A good track record maybe necessary but is clearly insufficient.
Having said that - ironically - Job himself wasn't exactly an obviously successful CEO prior to his return to Apple. He'd been fired from Apple previously, NeXT was one of many workstation manufactures and less successful than many direct competitors (eg Silicon Graphics).
Eric Schmidt is another example. Prior to Google he was CEO at Novell where (quoting Wikipedia): "He presided over a period of decline at Novell where its IPX protocol was being replaced by open TCP/IP products, while at the same time Microsoft was shipping free TCP/IP stacks in Windows 95, making Novell much less profitable."
Let me put it another way. Can we reasonably assume that people who find themselves in the position of needing to hire a CEO with their own money are not complete morons and will spend more than 5 minutes thinking about it?
I'm lost. The original question was:
Now all we need is a reliable way to identify a 'good' CEO without the benefit of hindsight.
Your response was "A candidate has to have a track record of success."
People are pointing out that doesn't appear to be sufficient.
So I agree that people hiring CEOs aren't morons and think about it. But I'm still not sure what indicators are useful outside track record, or indeed if you think that is sufficient.
I didn't say it was sufficient. For example, if I say "an airplane has to have wings" would you argue that isn't all it needs? Of course not.
There's a reason that English has the words "all", "only", etc. For example, there's a difference between "people like hamburgers" and "all people like hamburgers." There's a difference between "choosy people choose cheese" and "only choosy people choose cheese." English is not a programming language.
I suggest interpreting my messages from a presumption that neither am I a moron nor are people who select executives.
You've said "A candidate has to have a track record of success. That's how", but every question people have raised to try and identify additional points the response hasn't really added any additional information.
If your point that "people who [successfully] select CEOs" have some additional criteria that they use (outside the track record) then: Yes! Great!
What is it?