Hat Trick
For a soldier, skill, loyalty, and valor are the paramount virtues.
For a leader, one might propose wisdom, dutifulness, and vision.
Teachers require knowledge, patience, and fairness.
A great mother, if one is presumptuous enough to rate mothers, should possess equanimity, authority, and boundless love.
What are the prime virtues of the entrepreneur? What traits above all else, define the successful entrepreneur?
Someone might assume that innovation is indispensable, but not everyone can be on the bleeding edge. Many entrepreneurs have made a comfortable fortune doing nothing more following an age-old business model under ideal geographic and economic circumstances.
Some might say intelligence, or luck, or persistence. But, intelligence is ephemeral, and rarely as valuable as people make it out to be. Fortune favors the prepared, and persistence alone is a good way ride a sinking ship into bankruptcy and beyond.
I propose the following triumvirate: acuity, industry, and foresight.
Distinct from intelligence, acuity is the capacity to truly perceive the realities both within and without a business. The successful entrepreneur must actually see what is going on and be willing to face it, even if is unfortunate, unfair, or unlikely. The acute entrepreneur has no preconceived notions, and reacts always to what is, never to what should be, to what was projected, or to what seems comfortable.
Industry has nothing to do with persistence. Persistence is the virtue that allows one to slog on against all odds, denying evidence of failure, and pushing forward with utmost faith in eventual reward. Industry, on the other hand, is about following through on pre-determined pathways. The industrious entrepreneur understands that what lay a head may be hard, but that, all thing considered, the visible goal is worth the trouble.
I would say that foresight is the “weakest” virtue on this list. That is to say, I am strongly tempted to fold foresight into acuity, this leaving us with a duality, or freeing up the third slot for another virtue. But that temptation merely aesthetic, growing from the analogous relationship the two concepts have the human sense of sight. For our purposes, the two are quite distinct and stand separate and equally important.
Where acuity is seeing what is, foresight is the rare skill of projecting what can be, and then sorting that into what is likely and what is unlikely, and then further weighing the dangers and benefits of these possible futures against one another. It in the weighing and balancing of these possibilities and consequences against one another that foresight, as a virtue, vaults to the top of our vital list of entrepreneurial character traits.
I think these three virtues are the true test of the entrepreneur, the traits which separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, my assertion is certainly open to debate. Our network kindly provides the comment functions below, should anyone wish to disagree, modify, or elaborate.
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