Could we have predicted that Elon Musk’s restlessness would have led to his founding of (SpaceX) even though he more than had his hands full with Tesla? How about his latest company – “The Boring Company” – could its founding have been predicted? The answer is “maybe”.

Are we surprised by Musk’s emotionless approach to firing certain employees (as documented by WIRED)? Not in the least. Musk’s personality profile suggests he values self interest completely over co-worker interests (Musk scores 0% on “Agreeableness”, the attribute that speaks to the degree in which one values self-interest over other peoples’ interests). 

For much of 2018 we at CEORater have experimented with personality analytics as applied to public company CEOs. We partner with IBM’s Watson Group for the raw analysis of public documents – primarily earnings call transcripts and analyst day transcripts. We then apply our own business rules as informed by our experience as well as work out of Stanford University (led by David Larcker), the University of Chicago, the Stern School of Management and Harvard University. 

It’s early days, but we believe that if we were to analyze every public company CEO we would eventually identify personality traits that correlate to financial performance and very well may be predictive of financial operating performance at the company level. Larker’s research suggests as much. 

Mr. Musk’s full personality profile may be accessed HERE.

Wired’s recent profile of Mr. Musk may be found HERE.