In his book, Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?, scientist, historian and bestselling writer Jared Diamond sets out to knock the concept of a great leader off its pedestal with what he calls the Hamlet Test.Diamond, well known for blending science and history into compelling narratives, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel, which explains why certain civilisations conquer and outlast others. In this new book, he serves his signature cocktail of science, art and history, but this time, his arguments are far from convincing.Diamond says there are three schools of thought about what makes an effective leader. First, leaders are special people who shape the times they are in (heroic leader concept); second leaders make no actual difference; and third that depending on circumstances, leaders sometimes make a difference and sometimes do not, shifting the focus on the events that make them effective, implying that other people too could have done what the leader did or might have even done better given a similar set of circumstances.Diamond leans towards the third perspective.What is the Hamlet testTo determine when leaders make a difference he posits the Hamlet test, which suggests that the impact of a leader is measured by whether what he achieved could also have been achieved or bettered by any of his contemporaries.Why is it called the Hamlet test? It is because Diamond was convinced that none of Shakespeare’s contemporaries could have written a play as good as Hamlet. If a leader were superlative like Shakespeare, they would pass the test.Diamond used this parameter alongside some “natural experiments” in which similar events are used to judge events of the past so the impact of say an assassination could be gauged by looking at the impact of other assassinations in similar conditions, to judge leaders from the fields of politics, business, sports and religion. But, making a difference is not enough to pass the Hamlet test.Do Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg qualify? As per Diamond’s test, while they did make a difference with their approaches to leadership, they were not as impactful as Lynda and Stewart Resnick, who pioneered the pomegranate juice industry. Similarly, Diamond gives a high rating to Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana, for making his country a rare success story in Africa, in comparison to the likes of Adolf Hitler, former Chancellor of the German Reich and Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom because given his place among the tribes and his education, he was the only person who could achieve what he finally did.Story continues below this ad“Those five business leaders made a difference, but in a way different from how Seretse Khama and the Resnicks made a difference. Without Seretse Khama and the Resnicks, an affluent peaceful Botswana and a large pomegranate juice industry probably wouldn’t exist today. In contrast, without our five leaders, we surely would have online selling, personal computers, smart phones, social media and electric cars,” he writes.But those five businesses would have assumed different forms without those five leaders. They put their distinctive stamp on their business, and while they did not pass the Hamlet test, they still made a difference.Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings is packed with such discussions and conclusions as Diamond evaluates different leaders, their effectiveness and whether others might not have done just as well.Also Read | Why a Frenchman chose to do Hamlet in HindiAchilles’ Heel of Hamlet TestThe Hamlet test sounds impressive, but on close inspection, seems inadequate. Diamond claims that no one else could have written Hamlet, because Shakespeare was unique and far ahead of other playwrights of that time.Story continues below this adIn Diamond’s words: “We can make a strong argument that Shakespeare was uniquely talented. We can be confident that no Elizabethan other than Shakespeare could have written a masterpiece like Hamlet if Shakespeare had not done so – because we can name and judge all of the limited number of Shakespeare’s competitors as playwrights.”The problem with Diamond’s s confident assertion is that one of Shakespeare’s competitors (as he puts it) was Christopher Marlowe, who wrote plays such as Doctor Faustus andTamburlaine , and is considered by many to have been on par with Shakespeare before his untimely death at the age of 29.In fact, it is widely believed that Marlowe’s work not only paved the way for Shakespeare’s success (Marlowe popularised unrhymed prose, which Shakespeare adopted), but he even co-wrote some of Shakespeare’s earlier works.As Hamlet was written between 1599-1601 (well after Marlowe’s death), it seems unfair to claim that Marlowe could not have written a play to match it.Story continues below this adIt also seems unfair to use something as subjective as literature to compare the capability of different authors.Then there is the little matter of assuming that one has complete knowledge of the competitors or contemporaries of a leader, it appears a little presumptuous to assume that one knows all the contemporaries of Bezos or Jobs, and whether they would have done something similar to what both of them did.We were also puzzled by Diamond’s decision to talk of leadership in sport in detail but not give the same attention to leadership in the military, which has yielded some of the world’s most famous leaders.While Diamond gives a lot of space to political leaders (the most readable part of the book), he almost races through business, sports and religious leaders. Even in politics, he tends to focus on a handful of peopleStory continues below this adVerdict: Too compact to be comprehensive, convincing Jared Diamond won the Pulitzer in 1998. (Wikimedia)Those expecting detailed discussions and explanations of the leadership of the likes of Mahatma Gandhi (who is spelt “Ghandhi” in the index, and “Gandhi” in the text, and contrary to what the index says is actually mentioned at least twice, and not once, in the book) or Napoleon will come away disappointed.This could, and perhaps should, have been a larger book with greater geographical coverage over a larger period of time, covering more people and regions. We do hope Diamond will consider a significantly enlarged edition. One may not agree with his methodology, but by the time we came to the end of the book, we knew a lot more about leadership and natural experiments than we had when we started it.Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?Jared DiamondAllen Lane288 ppRs 1,299