For your listening pleasure or if you are tied to a chair, to make you give up State's secrets!
http://wcupodcasts.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/mike-rabinowitz-ent610-week-7-podcast/
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Need for Achievement - The Disease
There are many traits that make up a successful entrepreneur. Independent, highly risk tolerant, tactical and strategic vision, perseverance, honesty and more but the one characteristic that seems to cut through or influence all of the other characteristics is the need for achievement. What is this need for achievement? Who has it and how do they differ from the other mammals?
Questia’s Concise Dictionary of Business Management defines Need for Achievement as: ‘a concept associated particularly with the American psychologist DAVID MCCLELLAND. It is the strongly felt MOTIVATION to achieve, to accomplish ambitions and to be successful that is commonly found in the ENTREPRENEUR’
It would appear this affliction strikes the entrepreneur more often than regular people. The question you must ask yourself. Do I have the entrepreneurial disorder known as a Need for Achievement? The second question you must ask is..Is there a cure? As for the former, we will explore the traits of this unfortunate state in this blog. As for the latter, the answer is No. This is not one of those vague philosophical questions one ponders for half a semester of freshman philosophy such as 'if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it fall does it make a sound?' Simply put. YES it makes a sound and NO there is no cure for the infected entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur is a risk taker but not a wild gambler. A gambler rolls the dice and feeds off the adrenaline of the impending outcome. Whether the outcome is positive or negative the gambler gets the same rush of excitement and, if his funds hold out, he will repeat this process until closing time or he runs out of money. An entrepreneur, on the other hand, takes a more measured risk. He weighs the opportunity and works the numbers over and over until, in his opinion, there is little now left to chance. For the gambler, the outcome is dictated by fate. For the entrepreneur the outcome is dictated by as much of the inputs and outputs he can control. Another trait successful entrepreneurs suffer is the need for personal achievement. Awards presented to them are nice and probably appreciated but a true entrepreneur is more concerned with achieving or surpassing personal goals he has set. Even tremendous monetary rewards do not effect the entrepreneur the same way as it does a normal person. Let’s take for example a lottery winner sitting on 100 million dollars and an entrepreneur who, through his vision, tenacity and hard work is also saddled with 100 million dollars. The lottery winner is over the moon. He is living the life. He has a massive house with an indoor swimming pool filled to the brim with pink champaign. His 16 car garage has every stall loaded with exotic European sports cars with names that even the Europeans can’t pronounce. He is happy. He is content. He is done. The entrepreneur, on the other hand, views money as a measuring stick. A goal attained or maybe not yet quite attained and even if it were attained he would simply raise the bar to a higher number. He has no time for pink champaign swimming pools because he is going to go back to work the next day and the next day.
Entrepreneurs interact with others differently that regular people. A regular Joe at the office might be concerned with how well he is liked. If given an annual review by a superior he tends to focus on comments about his attitude or team spirit. The entrepreneur, even the corporate entrepreneur does not care about people’s opinions about his personality. How helpful he is or how is a great guy. He wants straightforward information about the actual job his is doing. Where are his weaknesses? What needs to be done to improve his production. One can often find examples in a typical office setting of a regular Joe or Josephine and a entrepreneurial minded individual driven by a need for achievement. Joe is Mr. Congeniality of the customer service team. He is thrilled when he gets feedback that details what a friendly, fun guy he is to have at the office. His cubical is strewn with little corporate awards that put in writing what a friendly, fun guy he is to have at the office. He has little fuzzy headed bobbleheads all over his desk and cartoon cutouts pinned to the walls. Taped to his PC is a Ziggy cartoon that nobody understands but he pretends to and giggles every time he reads it. Stew, the need for achievement afflicted sales manager cares about one thing. Sales! He sets goals and is satisfied only when they are met and happy only when they are exceeded. The data sheets that spit out the numbers that detail the goal breaking sales figures is his reward. Whether a corporate entrepreneur or independent. There are no Ziggy cartoons to be found in his office. Not unless it is the one that sparked the idea for a new product that will revolutionize whatever it is meant to revolutionize.
