Successfull Leadership is all Random

I was reading an article on “Great Leaders”.  The article said that all great leaders have “an innate ability to read the forces that shaped the times in which they lived—and to seize on the resulting opportunities.”  

My question is, “Did they simply get lucky?”.  It seems like there are many people who think they know what direction the world is moving.  If you read any stock website or investing newsletter, there is no shortage of opinions about the “times in which we live” and how to make money.

There is also no shortage of people who are willing to invest in some scheme hoping that it turns into the next Amazon.com, McDonalds or Avon.  Some of these ventures are successful.  A few are wildly successful.  The majority are break even or worse.

There is a popular theory that says, “given enough time, a chimpanzee typing at random will eventually type out a copy of one of Shakespeare's plays..”  Is that same thing true about entrepreneurs?  There are millions of entrepreneurs around the world with millions of ideas.  Each one is hoping to get rich.  Is it only hard work and some kind of sooth-saying ability that makes the difference between great success and average success or even failure or is it just inevitable that a small percentage will get it right.

I would like to see someone do a study about people who thought they had some great, world-changing idea and failed.  Are those people like the Ray Kroc’s and Sam Walton’s?  Are they just as smart, just as hard-working and just as educated?  Was there problem simply one of timing or luck?

Take Dean Kamen for example.  Everyone says he is a brilliant, hardworking, successful guy.  He has many wonderful inventions that changed healthcare.  He also owns his own island, so he is doing something right business-wise.  His one main failure is the Segway.  He thought it would be an invention that would change the world.  He said that third-world countries would design cities around the Segway.  Well, its been a few years since it was invented and the world has not changed.  Apparently, he could not read the forces shaping his time.  Maybe if he would have introduced the Segway at a different time or was able to sell it for a lower price, it would have caught on.  Could it be circumstances that is keeping the Segway from being successful?

I’m not ragging on Doctor Kamen.  He is a great scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.  I am saying that he may not be included in the list of great leaders because of timing and luck.