The Entrepreneur as Acheiver

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

Through­out his­tory, human behav­iour has been informed and influ­enced by arche­types. The Oxford dic­tio­nary defines arche­type as: “1. orig­i­nal model, pro­to­type; 2. typ­i­cal spec­i­men.” For cen­turies, philoso­phers, and, more recently, social sci­en­tists have used arche­types to char­ac­ter­ize human behav­iour. The arche­type of the entre­pre­neur is that of the Achiever.

Entre­pre­neurs typ­i­cally have a high achieve­ment ori­en­ta­tion. The United States leads the world in the expres­sion of entre­pre­neur­ship. Amer­i­cans cel­e­brate the suc­cesses and tol­er­ate the fail­ures of entre­pre­neurs much more read­ily than the cit­i­zens of other nations.

In the United States, the val­ues of egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, mer­i­toc­racy, and inde­pen­dence, among oth­ers, pro­vide fer­tile soil for the seeds of entre­pre­neur­ship. Achieve­ment is cel­e­brated; fail­ure is the flip side of the same coin. It is an accepted part of the striv­ing to achieve.

The achiever is an heroic fig­ure in Amer­i­can soci­ety, yet, as with any arche­type, there is a good and bad side to achieve­ment. Some­times, the drive to achieve leads peo­ple to cheat in order to com­pete and win. We have recently seen a num­ber of exam­ples of exec­u­tives in pub­licly traded com­pa­nies accused of fraud. Large finan­cial insti­tu­tions have been forced into bank­ruptcy or brought to their knees through reck­less invest­ments seem­ingly dri­ven by greed. Investor con­fi­dence has been shat­tered by their actions and those of peo­ple like Bernie Mad­off. It appears as if their need to achieve caused these peo­ple to “cheat the sys­tem” in order to get ahead.

An arche­type rep­re­sents a model of how we want to live our lives. Much of our lit­er­a­ture is based on arche­types. The only dif­fer­ence between an epic and a tragedy is in the choices made by the cen­tral character.

In an epic, when faced with adver­sity the hero or hero­ine rises to the occa­sion and their strengths become man­i­fest. The adver­sity brings out the best in them. It’s not about win­ning or los­ing, it’s about how we express our­selves in our heroic journey.

In a tragedy, when faced with adver­sity the cen­tral fig­ure falls vic­tim and their weak­nesses come to the fore. It is not the exter­nal events in our lives that deter­mine whether we are a hero or vic­tim; it is the way in which we respond to the cir­cum­stances we encounter in our lives.

For the Entre­pre­neur as Achiever, the writ­ing of an epic arises from the entrepreneur’s pur­suit of mean­ing, not money. The pur­pose of the entrepreneur’s work and life is to make a dif­fer­ence and to do what is significant.

Con­versely, the writ­ing of a tragedy takes place when the entre­pre­neur becomes so con­cerned with the exter­nal trap­pings of suc­cess that they sac­ri­fice their integrity, health, fam­ily, rela­tion­ships, and faith. They pur­sue suc­cess at any price and end up los­ing their sense of self.

The entre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney becomes an epic when the entrepreneur’s pur­pose is to become a bet­ter per­son and con­tribute to a bet­ter world.

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

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Tags: Acheiver, Adversity, Central Character, Covenant Group, Egalitarianism, Fertile Soil, Financial Institutions, Flip Side, Heroic Figure, Heroine, Human Behaviour, Investor Confidence, Meritocracy, Model Prototype, Norm Trainor, Original Model, Oxford Dictionary, Philosophers, Social Scientists, Typical Specimen
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