Man, everyone is demonstrably bad - until they aren't. Some things, like being CEO, are much more rare in the "try, try, try again" space, but it does seem to work like most things. My son was a terrible, demonstrably bad hitter for ~2 years. Then, all of a sudden, he was not, nor will he ever be again.

Agreed. I was thinking more along the lines of what does it mean to say "I want to hire the next Steve Jobs as our CEO"?