Have you ever seen any process of filtering job candidates that doesn't have massive failures? Look no further than sports. There is no profession with more accessible information about candidate qualifications, and we still see significant failures, signing people to hundreds of millions of dollars who never produce any value over a replacement player. Does that mean the process is no better than throwing darts at phone book? No. There are still actual skills that are hard to attain, and are decent predictors of performance.
When it comes to CEOs, despite the fact that this process doesn't value YOUR skills very highly doesn't mean it's purely random. It means you've either chosen to ignore this filtering process, you never learned what the process is, or you aren't good enough to stand out within it. But that doesn't mean it's a zero-signal filtration.
I come to this conclusion, b/c I think its extremely rare that the 'best' person to be the executive on day0 is rarely the 'best' person to be an executive in every stage of a company's lifecycle. but the executives can cling on, b/c they have low accountability (especially when they are the board).
Is it easy to win the lottery? No. Once you win the lottery, is life easier? Yes.