New Silicon Valley CEO required. Who do you want?
Your bad HBO — I’m CEO, Bitch.
Because HBO’s Silicon Valley needs a new CEO at #piedpiper, the good people at Pulse News gave me the job to pick the best candidate and give them our pitch.
Well, your bad HBO and fabulous folks at LinkedIn…
Prepare yourselves, because like Mark Zuckerberg said — I’m CEO, Bitch.
I know what you’re thinking… Who the hell are you?
Who I am is easy. I’m just a regular guy. I’m married. I have children, but they have fur, sleep a lot, and bark at the mailman. Like you, I’m a little overweight and a little under-appreciated. I’m just Joe America, living life in between emails from the Nigerian prince, Facebook notifications from people I don’t really know that well, and weird Snapchat videos from friends face swapping Michael Jackson. I didn’t mention Twitter because while I was one of the first people to join 10 years ago, I still haven’t figured out how to use it…
So now you know me as much as you know your Facebook friends. Welcome to my circle. Easy, right?
So if I’m just Joe America, Mr. Normal guy who doesn’t even know how to use Twitter, why should I be CEO of Silicon Valley’s fictitious company, Pied Piper?
Easier.
Pied Piper’s Former CEO, Action Jack Barker while funny, pales in comparison to my leadership skills. He also isn’t a very nice person.
Me on the other hand? Not even close. I’m a nice guy for the most part and have been preparing my whole life to not only lead effectively but to be the best damn leader in the world. I’ve mastered Executive Leadership and Strategic Management, gone through the equivalent of two MBA’s, all while managing a variety of business aspects for companies, and customers. I have trained to be the best, but there is one thing that I have that I never trained to be, that I don’t think is possible to learn…
If you take a look at many of the CEO’s at large companies, I think you’ll see that they have seemingly stumbled upon their positions. They got lucky… Luck plays a huge role in the process of attaining the title of CEO, and while I may not be handsome, Luck is something I’ve always had.
Lucky Mother%$#%$#!
So how big of an effect does the CEO have on their company, and how much does luck really play into the CEO’s success? From the Harvard Business Review article titled “Are Successful CEO’s Just Lucky?”:
“Perhaps the most sweeping indictment of the idea that CEOs’ careers are shaped by skill comes from a 2014 paper by Markus Fitza at Texas A&M. He argues that even that 2% to 22% of firm performance that studies have attributed to CEOs could be largely the product of luck. To understand why, you have to dive into the methodology of all this research, but I promise it will be worth it.
Studies of the CEO effect usually look at how much CEO turnover correlates with a company’s financial performance, after accounting for other factors like industry performance, overall economic performance, and the like. If a firm does badly for four years under one CEO, then another CEO comes in under the same economic conditions and the firm does well for the next four years, that gets counted as the CEO effect.
But that’s not necessarily proof of CEO skill. Imagine that when CEOs take the top job, they get to pick between two strategies, and once they pick, that strategy is in place for their full tenure. One strategy leads to success, the other to failure, but no one knows which strategy is which. Perhaps the first CEO in the example above just randomly happened to pick the bad strategy, and the next CEO happened to pick the good one. In that case, the CEO effect would just be measuring luck.”
Wow. Can you believe these findings? The main key to your success as CEO isn’t how smart you are. It isn’t how quick you can pivot your company. It’s definitely not how great a public speaker you are. The one single defining factor between success and failure? Be lucky.
This is precisely why I should be Pied Piper’s new CEO. Who is luckier than me?
- I lucked my way into many State Wrestling Championships in multiple styles, and to becoming the captain of our USA National Wrestling team. I lucked my way into singing the national anthem in front of 35,000 people while there too! Then I lucked my way onto the cover of WrestlingUSA Magazine sticking my middle finger up to the haters. (I guess they didn’t catch that when they printed the magazine…lucky)
- I lucked my way into meeting Donald Trump and him helping to get me into business with some key advice to boot. Then I luckily met him again 6 months later, and he not only remembered me but asked me how I was progressing with my goals. This offered some much-needed motivation which spurred me to luck into a job in the wire & cable industry.
- I lucked my way into making a $40,000 sale on my first phone call in the Wire & Cable industry. I went immediately from “Trainee”, to Account Executive in one phone call… I didn’t know anything about Wire or Cable, I just got lucky.
- I was lucky enough to meet my wife Amber in high school, then lucky enough to meet her again when we were adults while living a thousand miles apart. We fell in love, and the rest is history!
- I was lucky enough to overcome Dyslexia so bad, that words looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Then was lucky enough to be able to excel in education at some of the best schools in the world. My elementary teachers are probably so baffled by this they don’t think I’m the same person.
- Luck helped me cure an incurable disease. The dentist said I had gingivitis, and I would have to come in every 3 months for a special cleaning procedure for the rest of my life. They said it was something I would have to live with. So what did I do? I got lucky. I bought a Sonicare toothbrush, got some really cool double flosser sticks, and when I came back 3 months later the dental assistant opened my mouth for a cleaning and she gasped. She had to excuse herself from the room and went to the Dentist, and I overheard her telling him it was a miracle, that she didn’t have anything to clean, that my 4’s and 5’s were now 1’s and 2’s, and that I had reversed an irreversible disease… He had to come in and see for himself to confirm his disbelief. Luck.
I can literally keep going with stories like these, but you get the picture.
Now that we know my mom and dad must have been rubbing 4-leaf clovers together to create me, we can effectively state that I am lucky enough to have the number one success trait of an effective CEO. Pure hot damn Luck.
Everything else about me is downhill from there, but I really don’t think that matters. Like Steph Curry having the one trait of being the best Shooter, leading to him being the best player in the NBA, I have the one trait that affects success in CEO’s the most — Luck. I’m going to roll with it.
So to you at HBO, and the creators of #PiedPiper, I am officially nominating “Me” as your new CEO.
Like my dear old dad always says, “I’d rather be lucky than good”.
Get ready to get lucky.
By Brand Jonseck
- Who would you pick as the #piedpiper CEO?
- Have you had the pleasure of laughing yourself silly while watching Silicon Valley?
- What do you think the top trait is for successful leaders aside from “Hot Damn Luck”?
#PiedPiper #SiliconValley #HBO #Tech #CEO #Luck #Startups #Careers
Obviously this was satire, but if you would like to work with Mr. Jonseck in a management consulting role, or for some other exciting opportunity contact him at brandonjonseck@g.harvard.edu or call 1–949–306–6899.
Want to work together in the future? Let’s connect on LinkedIn. Add me using the email above. https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandjonseck
Want to teach me how to use Twitter? Tweet me @LuckilyInfamous
Article Originally Featured on LinkedIn Pulse News on the front page of FOUR different categories:
Entertainment, Your Career, Technology, Careers: The Next Level
