LOOKING THE OTHER WAY

            Being a money-maker is often confused with the concept of success. A person can make a company profitable and be considered successful, but being successful doesn’t always mean that a person is a money-maker. Regardless, much of the research on success focuses on the attributes of top level leaders in Fortune 500 companies. Many researchers are enamored by the power of C Street executives and tend to misattribute success traits to them. In other words, researchers assume that if the company is large, influential, and wealthy that the top level leaders of organizations are responsible for the financial success of the company. Is it the leader that makes a company successful or the company that makes the leader successful? To be sure, a top level executive has an indirect effect on the financial success of a company, by establishing policy, casting vision, choosing the executive management team and keeping the stock holders informed of current conditions. Jim Collins (2009) wrote, “Generally speaking leaders that help their companies survive tough financial times must revisit and discuss departmental budgets, create new and more effective marketing plans, and boost customer service to an all time high.” To put Collins statement in perspective, out of 1435 large companies, his research team only found 11 companies that met the criteria of sustained financial growth. Even though leaders of successful corporations possess many entrepreneurial traits it is difficult to identify them as money-makers. Britton et al. (1992) found that profitability in corporations was a poor indicator of success. “Performance indicators are very difficult to measure, says Britton. Efficiency is usually measured by profitability and the calculation of profitability is problematic. There is a lack of correspondence between the theoretical concepts and the available data, as the firm’s calculation of profit is different from the economist’s concept of profit.” In order to build a basis of empirical evidence for predicting financial performance among CEO’s the project requires an assessment process that is comprehensive and comparative to top level leaders in large companies.

            At the other end of the entrepreneurial spectrum the nascent entrepreneur is directly responsible for the financial health of his or her company. Thirty years of research reveals trait-like characteristics for the financially successful entrepreneurs (Kirzner, 1979; Gilad, Kaish, & Ronen, 1989: 48; Hills & Shrader, 1998; Shane, 2003).  If we are to find money-making traits we must first look away from power and prestige and find reliable markers for trait-like attributes of money-makers.