I’m cleaning out a hard drive this weekend and I find a folder of PDFs I haven’t opened in nearly four years. It’s my Hogan Assessment results from November 2021…a 4,000-word report about who I am, generated from 500 of the strangest questions I’ve ever been asked.
I sit down and read the whole thing again. Every word still lands.
What a Hogan Assessment Actually Is
This isn’t a Facebook personality quiz. This isn’t “Which Friends character are you?” This is what Fortune 500 companies use when they’re about to hand someone the keys to a division. It costs thousands of dollars, takes two hours in front of a laptop, and the questions feel completely nonsensical while you’re answering them. “Do you prefer sunsets or spreadsheets?” That kind of thing. There’s some serious voodoo in their algorithm because what comes out the other side is a mirror so accurate it’s unsettling.
The Hogan suite is actually three assessments in one. The HPI measures your strengths…how you show up on your best day. The HDS measures your derailers…what goes sideways when you’re tired, stressed, or not paying attention. And the MVPI measures your values and drivers…what you actually care about underneath all the professional polish.
I took this one because a PE firm was acquiring the company where I was CTO. They put every executive through the full battery before closing the deal. It wasn’t my first time…I’d done one years earlier before getting hired at another company. I knew what to expect. Two hours of seemingly random questions, then a session with a proctor who walks you through results that somehow know you better than your therapist does.
The Numbers
Here’s what the mirror showed me.
Inquisitive: 97. I chase new ideas compulsively. I’m curious about everything. I get bored fast. 97 out of 100 means I’m more curious than 97% of the population they’ve tested. That tracks. I’ve started more businesses, side projects, and rabbit holes than I can count. The upside is that I see connections other people miss. The downside is that I’ll abandon something the moment it stops being interesting.
Imaginative: 99. Unconventional thinking to a degree that others may find impractical. The report actually says “others will notice that his ideas seem unconventional, unusual, and unpredictable” and warns that “over time, others may find some of his ideas impractical, unrealistic, or unworkable.” Ninety-nine. Out of a hundred. I’ve heard “that’ll never work” more times than I can remember.
Diligent: 96. Extremely high standards. Reluctant to delegate. Hard to please. The report calls this out as both a strength and a challenge…“he may be a hard person to work with because he can seem reluctant to delegate, critical, hard to please, and stubborn.” That’s fair. I’ve driven people crazy with this one.
Altruistic: 97. Genuinely wants to help people. “He helps others because it is the right thing to do.” This one I already knew.
Mischievous: 82. Risk-taker. Tests limits. “Charming, adventurous, fun-loving, quick to make decisions, and willing to test limits. He never expects to fail, and if he does, he expects people won’t mind.” I laughed out loud reading that.
Recognition: 8. Eight. Out of a hundred. I have almost zero desire to be famous or recognized. The report says I’m “reluctant to engage in self-promotion” and “prefers to wait for others to notice his accomplishments.” This is accurate to a fault. I’ve had multiple exits and most people I know have no idea.
Excitable: 69. “Easily annoyed or disappointed with other people’s performance…willing to give up on people or projects.” This is the one that stings because it’s true. I thrive in Year 1 of anything…the building, the problem-solving, the figuring-it-out. Year 2, when it becomes operational and routine, I tank. I’ve done it over and over. The assessment didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. It just put a number on it.
Prudence: 30. Not naturally rule-following. “Flexible and spontaneous, comfortable using new and non-standard procedures to solve problems, willing to challenge rules and take risks.” My whole life I’ve heard people tell me I can’t do things. Prudence at 30 is the data behind why I do them anyway.
The Part That Surprised the Proctor
My MBTI came back ENTP. Extraverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving. That’s the “Debater” type…quick, innovative, argues both sides for fun, resourceful at solving problems, neglects routine.
But my Step II facets told a different story. On three out of five Perceiving facets, I scored out-of-preference…toward the Judging side. Systematic. Early Starting. Methodical. Those are not ENTP traits. Most ENTPs are the opposite…casual, pressure-prompted, emergent.
The proctor looked at the data and said “You’re not really an ENTP. You’re an ENTJ.” He wanted to dig into why the Step I had typed me one way when the detailed facets clearly pointed the other direction. He marked me as ENTJ in the final report to the PE firm.
What that means in practice: I have the idea generation and pattern recognition of an ENTP, but I’ve trained myself to execute like an ENTJ. I plan. I start early. I work methodically. I don’t know if that’s learned behavior from 30+ years of entrepreneurship or just what happens when you make enough mistakes. Probably both.
The Part Nobody Talks About
Here’s what I think most people don’t realize about these assessments. The interesting stuff isn’t in the strengths. Everyone likes reading about their strengths. The interesting stuff is in the tensions.
I’m a 97 Inquisitive who’s also a 96 Diligent. I chase every shiny object AND I hold myself to impossibly high standards on each one. Those two things fight each other constantly.
I’m an 8 Recognition who’s now writing a public blog and building a personal brand. That tension is real. Every post I publish goes against my natural wiring.
I’m a 69 Excitable who knows he’ll lose interest in things…so I design systems that don’t require me to care about the outcome. “The less I care about something, the more fruitful it becomes.” That’s not a cute saying. That’s a survival strategy built on self-awareness.
I’m a 30 Prudence who scores out-of-preference on Systematic, Early Starting, and Methodical. I break rules instinctively, but I’ve built discipline around the things that matter. Those aren’t contradictions. That’s 30 years of learning where the guardrails need to be.
The Real Value
This assessment didn’t change how I see myself. It validated what I already knew. Every result landed with a “yeah, that’s right” instead of a “huh, I didn’t know that.” And that validation is worth something. It’s one thing to suspect you’re wired a certain way. It’s another to see it quantified by an algorithm that’s been validated on millions of people and used by every serious company in the world.
You may think you know yourself. Take a Hogan and get the receipts. But be prepared…I’d bet there are a lot of people who aren’t as impressive as they think they are, and a report like this will show them exactly where the gaps are.
For me, the report confirmed something I’ve felt since the late ’90s when Apple ran the “Think Different” campaign. The line that always stuck with me: “…the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Inquisitive 97. Imaginative 99. Prudence 30.
Sounds about right.