His books include Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Third Chimpanzee, and Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Make a Difference?
In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jared Diamond discuss how to measure the true impact of individual leaders, why the institutional environment determines how much difference a leader can make, and whether societies are better served by systems that constrain leaders or empower them.
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that → include → them
This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
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transcript → condense → clarity
I have many questions about this book and about your work more broadly.
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I → have → work
Your new book is really about what difference leaders do and don’t make, and that’s a different way of asking the age-old historical and social scientific question about structure versus agency.
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that → make → agency
How should we think about salient leaders, ones that have led a country, a sports team, or a company to great success?
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that → think → success
Are they just being lucky, or did they actually make a difference in bringing about that success?
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they → make → success
There’s been a longstanding question whether leaders make a difference.
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leaders → make → difference
Thomas Carlyle said yes, he believed in the role of the great man.
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he → say → man
Tolstoy said no, and historians nowadays tend to be skeptical about the role of leaders.
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historians → say → leaders
But the question arises in so many spheres: in politics, in business, in sports like the World Cup, in religion.
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question → arise → religion
Do leaders make a difference, and if so, do they make a difference under some circumstances, and what are those circumstances?
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circumstances → make → circumstances
This is a question that interests me personally.
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that → interest → me
I was born in 1937, so I spent my childhood under the shadow of Hitler, and leaders have made a difference, mostly for the good, occasionally not for the good, in my own life.
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leaders → bear → life
I’m personally interested in the question of whether leaders make a difference.
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leaders → ’m → difference
So how should we think about this, presuming somebody does make a big difference and somebody does make much less of a difference?
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somebody → think → difference
In your book you suggest that it depends on a set of circumstances, such as how set the institutional environment is in which they operate and what the likely replacement would be like.
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replacement → suggest → what
The best way to think about this is to engage in what you call a kind of natural experiment.
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you → think → experiment
For us, we might think about it as a kind of counterfactual.
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we → think → counterfactual
As a laboratory scientist, my PhD was in laboratory physiology, so I was used to doing manipulative experiments, putting the gallbladder in sodium-rich solutions and then in potassium-rich solutions.
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I → use → solutions
If we were an omnipotent creature from outer space, you and I could quickly decide on the role of leaders by manipulative experiments.
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you → decide → experiments
We would kill some leaders and not kill others, or we would make 50 worlds, and in 25 of them Hitler died in 1930, and in the other 25 he didn’t die in 1930.
But we can’t do that, and if we could, it would be immoral and illegal.
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it → kill → that
So we have to do what astronomers and epidemiologists and so many other scientists do, which is to rely on natural experiments.
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which → have → experiments
We can’t and shouldn’t kill leaders, but leaders do die natural deaths, and we can compare what happens when a leader dies with when a leader doesn’t die.
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leader → kill → deaths
Or if you want to do something less drastic, instead of seeing what happens when a leader dies, you can get a leader very upset, slightly upset, or not much upset.
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leader → want → something
Business people often lose family members.
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people → lose → members
If a business person’s only son dies, the business person is very upset.
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person → die → ?
If his or her wife or husband dies, they get quite upset.
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they → die → ?
If a sibling dies, somewhat upset.
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sibling → die → ?
If a parent dies, slightly upset.
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parent → die → ?
And if a mother-in-law dies, perhaps not upset at all, but happy.
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mother → die → law
Then you can look at the results, and it turns out that business profits go down the most if an only child dies, and they go down much less if a parent dies.
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parent → look → results
They don’t go down, and may even increase, although it’s not statistically significant, if the mother-in-law dies.
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mother → go → law
So those are examples of natural experiments that allow us as social scientists to do what molecular biologists would do by manipulation.
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biologists → allow → manipulation
That’s quite a striking statistic.
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That → ’ → ?
I don’t recommend that any listeners who hold stock in a company go about murdering the mother-in-law of the CEO, because as you pointed out, it wasn’t a statistically significant result, but that tells you perhaps as much about human nature as it does about business.
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it → recommend → business
If one of the starting questions is whether great men and women make history, when you look at all of the hero worship we have today for some of the greatest individual athletes, some of the greatest coaches, some great founders and CEOs, or of course for politicians.
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we → start → politicians
I think by and large people have negative views of politicians, but many do admire one politician or another and think that if only they were in office, everything would get better.
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everything → think → office
Or does your research suggest that they really are the decisive factor?
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they → suggest → ?
If I gave you an “on the whole” answer, you should stop right now and say, Jared Diamond, you’re an idiot, because one can’t generalize so easily.
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one → give → answer
It depends.
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It → depend → ?
…and 265 more, not listed.
