当总统经验重不重要？

    高塔姆•穆昆达的新书《不可或缺：领袖的闪光时刻》（Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter）试图回答两个令人困惑的问题：我们选择哪个领导人会有区别吗？如果有区别，我们能够做出理性的选择吗？在这本书中，哈佛商学院教授（Harvard Business School, HBS）穆昆达把缺乏相关经验的领导人称作“初出茅庐的领导人”。与老江湖相比，他们有可能带来更大的改变。不过很难预测这种改变是好是坏。

    穆昆达对罗姆尼这位哈佛商学院的高材生看法如何？“罗姆尼的商业经历没法让我们了解他的执政能力，而他在商界学到的东西也不见得有多大帮助。”穆昆达认为，选罗姆尼当总统将是一场“巨大的赌博”。（下文的采访为精简和清晰的考虑经过了编辑。处理）

    什么原因促使你写这本书？

    总的来说，研究学者得出的结论是领导能力并不那么重要。统计学上有些可靠的证据证明这个观点，也有良好的理论解释，很有说服力。但问题是学术界以外的人完全不相信这一点。就是没人相信。每当看到这种情况，我就知道有些看头。就对世界的看法而言，这很可能是社会学家和社会学实践者之间差距最大的一个领域。

    当学者说领导人并不那么管用时，他们的意思是，如果我们不选这个人，换另一个只怕做法也差不多。然而学术界以外的人常常觉得领导和管理可以扭转乾坤。所以领导和管理有用，但谁做领导或是管理者恐怕无甚区别，因为人都是可以替换的。

    但我们都会想到不计其数的例子，证明领导人并不是可有可无。我想没有人会相信，如果史蒂夫•乔布斯不做领导，苹果公司（Apple）还能成为市值6,000亿美元的庞然大物。

    高影响力的领导人一定就是最佳选择吗？

    如果我们把领导人的影响力定义为做他人所不愿意做的事，这类决定会有什么后果呢？让我们想象一下，人人都说某只股票会大跌，你却逆流而上坚持买入。多数人会说你疯了。如果你判断准确，股价一冲上天，大家会觉得你是股神。但大多数时候，如果人人都和你说“天啊，这个想法太可怕了”，它往往确实是一个坏主意。

    影响力强大的领导人的危险恰恰就在于：他们会做他人所不愿意做的事。有时这种人确实出类拔萃，就像伟大的林肯总统。有时他们只是沃伦•哈丁（美国第29任总统，因丑闻和失言而闻名——译注）。

    怎样才能找到影响力强大的领导人？

    这就要谈到老江湖和初出茅庐的差别了。看看通用电气（GE）如何挑选领导人。公司从不找外人。候选人都从底层做起，经过20到25年的考察评估，到了有能力竞争CEO的位置时，通用电气已经对他们的一切了如指掌。这些年来，他们的同事、上级、下属都亲眼目睹他们在顺境逆境中的各种表现。到最后从5个候选人中挑选一个。所有的最终候选人都经过同样的流程考验，没选上的能有多大差别呢？

    但我们选举总统的方式并非如此。

    没错。但在最高效和最无能的总统中，初出茅庐的类型都超出应有的比例。

    罗姆尼也算初出茅庐吗？

    对，他是典型的初出茅庐。和任何共和党总统相比，他的相关经验都更缺乏，和所有总统相比，也只有伍德罗•威尔逊更为青涩。格罗弗•克利夫兰担任低级公职的经验比他略多一点，也是另外一个可比的对象。

    罗姆尼的商业经历多少有点用处吧？

    大量研究表明，某一领域的经验并不能够很好地用到其它方面。我们知道，明星经理人换到另一家公司，往往就流于平庸了。即使是在同一行业中的跳槽也是如此。你可以想像一下从金融业到政界的跨度。

    Gautam Mukunda has written a new book that tries to answer two vexing questions: Does it matter which leaders we choose? And if so, can we make rational choices? InIndispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, the Harvard Business School professor argues that "unfiltered leaders" -- those who haven't had much relevant experience -- will likely have a greater impact than filtered leaders. What's harder to predict is whether that impact will be good or bad.

    Mukunda's take on the HBS grad who's currently running for president? "Romney's business experience tells us little about what he will do in office, and what he learned during it will be of little help to him." Electing Romney, Mukunda says, would be a "tremendous gamble." (The following interview was edited for space and clarity.)

    What inspired you to write this book?

    In general, academics who study leadership have concluded that it's just not that important. There's some good statistical evidence for that, there are good theoretical arguments, it's a persuasive set of beliefs. But the problem is that no one outside academia believes that for a second. Just no one. Whenever I see something like that, I assume that something interesting is going on. This is probably the single greatest variance in beliefs about the world between social scientists and practitioners.

    When academics say that leaders don't matter that much, what they're thinking is, okay, if that person had not been there, the person who would have had that job instead would have done roughly the same thing. Whereas people outside of academia tend to think that leadership and management matter a lot. So leadership and management can matter, even if leaders ormanagers might not, because they're replaceable.

    But we can all think of countless examples where individual leaders were not replaceable. I don't think there's anyone who thinks that if Steve Jobs had not run Apple, Apple (AAPL) would still be a $600 billion company.

    Are high-impact leaders always the best choice?

    If our definition of leader-impact is that this person does things that other people in the same situation would not do, what do we know about that kind of decision? Think about what happens when you buy a stock that everybody else says is going to tank. Most people will say you're crazy. If you're right, and it shoots through the ceiling, you're a genius. But most of the time when everybody is telling you, 'Gee this is an awful idea,' it is actually an awful idea.

    The peril of high-impact leaders is precisely this: They're the people who do the things that no one else would do. Sometimes they look great, and they're Abraham Lincoln. Sometimes they're awful, and they're Warren Harding.

    So how do we identify high-impact leaders?

    That's where the filtered/unfiltered idea comes in. Look at how GE chooses a leader. They don't hire outsiders. They bring in people at low levels and they spend 20, 25 years evaluating them. By the time someone is in contention to be CEO, GE (GE) knows everything there is to know about this person. All those years—with their peers, with their superiors, with their subordinates—watching them perform in every conceivable circumstance. At the end of the day, GE's got five finalists for the job, and they pick one. All of the finalists have been through this process. How different could the four who weren't chosen possibly be?

    But that's not how we choose presidents.

    Right. A disproportionate percentage of both the most effective and the least effective presidents have been unfiltered.

    Romney would be in that category?

    Yes. He is an extraordinarily unfiltered leader. He has less relevant experience than any Republican president has ever had before entering the Oval Office, and less than any president of any party except Woodrow Wilson. Grover Cleveland had slightly more experience in lower offices, he's the other comparison.

    Doesn't Romney's business experience count for something?

    We have a lot of research that tells us experience doesn't transfer from one context to another very well. We know that when you bring stars from one company to another, even in the same industry, they usually don't stay stars. That's true even when you're moving within an industry. So think about how much more true it's going to be when you're moving from finance to politics.