementation.

\-----------------

CEO failed: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company
image.

CEO succeeded: Not afraid to stand up and be the face of the company. This
builds trust in customers, even when the reason for standing up is to
apologize for a mis-step.

\-----------------

CEO failed: They underestimate obstacles.

CEO succeeded: Focus on the end goal. A lot of people will try to scare you
from expanding into new markets, and you know there will always be problems.
It's how you deal with those problems that makes or breaks the company.

\-----------------

CEO failed: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past.

CEO succeeded: Stick to your gut feeling. If the business model does not seem
viable, there will be plenty of distractions telling you that "this time it's
different". Recognize core issues when you see them.

~~~
wh-uws
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Imagine the things that would have been said
about Steve Jobs if he had failed to bring Apple back to prominence

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ScottBurson
I think this is a very good list, and I'm very surprised at the negative
reaction it's getting here. The habits in this list are all signs that an
executive is making decisions, not rationally, but out of hubris. I'm amazed
that people can't see that this is a problem.

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orangethirty
I've always looked at the CEO position as something that is very hard to find
someone to carry out. Anyone clown can do a startup with a little website and
talk about getting traction. Bit few can actually deal with the demands of
being the CEO. The position is what sets the tone of the company and its
culture. Rotten people create rotten cultures. If I ever was in a position to
be a real CEO ( from a successful company), I would really invest in learning
about people, how they work better, and how to give them good tools so they
can do their jobs. Not in fancy planes, or luxurious offices. I despise those
things. Guess that my take on the CEO is that he/she has to be in a servant
type of position rather than that of a dictator.

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aik
Very interesting. Though aren't several of these also "habits" that Steve Jobs
had?

E.g.

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image

~~~
whatshisface
Maybe this list should be "Seven habits of CEOs that change things".

If they are good, they use there personality traits to make things better. If
they are bad, they use these traits to make things worse.

~~~
vidarh
Or seven habits that increase risk. These habits boil down to having an
extreme trust in their own infallibility, and eliminating and ignoring input
that disagree with them, which may work fantastically well for a long time if
you are a true visionary, but puts you at extreme risk of being blindsided if
you aren't, or eventually even if you are.

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rednukleus
I'm trying to work out if this article is intended to be ironic or humorous.
The list is basically a description of the Apple corporate culture (and to a
lesser extent some of their rivals), and then it ends with "[Jackson was long
AAPL at time of writing]".

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ucee054
To all the people saying "These are all Steve Jobs's traits":

Steve Jobs was an asshole and would have got nowhere if he hadn't met Wozniak.

When Jobs set out on his own, he got the flaming defeat that was Next
Computer.

Maybe his traits should be seen as negative, but he was lucky other talent at
Apple could compensate for them.

