this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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There are some offsetting factors that also prevent the "best and brightest" from rising to power: https://dealbreaker.com/2007/10/icahn-explains-why-are-there-so-many-idiots-running-shit
He moves up the corporate ladder, without a single original idea that might make his boss feel threatened by his potential.
Eventually, he gets to be the #2 guy at the company. He's a little dumber than the C.E.O., but the board likes him, so he eventually gets to be C.E.O.
Of course, he assigns a #2 who is a little dumber than he is. "And eventually, we're going to have all morons running our companies," Icahn concluded. "We might not be that far off from that right now."
That sounds vaguely like The Peter Principal.
It is, but the tellings I have heard of the Peter Principal generally have the incompetence leveling off at some lower strata where they can no longer do the job well so they don't advance any further.
The unspoken implication of Icahn's advancement theory is that management doesn't really do much of importance in these companies, basically any idiot can rise to the top. Of course that's not true, people can always actively undermine their own success, so they at least have to be smart enough to not do that.
Highly successful CEO I met over dinner once had this to say about his outstanding company growth performance: 1) it wasn't him, it was luck of being in the right place at the right time and not screwing it up too badly. 2) The hardest thing was choosing who to hire. If at least half of his new hire choices didn't actively make things worse, he considered that to be a good batch.