Do you have any non-anecdotal information to support this theory?
It's definitely within reason to reframe ambition as "willingness to take risks to advance oneself." In which case your theory might be suffering from survivors bias. Given a number of people pursuing ambitious agendas the average and median results could be anywhere on the map but you would still have an outsized representation within "people who ascended hierarchies".
It's definitely within reason to reframe ambition as "willingness to take risks to advance oneself." In which case your theory might be suffering from survivors bias. Given a number of people pursuing ambitious agendas the average and median results could be anywhere on the map but you would still have an outsized representation within "people who ascended hierarchies".