"I would rather live a short life of glory than a
long one of obscurity." Alexander the Great
In 324 BCE Alexander the Great established world domination. His generals encouraged him to return to Babylon to rule his Kingdom. Alexander could think of nothing worse than to live out the rest of his life as an administrator of Babylon. The end of battles did not mean security for Alexander, it meant obscurity. For a year he reluctantly ruled over his kingdom, and in the end he drank so heavily that in his weakened state, at the age of 33, he caught pneumonia and died.
long one of obscurity." Alexander the Great
In 324 BCE Alexander the Great established world domination. His generals encouraged him to return to Babylon to rule his Kingdom. Alexander could think of nothing worse than to live out the rest of his life as an administrator of Babylon. The end of battles did not mean security for Alexander, it meant obscurity. For a year he reluctantly ruled over his kingdom, and in the end he drank so heavily that in his weakened state, at the age of 33, he caught pneumonia and died.
When a nascent entrepreneur establishes his or her company, so that it is financially solvent they are already thinking about starting another business; when they win the bid or secure the contract they’re off to another negotiation. For people who don’t understand this kind of drive it seems strange that money-makers seldom celebrate their accomplishments. However, it’s not the accomplishment that drives them – it’s the battle. The money-maker has a high need for achievement. If the nascent entrepreneur talks about making the final deal and settling down to enjoy the fruits of their labor, it’s for the benefit of others; a wife or husband that complains about never getting to spend enough time with them. A company that wants to promote an entrepreneur into an administrative role, such as Vice President of Marketing, or Sales VP will find a lot of resistance and often lose one of their best money makers, because the need for achievement in administrative roles is never fulfilled in the same way as it is in the trenches.
A need for achievement (nAch) is a stable trait to obtain satisfaction by continually striving for a higher standard. When John D. Rockefeller was asked how much is enough he replied, “A little bit more.” McClelland, Koestner, and Weinberger (1989) viewed nAch as an animal like drive that energizes and selects behavior. In other words, an entrepreneur with a high need for achievement is not driven to succeed by some outer force, but rather is motivated by an internal drive to always obtain a higher standard. For the money-maker the achievement incentive, a term coined by Spangler (1992), is triggered by a potential opportunity to make a lot of money. The potential opportunity is the driving incentive for the money-maker, but without it there is no incentive to achieve. McClelland (1965) conducted a longitudinal study, looking at graduates 14 years after graduation, and found that significantly more of those originally scoring high in nAch were currently in entrepreneurial occupations. This supports the theory that there is a strong relationship between high need for achievement scores and “entrepreneurial” behavior. What the McClelland research did not show us is a correlation between entrepreneurial drive and money-making success. Therefore, nAch alone is not a predictive trait of the money-maker.
As we continue to search for money-making traits, it is this researchers belief that the composite nature of successful entrepreneurs will come together like pieces of a puzzle to reveal the predictive characteristics of money-makers.
Multiple research studies have suggested that nAch is a strong trait indicator for leadership success in general, as long as it is balanced by other factors such as social power needs. However, while I can see money as an external success "indicator" for some entrepreneurs, the reason there may not be a correlation between nAch and money-making is that there are other motivators for those with nAch. Therefore, they may not see money generation as a measure of their nAch, or they may not be personally good at managing money itself as a resource, in spite of the nAch.
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