02 of 10 Hero archetype
The Maverick
Unscheduled starters, who begin today and keep only what earns its place.
- Trait
- Method: Improv
- Read as
- Industriousness or Orderliness
- Day job
- Early-stage founder work, Field sales and business development, Creator, freelancer, contractor
- Nemesis
- The Strategist
- Allies
- Odysseus, Byron, Hemingway, Kerouac
This is your archetype. Your answers are kept for ninety days.
TheMaverick
- Execution13
- Leadership38
- Teamwork50
- Adaptability86
- Negotiation50
- Vigilance40
Unscheduled starters, who begin today and keep only what earns its place.
Who is the Maverick?
The Maverick is dealt to a man whose method sits low against other men: whether you run a plan or run on the day.
Odysseus ten years home from Troy, with no plan that survived the next island.
HomerYou run on the day, not the plan. You start before the schedule is written and you move on when a thing stops paying. What you keep, you keep because it earned its place.
What you bring, and what it costs.
Powers
- Speed off the markYou start. While other men are still writing the plan, you have a week of real results.
- Honest adjustmentYou change what is not working without waiting for the plan to give you permission.
- Low overheadYou do not need a system to act, so you act more often than the men who do.
- Range of experienceYou have tried more things than most men, and you know from the inside which ones were worth it.
Weaknesses
- Nothing runs long enoughMost things worth doing take longer than your interest lasts. Some of the things you dropped would have worked.
- No recordYou cannot tell which of last year’s attempts worked, because none of them was run the same way twice.
- The boring dayThe result comes from the day you least want to show up, and that is the day the plan was for.
Five traits deal the archetype.
Scored against other men. Method is the one that deals this card.
Base traits
The archetype's shape. Yours replaces it after the twenty.
NerveNRV
SteadyAlert
63Neuroticism
How early a threat registers and how hard your mood is to hold.
EdgeEDG
BluntWarm
37Agreeableness
How much other people pull at you and how much you give way.
MethodMTD
ImprovSystem
10Conscientiousness
You run on the day. You start before the plan is finished and you drop what stops paying.
PresencePRS
Low-keyOutgoing
39Extraversion
How much you go toward people and take the room.
RangeRNG
PracticalIdeas
45Openness
How much you go toward ideas and the new thing.
Your ten traits
Where the Maverick wins at work.
Low conscientiousness costs performance in structured roles across the research.
The papers: Personnel Psychology, 1991
Roles
- Early-stage founder workThe first ninety days, before there is a plan to keep.
- Field sales and business developmentA different room every day and a result by Friday.
- Creator, freelancer, contractorYou start on Monday and keep only what pays.
- Emergency and trades on callThe job arrives and you go, with no schedule in the way.
- Reporting, scouting, sourcingCover the ground and come back with the thing.
- Touring and seasonal workIntense, short, and then somewhere else.
Skills
- Starting before the plan is written
- Changing course without permission
- Running light, with nothing to maintain
- Reading a new room fast
Your allies.
Ten years home from Troy, with no plan that survived the next island.
Left England, fought for Greece, wrote on the road, and never kept a schedule in his life.
He lived in Paris, Spain, Africa and Cuba, wherever the day took him, and wrote it down.
Wrote On the Road in three weeks on one roll of paper, then moved on.
Your nemesis: the Strategist.
TheMaverick
- Execution13
- Leadership38
- Teamwork50
- Adaptability86
- Negotiation50
- Vigilance40
Unscheduled starters, who begin today and keep only what earns its place.
VS
TheStrategist
- Execution87
- Leadership62
- Teamwork50
- Adaptability14
- Negotiation50
- Vigilance60
Disciplined and reliable finishers, with a plan for the week and the will to run it.
You start today and he finishes in twelve weeks. You would find his week suffocating, and he would say you are wasting a good engine. Half of what you dropped, he would have finished.
Know all ten.
The card reads five traits from twenty questions. Understand Yourself asks one hundred, scores all ten traits against other men, and confirms or corrects the card. It comes with New Heroes.
Join New Heroes →Browse the free records →Take the twenty questions again →
Twenty items from a public-domain instrument, scored against 892 men. The card says something about you. It does not say what to take.