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When Do Leaders Actually Matter? A Conversation with Jared Diamond on Discretion, Timing and the Hamlet Test

In this interview, I spoke to Professor Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, about when individual leaders genuinely change outcomes. We discussed discretion, timing, his Hamlet Test for irreplaceability, assassination as a…

Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL 24 min read

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Three thousand moments. Three picked at random.

“The greatest risk often lies in people's biased perceptions of risk itself. The challenge is: how do you debias risk when everyone's perception of it is inherently biased?”
— Bent Flyvbjerg Leading researcher on megaprojects, planning, and governance expert
“There was really a sense that humanity had already reached its peak, and so the question wasn't what comes next that's better, but rather how to prevent decline and loss. If you had a good state—or even just an okay one—your main concern was to keep it, to stop it from falling apart. Because there wasn't anything better you could reasonably expect.”
— Dan Edelstein
“Being creative is about being a collective. It's not something unique. Cirque is not a one man, or a one woman show. It's a collective. That's why we can nurture each other's creativity.”
— Daniel Lamarre President and CEO of Cirque du Soleil

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  1. 01 Business & Economics When Do Leaders Actually Matter? A Conversation with Jared Diamond on Discretion, Timing and the Hamlet Test 361 interviews
  2. 02 Culture, Society, Sports & Arts The Crisis Diplomat: A Conversation with Ian Proud on the 2004 Tsunami, Institutional Failure and Living with Trauma 236 interviews
  3. 03 Politics & Policy From the Minefields of Kuwait to Sandhurst: A Conversation with Major General Arthur Denaro on War, Leadership and Peace 170 interviews
  4. 04 Science & Technology Could Machines Be Conscious? A Conversation with Dr Tom McClelland on Minds, Machines and the Hard Problem of Consciousness 135 interviews
  5. 05 Health & Medicine The Continuum of Mind: A Conversation with Professor Michael Levin on Cognition, Bioelectricity and the Future of Being 74 interviews
  6. 06 Nobel Laureates Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Professor Alvin Roth 21 interviews

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