A few years ago it occurred to me that many times the people at the top have a larger impact not necessarily because they are smarter or more talented than the people lower on the totem pole of society, but in large part because they are simply at such a high level.

The analogy that came to mind was of someone wanting to throw a rock as far as possible, and trying to do so from different rungs on a ladder. If they throw a rock from the bottom rung, it will go a certain distance, but if they throw the rock from the top rung it will go much farther, even if it’s the same person throwing the same rock with the same amount of effort.

More generally, between the bottom and top rungs, the higher the person is on the ladder, the farther the rock goes.

This same concept applies to life in general. You are more likely to have an impact on your company’s direction and success if you are the CEO than if you are entry-level employee. You are more likely to have an impact on your country’s direction and well-being if you are the President or a member of Congress than if you are a private citizen.

This is true even if you are the same person, with the same skillset and the same idea of how to improve things. For example, if a regular employee thinks his company should embrace green technology or build the iPhone it will be much tougher to convince others to enact this than if you are the CEO of General Motors or Steve Jobs. If a private citizen has an idea on how to reduce inflation it’s almost impossible to get anyone to do anything about it, whereas people higher up the political food chain and have the same idea will have a much easier time getting people to at listen to them and possibly implement some changes.

On a humorous note, the difference in how people’s ideas/solutions are treated depending on how high they are on the ladder begins even with how the ideas are described in articles and discussions: A regular person has an ‘idea’. A leader has a 'vision’.

Of course, it’s possible that people who get to the top of the ladder get there because they do in fact have higher abilities than the people who stay in the bottom rungs. But, we should be aware of the fact that there are two components which contribute to how far the rock goes: the person’s rock-throwing ability and how high they are on the ladder. This is often forgotten in descriptions of the achievements of people at the top.

It would be interesting if there was a way to quantify how much of someone’s achievements was due to their innate ability and how much was due to the high position they managed to ascend to. As an aside, this also applies to institutions. For example, how much of Stanford’s success at minting successful researchers and entrepreneurs is due to its innate qualities (e.g. the quality of its professors) and how much is due to how high it is on the ladder (which means that the brightest in the world apply to go there)?

The important lesson from all of this is the following: If you want to have a large impact (in your company, your country, or the world), make sure you learn how to climb the ladder. Everything else about your abilities being equal, the higher you manage to climb, the higher your impact will be.

Originally posted December 3, 2011

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