Monday, July 25, 2011

BEING A MONEY-MAKER

            In 2005 I was invited to attend an annual Mary K conference. Besides the fact that there were no men’s bathrooms it proved to be an inspiring experience. Hundreds of women paraded across the stage to celebrate their success. Many women were making significant livings selling cosmetics, but I was mainly impressed with the women who were making 50k . . . a month.
            I attended a workshop led by a 50k woman and her husband. The intended purpose was to suggest how to lend support to a wife or significant other on her way to success. One man told the group that his wife spent 70 hours a week on the business. She listened to all the tapes and attended all the meetings, but she made very little money, then he turned his question to the workshop leaders, “What’s she doing wrong?” The 50k woman said, “I can’t give you a specific answer without knowing what your wife is doing, but most people who put that much effort into their business and don’t make money are probably spending most of their time doing things that don’t make money.” I tend to agree with her answer, but there are people who seem to do exactly what money-makers do and can’t make it happen.
            Sustaining profitability must be more than merely doing the right things. An integrationist approach to entrepreneurial profitability claims that successful entrepreneurs have a specific combination of personality traits, genetic propensity, and experience that gives them an advantage over other business people. Strategic Growth Markets Area Leader for Americas, Maria Pinelli (2007) writes, "there are traits and experiences that make it more likely that an individual will choose the path of entrepreneurship and, crucially, succeed over the long term." Recent research indicates that succeeding as a money-maker requires certain cognitive and affective qualities that are uniquely selected in certain individuals. “Entrepreneurs are truly a different breed of person. . .” (Bender, 2007). Much of the current research contradicts many of the caricatures of successful entrepreneurs. The business community has depended too much on anecdotal evidence for identifying entrepreneurial profitability. It is to their advantage, however, to invest resources to recognize individuals with money-making traits in the early stages of their development. “It [Successful entrepreneurship] is highly under-researched and has potential to answer several questions regarding traits and behaviors of entrepreneurs, is why, when, and how some people and not others discover and exploit opportunities” (Shane, 2000). So far the research reveals that successful entrepreneurs are not like the rest of us. When successful entrepreneurs are compared to others it's like comparing apples to oranges. In future blogs I will reveal the research identifying distinctive trait-like properties of the money maker.  

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

UNCOMMON EDGE

One of the most cutting edge observations in the Psychology of Success is John Gartner’s (2005) hypomanic edge. Dr. Gartner finds the entrepreneurial spirit inherent in the family of bipolar disorders. He categorizes hypomania as a milder form of bipolar disorder that is not normally debilitating like clinical mania or depression. Gartner speculates that the American spirit germinated from the seeds of hypomania and he says, "[hypomania] has made us what we are . . .”
The concept of finding entrepreneurial characteristics in bipolar illness may not be a new idea.  Harvard Business School’s Alexander Zelaznick (1986) said in a New York Times interview, "To understand the entrepreneur, you first have to understand the psychology of the juvenile delinquent." Zelanznick was talking specifically about risk taking. Peter C. Whybrow said to the Boston Globe (2005), "We do know that in the American population you find a much higher prevalence of the D4-7 allele, which is the risk-taking gene.
According to the DSM-IV-TR risk is characteristic of hypomania, along with inflated grandiosity, decreased need for sleep, easily distracted, flight of ideas, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, increased psychomotor agitation - not the kind of person that you want to be your financial investor. Alden Cass is a therapist in Upper Manhattan and he may not agree with your initial judgment. Many of his clients are bankers, brokers, traders, and financial advisers. He claims that the majority of his clients fit the description of a hypomania. He helps them work through the negative effects of the illness – depression, burnout, substance abuse, infidelity, and wrecked marriages and family, but then he adds, “Hypomania is great for business.” It may be great for businesses that want fast turnover and don’t mind high risk ventures, but companies that want to be establish themselves as landmarks and sustain long-term profitability should steer away from reckless business practices.
It is probably true that many entrepreneurs are hypomanic, but it may be true because they find it difficult to work for others for long periods of time. When the research is in, I suspect it will show that money makers have some characteristics of hypomania, as many of us do, but in order to sustain profitability there needs to be an uncommon stability and persistence that the hypomania is incapable of maintaining.

Friday, July 8, 2011

THE ORCHID ADVANTAGE

Are you familiar with the child that few people can control? That child may be the future CEO of your company. Genetics tells us a lot about why people behave as they do, but until recently most behavioral genetic studies have been done on people with clinically diagnosed mental illnesses. “Most genetic researchers,” says Jay Belsky (2009), a child-development psychologist at the University of London, “don’t see the upside, because they don’t look for it.” Researchers are beginning to see the advantages of genes that make people vulnerable to dramatic mood swings, risk taking, and attention deficits. Bakermans-Kranenburg and van Ijzendoorn (2004) wanted to see how children with a risk gene allele for externalizing behaviors (crying, screaming, hitting, throwing toys) would respond in a positive environment compared to children with a no risk gene allele. The results were astounding; in protective environments children at risk reduced externalizing behavior by 27% compared to the no risk children that reduced externalizing by merely 12%. In a subsequent study of the environment-gene interaction Bruce Ellis from the University of Arizona and Thomas Boyce a pediatrician from the University of British Columbia recognized that some people are like Dandelions who can adapt to almost any environment and others are like Orchids that will wilt if they are ignored or mistreated, but will become spectacular when nurtured in the right environment.

The less numerous and more vulnerable orchids in our society offer great potential. The orchid perspective is a new way of looking at people that don’t fall in the normal range. Malcome Gladwell (2008) in his book Outliers describes in detail successful individuals that lie outside the bell curve, “I think you have to look around them—at their culture and community and family and generation. We've been looking at tall trees, and I think we should have been looking at the forest.” The environment-gene interaction may be an important indicator in predicting the money maker in our society. Imagine what could happen to a society that recognized potential for the kind of success we’ve only begun to realize. Consider the possibility of identifying and transplanting orchid individuals into an environment that nurtures success.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

WIRED FOR SUCCESS

       Are some people’s brains hardwired for success? It turns out that this may be the case for highly successful individuals in business, politics, or even the clergy. One of the newest and most interesting trends in behavioral psychology today is the “gene-environment interaction.” Researchers have identified dozens of variant genes that appear to be responsible for a susceptibility to depression, Attention Deficient Disorde
(ADD), Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Violence, and Antisocial Disorders (Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2004), but the negative effects of the gene alleles only occurs in stressful environments or as a result of traumatic experiences. In other words, a Dr. Jekyll can become a Mr. Hyde in certain environments. However, in the right context we have also seen that the same genes are responsible for individual’s great success. We suspected genes that could be so deleterious to the species had redeeming value; otherwise selection would have eradicated it from the gene pool. Researchers Bruce Ellis and Thomas Boyce (2009) stated, “At first glance, this idea, which I’ll call the orchid hypothesis, may seem a simple amendment to the vulnerability hypothesis. It merely adds that environment and experience can steer a person up instead of down. Yet it’s actually a completely new way to think about genetics and human behavior; risk becomes possibility, vulnerability becomes plasticity and responsiveness.”