Beyond Personal Skill to Leadership Leverage

I prefer to evaluate people based on their specific positions in society rather than applying a universal measure to everyone. My evaluation criteria are shaped by what differentiates an individual and what defines their primary role. It is similar to the weighting in university entrance exams: if you apply for an engineering degree, every correct math or science answer significantly increases your score, while a correct social science answer adds much less. The opposite holds true for a social science applicant, where solving math questions yields minimal impact on the final result.

Based on this mindset, I evaluate decision-makers and rulers primarily by the actions they take. While it is personally valuable for an individual to know several languages, this skill is less critical for a leader. A far more important metric for a ruler is whether they believe in the importance of linguistics enough to establish an education system where millions can learn. An individual knowing ten languages is a 1 x 10 calculation. Compare this to a leader enabling a hundred thousand people to know two languages: 100,000 x 2 = 200,000.

Rulers and decision-makers possess the power to accelerate the things they deem important. In this regard, my own father outperforms many historical rulers who spoke multiple languages but took little action to promote education. Despite having almost no foreign language knowledge himself, my father sent both of his children to an American College to ensure we learned a language properly.

We can extend this logic to literacy. An individual reading a thousand books is 1 x 1,000. However, a ruler who establishes printing presses across a country to lower the cost of books for the entire society achieves a much greater impact, such as 100,000 x 5 = 500,000.

An individual's knowledge remains valuable to society only as long as they live. In contrast, passing experience and know-how to the masses creates a snowball effect. I believe facilitating this transfer of knowledge is the most valuable contribution a ruler can make during their reign.