A suggestion to profitably invest part of the holiday: have a listen to the podcasts of last week’s Thursday Noontime webinar with business coach, investor and entrepreneur Allon Raiz. The engagement lived up to its billing of practical advice for those seeking a post-Covid-19 plan. You’ll find the podcasts in the Biznews Radio channel. Click here: https://iono.fm/c/4829.
Among the highlights of our discussion was how Allon believes “father issues” provide an unexpected spur for entrepreneurial achievement. He reckons they can fuel a hidden fire in business builders, creating a need to continually prove themselves. Raiz says he relates to such beings, having also had a difficult relationship with his own father.
My first exposure to this concept came almost two decades ago when Heidrick & Struggles’s Allen Shardelow gave me a book called Drive written by his boss, the executive search firm’s UK head John Viney. In the book Viney, who died in 2009 aged 61, shares his knowledge of business leaders he had worked with, many of whom had been alienated from one of their parents early in life.
A Cambridge astrophysics PhD who also had a music degree from Oxford, Viney possessed the traits of those he wrote about. He was eight when his father died, unleashing a drive that powered his own career which helped transform the global headhunting industry. It also shaped a belief that the best CEOs were often loners whose ambition stemmed from an early age. Including, as Allon Raiz opined last week, “father issues”.
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