Do Individuals Really Make A Difference?

This topic has long been a controversial one in western intellectual circles. Do individuals really make any difference in the flow of history or is everything determined by great impersonal historical forces? If you've studied history or government or sociology in college you've no doubt gotten a very heavy dose of the latter position. Kings and queens, despots and tyrants, presidents and prime ministers all may have some influence in the short term but in the long run great historical trends determine the course of human affairs.

Or do they? Two books that I recently encountered directly challenge this view. They both were written by highly respected authors and their conclusions are creating quite a stir in political, business, and academic circles.

There is a reason I have chosen to take up this question today. Our country and indeed Western Civilization is at a dangerous crossroads. In fact I believe it is in very serious danger from a variety of forces, some impersonal and some human, but all of them magnified by a degree of interdependence and complexity unparalleled in human history. The dominoes are lined up and close together. If one topples, all the others will fall.

Through concerted, intelligent action we may be able avert a devastating global societal upheaval. If on the other hand we continue down the road we have followed in recent decades the judgment of future generations will likely be against the role of wise and capable leaders and for the role of blind, unstoppable historical forces. Our task is to find those wise leaders...and soon. But how?

“Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter” is a fascinating new book by Gautam Mukunda, a professor at the Harvard Business School and a specialist in leadership and international relations.

This book grew out of a discussion with a colleague who posed this question: why have so many countries been ruled by crazy leaders, from Hitler and Stalin to Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein? How was it that these men came to power when there might have been plausible alternatives, men whose actions would not have led to the deaths of millions of people?

This got Mukunda to thinking. Maybe it is true that most of the time leaders are not indispensable. Others could have done an equally credible job.

But sometimes, a critical junctures in history, some leaders really are indispensable. So the question for Mukunda became: Is there some systematic way of identifying those particular individuals who were the right people, in the right place, at the right time, to change history? If he could devise a method of identifying leaders who truly matter and find a way to measure their impact, then he would not only understand history better. Such a method could be used to improve our understanding of contemporary leaders and perhaps even help us choose better ones.

Mukunda studied a number of leaders from politics, business, and the military and how they rose to power. He was especially interested in the process by which they were selected and from that he developed the Leadership Filtration Process or LFP.

Three factors seem to operate in selecting leaders throughout history: First, the external environment, that is, the historical circumstances in which they find themselves; second, the internal dynamics of the organization to which they belong, whether it be a political party or a corporation or a military force; and third, leader selection systems, that is, the process by which potential leaders are forced to either fit a certain mold or else be rejected.

Most of the time the Filtration Process results in leaders of average ability producing average results. These are the men, and occasionally women, who steadfastly work their way up the ladder to eventually assume senior leadership positions. They are well known to their cohorts and their likely behavior in a variety of situations is highly predictable.

But every now and then a crisis arises that demands an exceptional leader, one who does not fit the standard mold, one who would not normally get through the organization's filters, one who would be classified as an Extreme. As an Extreme this leader is likely to have a big impact on events, for better or worse.

Mukunda offers a number of examples including Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson but the pair on which we will concentrate today are Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. Both were accomplished British politicians who had over a span of decades held various senior leadership positions. But there were also profound differences. Chamberlain was the quintessential organization man, a political pro but highly predictable.

Churchill on the other hand was a political maverick who had changed parties not once but twice in his career. Members of his own party not only did not trust him. Many of them despised him. He made many mistakes and many enemies during his long career and but he also possessed incredible foresight.

A professional military man before he entered politics, he became a widely read author

and commentator. He was widely respected as a gifted orator and held senior government positions during World War I. In the 1930s he stood alone warning of the danger of Hitler when the rest of the British political establishment insisted on following a policy of appeasement.

When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939 it was apparent to all that Churchill had it right all along and he was brought back into the cabinet but not immediately as prime minister. Instead, for eight months he headed the Royal Navy, at that time the world's largest. The following spring as France was collapsing under the Nazi blitzkrieg Chamberlain resigned. With no serious competitors Churchill was the obvious choice to become prime minister.

The point that Gautam Makunda makes is that under any other circumstances Chamberlain would have performed admirably and Churchill would never have had a chance to be prime minister. It was only the combination of extreme events and the fact that none of Chamberlain's experiences had prepared him to deal with a man like Hitler that led to his downfall. He insisted on following a policy of peace at all costs and that inflexibility, that inability to face harsh reality, resulted in his being judged as one of history's great failures.

Churchill on the other hand proved to be exactly the right man, in the right place, at the right time as he “marshaled the words of the English language and sent them into battle,” to quote John F. Kennedy.

For eighteen long months before America's entry in the war, a weak and ill prepared England stood alone against the might of Hitler and the Third Reich, inspired by Winston Churchill's leadership and his dogged determination to “fight them on the beaches, and in the fields, and in the streets” if that's what it came to. “To never surrender!”

Numerous historians have considered the question of whether there were any other alternative leaders to Churchill and the near universal consensus is that there simply weren't any. Churchill always believed he was a man of destiny and anyone looking objectively at the reality of British politics in May 1940 cannot come to any other conclusion.

There are not many indispensable leaders in world history but Winston Churchill was surely one of them. But only for a brief moment, at a critical juncture in world history.

Today we remember him as one of the greatest leaders in modern history but we often forget that immediately after Germany surrendered in April of 1945 Britain held a general election and Churchill and the Conservatives were thrown out office. The British people no longer needed a war leader. They wanted a leader and a party to help them rebuild their shattered and bankrupt nation and for that they chose Clement Atlee and the Laborites.

We don't have time to look at all of leaders covered in Mukunda's book but what we see again and again is that unfiltered leaders, men who rise to power suddenly, usually through highly unusual circumstances, turn out to be spectacular successes or equally spectacular failures. Abraham Lincoln was an example of the former. Woodrow Wilson was an example of the latter, most notably in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in his effort to steer the U.S. into joining the League of Nations.

Trying to predict in advance who will be the success and who will be the failure however is not an easy or straightforward task. Stubbornness and determination can serve leaders in war well, as they did with Lincoln and Churchill. But those same traits can result in disaster as they did for Wilson and the League treaty and Chamberlain in his refusal to recognize Hitler for the megalomaniac that he was.

One personality trait does seem to divide the successful leaders from the failures though. Surprisingly it is severe and chronic depression. Both Lincoln and Churchill suffered from it. Makunda believes it helps by forcing leaders to recognize their weaknesses and avoid overconfidence. Depression has the effect of shattering rose colored classes, making it more likely that those in positions of leadership will see the world as it really is and not be blinded by wishful thinking.

“Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter” is a fascinating book and I highly recommend it for your library. Gautum Makunda's Leadership Filtration Theory opens up a whole new way of looking at how leaders rise to power. What it does not do is explain the highly unusual circumstances, usually a crisis, that seem to be required for truly great leaders to appear on the world stage. In each case change even a single decision during the leadership crisis and the whole course of history would have been altered.

Do we humans control our own destiny? Or do blind historical forces? Or should we believe, as the distinguished – and controversial – British historian Arnold Toynbee did, that “history is a vision of God's creation on the move.”?

Some food for thought as we experience a tumultuous and perhaps fateful year for our species on this little blue planet.

©2013 by Allen B. Hundley