He won't play the game. The financial press made it clear: At Google's quarterly earnings press conference, Larry Page needed to explain his vision for the company. "He needs to spin a good story," they said. "He needs to assure Wall Street that the adults are in charge at Google." Oh, how wise those Wall Street analysts are. Spin, image, a good dance, razzmatazz -- that is what American business and stock investing are all about, right?
Larry Page doesn't seem to think so. At the meeting of stock analysts to discuss Google's quarterly earnings results, Page walked into the meeting room, made some exaggeratedly positive and vague statements (was he mocking positive psychology?), and a few minutes later he walked out, leaving the rest of the hour to his management team. What a performance! No vision, no substantive comments, no playing the game.
Businesswise, the news from Google was good. The core search business did significantly better than the analysts had guessed it would. But Larry had gone on a spending binge: He gave employees generous pay raises, and he invested billions in various projects from alternate energy to Google television. Even with the spending spree, Goggle's net income still rose 17% year over year to record levels, but because of the spending spree, Google's net income came in slightly below what Wall Street guessed it would.
Google's stock lost billions in market value mostly because of Larry Page's personality. Shares that traded as high as $615 a few weeks ago were down to $520 near last week's low. Although the stock looks like a screaming "buy" at current prices, money managers aren't likely to warm up to Larry Page anytime soon. They don't like him, and they aren't buying his stock.
What might have motivated Larry Page to snub Wall Street analysts, knowing in advance that such behavior could send his company's stock price reeling? As regular readers of my blog know, the results of our research suggest that virtually all psychologically-important motives can be reduced to combinations of 16 universal needs. Although everybody embraces all 16 needs, individuals prioritize them differently. So to understand what might motivate Larry Page's attitude toward Wall Street, we need to consider his "Reiss Motivation Profile" of human needs and compare it to the composite profile for Wall Street. If we could do this assessment study, I strongly suspect it would reveal that deep down Larry Page and Wall Street have different valuations of status and power.
Status, the need for social standing, motivates everybody, but not in the same ways. Many people with a high need for status want to be popular and may place a higher-than-average valuation on their reputation. They pay attention to what others think. They try to impress others with expensive clothes, luxury cars, and prestigious residences.
People with a low need for status are just as motivated as those with a high need, but toward opposite goals. They may regard popularity as superficial; some may act as if they do not care what others think about them. If they seek wealth, they may not flaunt it to impress and attract attention. To display their rejection of the values of high society, and their identification with everyman, they may wear working class or middle class clothes, such a T-shirts, baseball caps, jeans, etc. A few are motivated to thumb their nose at propriety and disregard formalities.
Power is the need to assert one's will and, thus, influence others or the environment. Power motivates everybody but not in the same ways. People with a high need for power think of themselves as important, not because they are popular or noticed, but rather because of what they have built, accomplished, or done. They seek leadership or influential roles. On the other hand, people with a weak need for power lack ambition and tend to be laid-back, because these personality traits gratify their need to minimizse their personal influence.
Larry Page's behavior suggests he has a high need for power and a very, very low need for status. He won't dance for Wall Street because he thinks American business is about improving people's lives, not "playing the game" by reporting earnings that "beat" Wall Street estimates by a few pennies. He may not care what Wall Street analysts think because, after all, they are people who have few achievements of their own and who exude what Page may regard as superficial status values.
Throughout history blue bloods and achievers have trashed each other's values. Kings and queens, for example, advocated the values of high status and low power, exact opposite of Larry Page. The doctrine of royal idleness condemns princes and princesses to lives of lesiure to show that royals don't have to achieve/ work in order to be important. Aristotle, on the hand, expressed disrespect for the idle rich.
Page may be motivated to thumb his nose at Wall Street propriety. Many people with low need for status can't stand the values of Wall Street, where people make millions by flipping paper assets, tricking their own customers out of their life savings, and most importantly from a psychological standpoint, they don't discover, build, invent, or create anything. Page's values are competence and achievement (which are motivated by a high need for will/power), not social formalities, popularity, and celeberity (which are motivated by a high need for social status). Larry Page appears to have a value conflict with Wall Street deeply rooted in who he is, or his personality. I like Larry Page.
