Intel is the latest Fortune 500 giant to test the “4 wrong CEOs” rule.

Sometimes a CEO’s most fatal decisions are only apparent years later. Example: If a decision had gone the other way, chipmaker Intel might be at the cutting edge of AI today, rather than struggling to regain its former industry leadership.

In 2017 and 2018, the company had a chance to buy a 15 percent stake in OpenAI for $1 billion, Reuters recently reported. If CEO Bob Swan had said yes, that investment would now be worth an estimated $12 billion, based on a February valuation of OpenAI by venture capitalists and private investors. But Intel missed a lot more. They may have received an additional 15% in exchange for selling hardware to OpenAI at cost. With a 30% ownership, it could have been at the forefront of generative AI, which OpenAI released to the world in 2022. From the perspective of 2017 and 2018, however, Swan considered the potential business a loser. (Swan did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.)

The episode recalls a similar decision in 2006, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs asked Intel CEO Paul Otellini to make chips for a product that didn’t exist yet, which would be called the iPhone. Otellini said no. When he retired in 2013, he seemed to understand the magnitude of his decision, telling an interviewer: “The world would have been a lot different if we had done it.” (You can read the full story about the fallout from that decision here.)

Intel is now testing the long-standing observation that a company can survive one wrong CEO, but no company can survive four wrong CEOs in a row. After the great Intel CEO Andy Grove stepped down in 1998, he was succeeded by four CEOs, including Swan and Otellini, who were arguably wrong for the job at the time. As performance deteriorated, in 2021 executives brought in former Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger as CEO to lead an ambitious, high-stakes rescue mission. The outcome remains unclear; Intel’s stock price recently fell 26% due to poor quarterly results.

The Intel saga is a grim reminder that some of America’s biggest companies have succumbed to the disease of four wrong CEOs. Consider Westinghouse, a gem of American industry for 100 years. Four consecutive misguided CEOs from 1983 to 1993 damaged Westinghouse so badly that the board brought in an outside CEO who dismantled and recreated the company. An entity called Westinghouse remained, but the wonderful institution was gone, and the new-look company has since disintegrated.

Even more dramatic was the demise of Sears, the world’s largest retailer for decades. Four misguided CEOs from 1962 to 1986 led Sears on a downward trajectory from which it could not recover. Under the first of these CEOs, Sears’ market value peaked and began to decline, a reversal that top executives explained as a quirk of the economy. Under the fourth, Sears diversified heavily into financial services and relegated the retail business to a cash cow to be milked until it quit. The financial services strategy failed and was canceled in 1992, but by then Walmart had overtaken Sears, which had lost steam forever. Investor Eddie Lampert bought the company in 2004 but was unable to revive it. Sears once had 3,500 stores. He is now 11.

It’s worth asking why corporate doom often takes four CEOs. Surely a single truly terrible boss could do the trick, right? Yes, but in companies of significant size, the truly terrible CEOs will likely be ousted before they can destroy everything. Destroying a substantial and successful business takes some doing, as explained by Jim Collins, author of several business mega-sellers (Built to last, Good at Sea, Excellent choice). In Like Mighty Fallhe identifies five stages of decline: pride born of success; the undisciplined pursuit of several; denial of risk and danger; grasping for salvation; surrender to irrelevance or death. Intellectually and emotionally, a single CEO would have a difficult time going through all five stages, and a board of directors could hardly let a CEO take a company through all five.

To see how these stages play out, and why even three bad CEOs might not be enough to destroy a company, examine Apple in 1997. The company was 20 years old. Three consecutive failed CEOs led the company through its first three stages of decline. The company had been close to bankruptcy and was now in the fourth stage of bailout. A fourth wrong CEO would almost certainly have taken Apple to the final stage. The board, desperate, brought back co-founder Steve Jobs, who had been fired in 1985 and (believe it or not) had never been Apple’s CEO. The rest is history, but it could so easily have gone the other way.

It must be said that wrong CEOs are not stupid or bad. Most often they are intelligent, highly accomplished and driven to succeed, but their experience or temperament did not suit them for the job at that company at that time. Four of them in a row is as unlikely as four of a kind in poker, but in the corporate world it does not happen by chance. Ultimately, the blame must fall on those fallible people in the boardroom.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com