Did JC Penney's ousted CEO enjoy too much past success for his own good?

Ever hear of the term "fundamental attribution error"? Social scientists use it to describe a circumstance in which an individual's success is due to factors that have little or nothing to do with the person's inherent talents. Once those factors are removed, the person will often fall on his ass. (It happens from time to time in my line of work, when a reporter or editor of a major paper like the NYT or WSJ decides to try his hand at small-town journalism, only to figure out that the skill sets are far different.) New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki says that Ron Johnson, just let go as chief executive of JC Penney after a rocky 18 months, might have fallen victim to fundamental attribution error. He was hugely successful at Target and Apple, but the circumstances at those companies were not the same as what he faced at Penney. "Being great at selling cheap fashion or cool technology products doesn't mean you'll be great at turning around a middle-market retailer," he writes. Here's more:

Of course, this cuts both ways. Right now, Johnson looks like a complete fool. But turnarounds are hard to pull off, especially in retail. One study found that efforts at merely getting a money-losing retailer back to profitability succeed only thirty per cent of the time. Radically remaking a major company, as Johnson is trying to do, is even harder. So, if Johnson isn't as good as he looked at Apple, he's probably not as bad as he looks at Penney. Indeed, his biggest mistake may simply have been taking the job in the first place. He's become a living example of one of Warren Buffett's keenest observations: "When a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."

The new "Masterpiece" series "Mr. Selfridge" reminds me of Johnson's challenges. As you might know, H. Gordon Selfridge (pictured) was a retailing genius at the beginning of the 20th Century. He worked his way up at Marshall Field's before taking his act to London, where he opened Selfridges in 1909. He was a larger-than-life character in many ways, but as a merchandiser Selfridge is best known for making shopping fun, or at least less of a chore. Something as obvious these days as displaying items on tables instead of hiding them behind counters was started by Selfridge. He was the guy who insisted that the customer was always right. Thing of it is London shoppers didn't embrace the new approach; changing customer habits, then or now, takes time, assuming that the ideas make sense in the first place. Ron Johnson wanted to revolutionize the department store business in ways that just didn't connect, and with skeptical shareholders constantly under foot, he didn't have the time to work out the kinks.