When Benjamin Franklin was a young man, he developed a list of thirteen virtues. The virtues, he figured, were the thirteen dimensions of good character. If he could master his thirteen virtues, he could master success and happiness. Franklin carefully recorded each virtue in his diary and tracked his progress against them. It was a life-long journey for him.
Franklin went on to achieve, quite possibly, more than any other single person in history.
He started, of course, as a printer. He eventually bought a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette and grew the paper into the most successful and widely-circulated paper in the American Colonies. That alone made him one of the most accomplished businessmen of his day.
While growing the paper, he founded the first public library, started a public hospital (The Pennsylvania Hospital), and created Philadelphia’s first fire department. He founded the first philosophical society in the colonies, the American Philosophical Society.
He created and published Poor Richard’s Almanac. He coined all sorts of witty phrases that we routinely quote today. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” was supposedly his firefighting philosophy, prompting him to develop the Philadelphia Fire Department. He wrote a document in 1749 called, “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania” which led to the creation of the University of Pennsylvania a couple years later. In 1752, he founded the world’s first fire insurance company.
Franklin then turned to science. Dissatisfied with the efficiency with which people heated their homes, he re-engineered the wood-burning stove (result: The Franklin Stove). He designed the world’s first swim fins and created the world’s first bifocal eye glasses. He famously tamed electricity with his kite and later invented the lightening rod, which prevented innumerable fires as the simple inexpensive device worked beautifully and went literally viral around the world.
As a statesman, Franklin served as the Governor of Pennsylvania, Postmaster General of Philadelphia, Deputy Postmaster General for the British Colonies, and Ambassador to France.
Considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Franklin curiously was largely absent from the colonies during the contentious years leading up to U.S. independence. He spent a full 18 years in London as a colonial representative to England, representing not just Pennsylvania, but Georgia and Massachusetts as well. He returned in 1775 just in time to sit on a five-person committee to write the Declaration of Independence. He was elected to the Second Continental Congress, attended the Constitutional Convention, and signed both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Lost in all of his other accomplishments is his treatise condemning slavery, which he managed to write just before his death.
Wow. Was this guy for real?
Franklin is the bellwether of an elite club of leaders we call the all-in super-overachievers. They dedicate themselves to accomplishing the extraordinary. George Washington, John Wooden, and John Lennon are members, as is Wilbur Wright. They share not only the gift of achievement, but also certain psychological traits.
Achievement is the output of these elite leaders, what we read in the history books. The psychological traits are the inputs. Their traits and personalities are what make them who they are, what give them the will and drive to achieve.
In The Priceless Investment Value of Exceptional Leadership, we noted how finding and aligning with people like Sam Walton or Steve Jobs early in their careers is life-changing for an investor. In these days of spreadsheets and big data, we believe the assessment of leadership is the great neglected element of investing.
When we examine the elite capital allocators, we find they too are all-in super-overachievers. Oddly enough, Sam Walton and Steve Jobs share certain psychological traits with Ben Franklin.
One defining feature of this group of elite leaders is a proclivity to order and structure, one that is typically on full display very early in life.
What sort of teenager thinks about the virtues he or she wants for success and then puts a structure together for the execution of the plan? It turns out that kind of behavior is typical of all-in super-overachievers. They are systematic about achievement very early in life.
John Wooden had what he called a pyramid for success. The pyramid consisted of fifteen blocks. Each block contained a personality trait that Wooden believed led to success in both athletics and life in general. Wooden supposedly started developing the pyramid in high school, long before he won his first championship. For more on John Wooden, see Obsessed with Success.
Warren Buffett has said he read every book on investing in his local library when he was young. He took what he could from early investors like Ben Graham, Phil Fisher, and John Burr Williams and developed his framework for investing. He did it before the age of twenty.
Sam Walton had a framework for making money in retail. Steve Jobs had a framework for making money with computers and electronics. Henry Singleton had a framework for managing a conglomerate in the 1960s.
We would argue, in fact, that all elite leaders have some sort of a system in place to live their lives and manage their affairs, a system most likely developed early in life. The elite leader refines and perfects the framework over the years. It evolves as the leader learns and grows, but it doesn’t change its shape entirely. These people like to develop a framework for success and then execute against that framework.
Our job as investors, of course, is to find the all-in super-overachievers that happen to focus on business and to find them early in their careers. As we examine young leaders in positions of influence, one thing we look for is evidence of an internally-generated framework. Not a framework developed by investor relations, but a framework developed by the leader of the organization. We look for a leader with rigorous self-imposed internal standards. We look for the equivalent of Franklin’s thirteen virtues.
