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CEOs Flamed Out: How 'Failing Up' Works
8 Dec, 2025
Summary
- Confidence and certainty are often mistaken for competence in leadership.
- Asymmetric accountability allows underperforming leaders to deflect blame.
- Frequent job changes can be misinterpreted as ambition, masking poor performance.
The corporate landscape is marked by executives who 'fail up,' steadily ascending despite questionable performance. This phenomenon is not an anomaly but a feature of leadership evaluation, often prioritizing confidence over genuine competence. Boards and senior managers may mistake boldness for ability, especially in ambiguous situations. Leaders who can skillfully narrate failures, blaming external factors, can maintain their upward trajectory.
Asymmetric accountability further facilitates this rise. Complex organizational systems obscure direct links between individual decisions and outcomes. While credit flows upward during good times, blame often diffuses downward during poor performance. This diffusion mechanism allows underperforming leaders to persist long enough to secure future promotions, often unaffected by the negative results.
Moreover, frequent job changes are sometimes perceived as ambition rather than a red flag. Executives can reframe exits as 'growth opportunities,' and recruiters, under pressure, may rely on résumé signals over deep performance audits. Ultimately, the CEO role strips away these buffers, exposing the weak execution that was masked during the ascent.
