David Brooks, something of a conservative columnist for the New York Times, has an interesting piece this morning on the personality traits and characteristics common among successful CEOs as determined by a slew of academic studies. I don't post this to endorse any of the ideas necessarily, but I do find them provoking. Here are the relevant portions when thinking about MMA:

What mattered, it turned out, were execution and organizational skills. The traits that correlated most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours.

In other words, warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic people are less likely to thrive as C.E.O.’s. Organized, dogged, anal-retentive and slightly boring people are more likely to thrive.

These results are consistent with a lot of work that’s been done over the past few decades. In 2001, Jim Collins published a best-selling study called “Good to Great.” He found that the best C.E.O.’s were not the flamboyant visionaries. They were humble, self-effacing, diligent and resolute souls who found one thing they were really good at and did it over and over again.

That same year Murray Barrick, Michael Mount and Timothy Judge surveyed a century’s worth of research into business leadership. They, too, found that extroversion, agreeableness and openness to new experience did not correlate well with C.E.O. success. Instead, what mattered was emotional stability and, most of all, conscientiousness — which means being dependable, making plans and following through on them.

...

The second thing the market seems to want from leaders is a relentless and somewhat mind-numbing commitment to incremental efficiency gains. Charismatic C.E.O.’s and politicians always want the exciting new breakthrough — whether it is the S.U.V. or a revolutionary new car. The methodical executives at successful companies just make the same old four-door sedan, but they make it better and better.

These sorts of dogged but diffident traits do not correlate well with education levels. 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.

These are general tendencies, of course, and there are a host of CEOs who are flamboyant and cultivate a cult of personality yet remain highly effective on the job. Still, though, I wanted to share this information with the readers as maybe just a thought exercise. Clearly White's got the "mind-numbing commitment to incremental efficiency gains", although I'm curious about whether over the long run his celebrated status will hurt him (so far, I don't see much evidence of that). White's also got the long hours and commitment to doing what he's good at down pat. And other CEOs or GMs in the MMA business share many of these qualities as well. But to what extent did Jay Larkin, Gareb Shamus, and Jeremy Lappen not have these qualities? To what extent did that play a factor in the demise of the IFL, WFA or ProElite? It's nothing more than some Tuesday food for thought, but I wanted to pass it along just the same.