The Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators

Citation

Beverland, M. (2001), "The Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 50-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2001.22.1.50.3

A quick look at any business bookshelf will indicate how chaotic the field of business leadership is. Leaders are advised to “lead”, “follow”, “flow with the Tao”, “flip adversity into success through jujitsu”, or imagine that their employees comprise a basketball squad or a Green Beret unit (Puris, 1999). Would be leaders are told to emulate Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, George S. Patton, Machiavelli, the Founding Fathers, etc. Turning to the academic journals one will find a dizzying array of different leadership models, from contingency theory to transactional and transformational leadership. While there have emerged a number of good biographies of business leaders in recent decades, what is missing is an integrated study of what great leaders have done, what has made them what they are, and what principles they have followed that enabled them to create great wealth. That is what The Prime Movers achieves.

Over the years I have had the privilege of seeing Professor Locke’s original thesis develop from a series of interesting case studies of leaders past into a fascinating qualitative study of leadership. Professor Locke has examined a number of great wealth creators (ranging from John D. Rockefeller through to Sam Walton and Mary Kay) from the past and present, and attempted to inductively develop a set of leadership traits common to all. To do so he has had to integrate vast amounts of data from history, business, philosophy, economics and psychology. He argues that the traits common to all great wealth creators are: independent vision, active mind, competence and confidence, drive to action, egoistic passion, love of ability in employees, and virtue. On this last he builds on the unique ethics of the late Ayn Rand. Building on Rand’s philosophy he clearly is not going to run from hard questions, and defends the actions of great leaders based upon their ability to create great wealth as opposed to their philanthropy or their ability to create jobs, which Locke argues is a side issue. What emerges is a set of leadership principles that can be applied by any manager to running a successful business over the long term. By understanding that general principle can only be developed in a context, Locke argues that these principles are successful only so far as they are consistently and continuously applied. Failure to apply them will lead to organisational decline, as it did with the likes of Henry Ford.

This book is an excellent example of a top social scientist at his best, and an excellent inductive study of management that will challenge many preconceptions held by academics. It is also a highly readable and useful text for any aspiring wealth creator. I have just one minor complaint. I personally wish that Locke had expanded his section on the strategies followed by the wealth creators, but this is perhaps too much to ask an author who has already integrated so much material into a highly inspiring account of leaders who have made a real difference.