Can Low trait Conscientiousness people be effective?

“You’re smart and high in openness, but low in conscientiousness,” Jordan Peterson said, “really low. In the study we ran at a startup incubator no one below 30th percentile Conscientiousness had run a successful business. You’re 3rd percentile. So that’s going to be something for you to overcome.”

We were both visiting my uncle in California at the time. Our dinner table conversations had turned to mythology then personality type. Jordan had suggested I take his test. I had and these were the results. The results hit pretty hard. Especially as an entrepreneur. And it was surprising, too. I keep my house fairly neat, keep a calendar and if there are dishes in the sink I usually wash them, even if they aren’t mine. I wasn’t really sure what to do with that information. Or if it was correct. Of course when I talked to my mom about the Big 5 test results she thought surely that can’t be right. And Jordan didn’t give me any ideas about how to deal with low Conscientiousness.

This is Part I. See Part II here where I share lessons learned on being a successful entrepreneur with low conscientiousness.

For a bit of background, Conscientiousness is one of the 5 personality dimensions of the state of the art personality test, Big 5. You may have heard of Myers-Briggs — well, this is more accurate than that. As far…