Great leaders: Balancing efficiency, effectiveness, and community impact

Leaders who extract extraordinary efficiency from resources are lionised during their times and criticised later

There are two contrasting views about great leadership. Business writing has largely adopted the “Great Man Theory”, perhaps inspired by Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle, who wrote: “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” American anthropologist Margaret Mead too had said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”

 

On the flip side, Jane Ridley, professor of Modern History at Buckingham University, dismisses the “Great Man Theory” as “romantic claptrap”. Leo Tolstoy had felt that “history is made by the sum total of an infinite number of small decisions taken