Fortune Magazine Picks Another Round of 50 Great Leaders
Fortune Magazine likes to publish lists of people and things. On April 1st (and isn’t that appropriate), the business magazine will publish its second annual list of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” which may be more interesting because of who isn’t on it, rather than who is. The 50 greatest leaders were selected from nominations received from the people who were on last year’s a list, along with a group of 28 “thought leaders” and the staff of the magazine.
Here’s the list of the nominators. See how many of them you know (no peeking on Wikipedia):
- Mildred Apenyo
- Dominic Barton
- Kathy Bloomgarden
- Ian Bremmer
- Kenneth Chenault
- Caitlin Colegrove
- Sen. Christopher Coons
- Rohitesh Dhawan
- Susan Desmond-Hellmann
- Charlotte Florance
- Laurie Garrett
- Ilene Gordon
- Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg
- Richard Haass
- Rosabeth Moss Kanter
- Thomas Kolditz
- Anand Mahindra
- Rita Gunther McGrath
- Denise Morrison
- Alan Mulally
- Joseph Nye
- Jeffrey Pfeffer
- Zhang Ruimin
- Carol Sawdye
- Witney Schneidman
- Peter Thiel
- Paul Volcker
I knew – and I mean I really know of – four : Richard Haass, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Alan Mulally, and Paul Volcker. I recognised some of the other names, but I really couldn’t place them.
The actual list of the 50 greatest leaders for 2015 is only a little less enigmatic. Out of the 50 leading leaders, I really knew only 14. See if your list differs greatly from mine, because I am betting it won’t. Here’s a link to the entire list. See how many you can recognise without looking and let me know if you have beaten my score.
- Tim Cook
- Xi Jinping
- Pope Francis
- Taylor Swift
- John Roberts
- Howard Schultz
- Bill and Melinda Gates
- Elon Musk
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Jeff Bezos
- LeBron James
- Jamie Dimon
- Jimmy Fallon
- Narendra Modi
The full list of 50 great leaders features some interesting anomalies:
- Only one U.S. politician (not surprising considering the nadir to which American politics has fallen), Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
- Fifteen out of 53 are women (there are three pairs of greatest leaders who got bundled together. Apparently Fortune can’t count all that well. )
- Just three – Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos – are on the list representing the Big Tech sector. Bill and Melinda Gates – a twofer everywhere they go, apparently – are on the list, but only as the scions of their Foundation. Elon Musk, who now has only a tangential relationship to the computer world, made the list. Conspicuously missing from the list: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, or anyone else from Google for that matter.
- Only two “world leaders” made the list: China’s president Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Conspicuously missing: U. S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Putin should demand a recount. We may not like him but he is an obvious choice for a great leader list, even if you don’t like the direction toward which he is leading Russia.)
- Two American basketball players, LeBron James and Yao Ming, made the list but no baseball, football or hockey stars, reinforcing our notion that basketball players are, well, smarter than other athletes. (No jockeys made the list either, and they are usually smarter than other athletes.)
- Two other people with basketball connections also made the list, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Princeton University women’s basketball coach Courtney Banghart (and, well, isn’t that an incredibly appropriate name for a female basketball coach?)
- Taylor Swift – Taylor Swift? – is on the list as the sole representative of the music industry. Bono is not on the list. Nor is Bob Dylan, but I guess 50 years of industry leadership doesn’t count.
- Pope Francis is the only religious leader on the list. That makes sense. Can you name another religious leader from any denomination not your own? The Dalai Lama? Okay, now name another one.
- Only three of the great leaders – Howard Schultz, Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Silver – appear to be Jewish, which leaves the Jewish people strangely underrepresented on the list. At the very least, Benjamin Netanyahu should have gotten an honorable mention. You may not like his policies but there is no question that he is a very skillful leader on a very hot hot seat.
Lists like these don’t really mean anything. Just because you make onto the greatest leaders list doesn’t mean that you are really a great leader, and most of these leaders would agree, because leadership today is invested in the team not in individuals, a product of collective group think in the corporate arena. Just because you didn’t make the list, that doesn’t mean you are not a great leader, because truly great leaders don’t stand head and shoulders above the crowd. On the contrary, they often stand behind their followers pushing them toward greatness, because true greatest consists of helping other people to become better, if not great.
Share you thoughts about this list in our comments section. Who do you think should be booted off this list? Who do you think deserves to be voted on? We’ll publish the results, if there are any.
