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schools problems. While Crew was in charge, the district was a finalist for the Broad Prize for Urban Education in 2006, 2007, and 2008, improved its bond rating, achieved improvements in student academic performance, and built thousands of classrooms to ease overcrowding.1 Recognizing this performance, in the spring of 2008, the American Association of School Administrators named Rudy Crew the National Superintendent of the Year, bolstering his reputation as an innovative school administrator. His reward? By September 2008, less than six months after being named the best school leader in the country, Crew was negotiating his severance package with a school board that had voted to get rid of him.

If you think it’s just in the domain of public education where success fails to guarantee job security, think again. At the Veterans Health Administration, Ken Kizer, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1994, inherited an antiquated, inefficient health-care system. The VA faced changes in its client population, the competitive health-care environment, and modalities for delivering care.2 In just five years, Kizer instituted an electronic medical record system, made structural changes to enhance efficiency and quality of care—with 20,000 fewer employees, the VHA went from serving 2.9 to 3.5 million veterans—changed the culture to be more receptive to change, and according to a cover story in BusinessWeek, laid the foundation for making the VHA the purveyor of “the best medical care in the U.S.”3 In 1999, facing stiff Congressional opposition to his reappointment, Kizer relinquished his post. Balancing politics and medical care turned out to be difficult—“in particular, the closure of VHA hospitals in certain key Congressional districts had created acrimony in Congress.”4

And it’s not just in the public sector where there is a weak link between job performance and career outcomes. The world of business offers numerous cases, too. Although few may remember, Jamie Dimon, the now-celebrated CEO of financial powerhouse JP Morgan Chase, left Citibank when his onetime mentor and boss, Sandy Weill, turned on him. Arthur Blank and Bernard Marcus founded the large and successful home improvement company Home Depot after they were fired in the late 1970s from Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers by a boss who didn’t like them. John Scully forced Apple cofounder and technology visionary Steve Jobs out of the company in the 1980s. And that’s just a small sample from a very long list.

And it’s not just at the highest levels or just in the United States where performance doesn’t guarantee success. A marketing executive in India asked her CEO to formally recommend her for a list of “high potential leaders” in the organization, which would be accompanied by getting paid more than 30 percent higher than peers at the same level and becoming eligible for assignments more likely to advance her career. This request came just after she had been instrumental in turning around a distressed brand, had been nominated for an internal marketing award, and after she won an external advertising award at the Indian equivalent of the Cannes film festival. Her request was refused, past outstanding performance notwithstanding.

Not only doesn’t good performance guarantee you will maintain a position of power, poor performance doesn’t mean you will necessarily lose your job. Michael Jeffery maintained his position as CEO of LECG Corporation, a global expert services and consulting firm, for three years even though the company was almost never profitable during his tenure and in just the two years prior to the announcement he was voluntarily stepping down, the stock price declined 80 percent, much more than did competitors’. His prior relationship with the non-executive chairman of the company and his ability to “manage” the board and blame the company’s problems on his predecessor (who had actually built the company) ensured his survival—for a while. Or consider the CEO of a medical device company who has presided over nearly a decade of flat stock price, a growth in sales