If you find yourself setting high but attainable goals, surpassing those goals and then setting new goals. You may have a problem. If you measure your success by personal achievement versus the acclaim of your peers. You may have a problem. If you seek out feedback that tells you how you are doing and what needs to be done to improve as opposed to how popular and well liked you are. You have a problem. You are an entrepreneur and.......There is no cure.
Questia’s Concise Dictionary of Business Management defines Need for Achievement as: ‘a concept associated particularly with the American psychologist DAVID MCCLELLAND. It is the strongly felt MOTIVATION to achieve, to accomplish ambitions and to be successful that is commonly found in the ENTREPRENEUR’
It would appear this affliction strikes the entrepreneur more often than regular people. The question you must ask yourself. Do I have the entrepreneurial disorder known as a Need for Achievement? The second question you must ask is..Is there a cure? As for the former, we will explore the traits of this unfortunate state in this blog. As for the latter, the answer is No. This is not one of those vague philosophical questions one ponders for half a semester of freshman philosophy such as 'if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it fall does it make a sound?' Simply put. YES it makes a sound and NO there is no cure for the infected entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur is a risk taker but not a wild gambler. A gambler rolls the dice and feeds off the adrenaline of the impending outcome. Whether the outcome is positive or negative the gambler gets the same rush of excitement and, if his funds hold out, he will repeat this process until closing time or he runs out of money. An entrepreneur, on the other hand, takes a more measured risk. He weighs the opportunity and works the numbers over and over until, in his opinion, there is little now left to chance. For the gambler, the outcome is dictated by fate. For the entrepreneur the outcome is dictated by as much of the inputs and outputs he can control. Another trait successful entrepreneurs suffer is the need for personal achievement. Awards presented to them are nice and probably appreciated but a true entrepreneur is more concerned with achieving or surpassing personal goals he has set. Even tremendous monetary rewards do not effect the entrepreneur the same way as it does a normal person. Let’s take for example a lottery winner sitting on 100 million dollars and an entrepreneur who, through his vision, tenacity and hard work is also saddled with 100 million dollars. The lottery winner is over the moon. He is living the life. He has a massive house with an indoor swimming pool filled to the brim with pink champaign. His 16 car garage has every stall loaded with exotic European sports cars with names that even the Europeans can’t pronounce. He is happy. He is content. He is done. The entrepreneur, on the other hand, views money as a measuring stick. A goal attained or maybe not yet quite attained and even if it were attained he would simply raise the bar to a higher number. He has no time for pink champaign swimming pools because he is going to go back to work the next day and the next day.
Entrepreneurs interact with others differently that regular people. A regular Joe at the office might be concerned with how well he is liked. If given an annual review by a superior he tends to focus on comments about his attitude or team spirit. The entrepreneur, even the corporate entrepreneur does not care about people’s opinions about his personality. How helpful he is or how is a great guy. He wants straightforward information about the actual job his is doing. Where are his weaknesses? What needs to be done to improve his production. One can often find examples in a typical office setting of a regular Joe or Josephine and a entrepreneurial minded individual driven by a need for achievement. Joe is Mr. Congeniality of the customer service team. He is thrilled when he gets feedback that details what a friendly, fun guy he is to have at the office. His cubical is strewn with little corporate awards that put in writing what a friendly, fun guy he is to have at the office. He has little fuzzy headed bobbleheads all over his desk and cartoon cutouts pinned to the walls. Taped to his PC is a Ziggy cartoon that nobody understands but he pretends to and giggles every time he reads it. Stew, the need for achievement afflicted sales manager cares about one thing. Sales! He sets goals and is satisfied only when they are met and happy only when they are exceeded. The data sheets that spit out the numbers that detail the goal breaking sales figures is his reward. Whether a corporate entrepreneur or independent. There are no Ziggy cartoons to be found in his office. Not unless it is the one that sparked the idea for a new product that will revolutionize whatever it is meant to revolutionize.
If you find yourself setting high but attainable goals, surpassing those goals and then setting new goals. You may have a problem. If you measure your success by personal achievement versus the acclaim of your peers. You may have a problem. If you seek out feedback that tells you how you are doing and what needs to be done to improve as opposed to how popular and well liked you are. You have a problem. You are an entrepreneur and.......There is no cure.
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