Are Great Leaders Truly Great—or Just Lucky?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I'm Adi Ignatius.
I'm Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
So Alison, today we're going to be tackling an age-old question. Are successful leaders people who are uniquely qualified to handle their opportunity? Or do the context and circumstances therein largely dictate how they'll perform? We're essentially renewing the great man theory versus the idea that history rises from below.
Yes, great men are great women. I do like that topic, especially in an era when boards are rewarding CEOs with astronomically large contracts. You can't help but wonder whether these leaders actually are bringing differentiated talent that's worth that kind of money.
And while the debate is in many ways unanswerable, Jared Diamond has tried to apply the rigor of research to look at the extent to which an individual leader can truly and deeply influence their institution success. And he even has advice for leaders who want to increase their chances of doing well.
I imagine it has a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time.
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.
How can we tell whether leaders—not circumstances—drive an organization’s success?
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?
because the debate still remains unresolved. The traditional way in which historians and biographers have tried to settle the role of the leaders is by writing biographies, but biographies don't settle things. So I reopened quotes to the debate because there are now two new powerful methods, methods of natural experiments that social scientists have pioneered for vast few decades, and then a method that I introduced called the Hamlet test method,
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.
I call it the Hamlet test because you could ask, was Shakespeare the only person who could have written that great play, Hamlet? Well, in that case, we know who were all the other Elizabethan playwrights at the time. There are about 25 of them. We've got their plays. We can judge their plays. Some of them are slightly good, but none of them remotely approach Hamlet. And in addition, Hamlet was Shakespeare's 22nd play. He had already written Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. he had established himself as a good player. In the case of, say, Jeff Bezos, was Jeff Bezos uniquely qualified to found Amazon? Well, the population of the United States is about 340 million, and it's impossible to make an argument that out of those 340 million, the only one who could found Amazon was Jeff Bezos.
So Shakespeare passes the Hamlet test, but Jeff Bezos does not pass the Hamlet test. But in other cases, you can identify a uniquely qualifying person.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–2:29
2
How can we tell whether leaders—not circumstances—drive an organization’s success?
2:29–4:51
3
Which business leaders pass Jared Diamond’s Hamlet test for being uniquely qualified?
4:51–7:21
4
How much do CEOs influence company profits compared with industry and timing?
7:21–9:14
5
When do leaders make the biggest difference, and how much depends on timing?
9:14–11:52
6
What leadership traits help executives seize opportunities, and is success partly luck?
11:52–14:41
7
How do founders shape institutions, and can leadership success last across different contexts?
14:41–18:51
8
How can executives increase their impact by choosing industries with more decision-making freedom?
18:51–25:59
Speakers
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