Adi Ignatius

speaker

699 appearances 13 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 5d ago

Adi Ignatius’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 5.

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HBR IdeaCast · Are Great Leaders Truly Great—or Just Lucky? · 1 Sep 2026 podcast

Absolutely.

Look, it's an interesting topic.

Diamond is perhaps best known for his 1997 book, Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies.

And his new book on leadership is called Profits, Profits, Coaches and Kings, When Do Leaders Matter?

He spoke with me about the secret sauce that makes political, business and sports leaders succeed and what can and can't be attributed to the individuals in charge.

Here's our conversation.

So in this new book of yours, you've reopened the debate about how critical individual leaders are in the unfolding events, right?

So there's the great man theory of history where we credit individual leaders in business, in politics, in religion, in sports for uniquely affecting historical developments.

And then there's an opposing view, which is that leaders are constrained by the context and the circumstances they're in and have little influence on events.

My first question is why dig that up again?

All right, so let's talk about the Hamlet test.

So as I understand it, if you're going to assess a leader's greatness, you need to identify, you need to evaluate all the plausible alternatives.

All right.

So in the business world, who does pass the Hamlet test?

Okay, so there's a distinction between someone, the Resnick family and pomegranates, who created something, an outcome that probably would not have happened without them,

as opposed to leaders like Bezos or other tech titans like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, where the innovation would have happened, but they shaped the outcome, right?

And that we have to recognize that.

That may not pass the Hamlet test, but that is one of the definitions of great leadership, which is to seize the moment and shape its outcome.

Now, corporate boards tell us that the individuals they select as CEOs are

you know, must be uniquely qualified to lead their companies because they pay them,

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