Or, more likely, leadership is sloppy and lazy. They make mistakes and color outside the lines, and they pay for it. The hope is that they don't hurt themselves too bad.

Luckily for leadership, opportunity cost is completely invisible. They can't travel to alternate realities so they can just pretend they made a good decision and go with that. This is what causes the fun phenomena of "failing upwards" we see in modern American corporate leadership.