Let's get something straight: passion is not a requirement for business success, and the seemingly 24/7 'passion-in-business' industry is selling you a pup.
Despite the ever-multiplying "find-your-passion" gurus and the breathless profiles of passionate leaders by never-ran-a-business-in-their-life journos, possessing passion is about as relevant to business success as possessing Steve Job's black turtleneck: try hard enough and you can get your hands on either (or both), but neither will guarantee you business success.
There are two significant ways in which this fixation on passion as a prerequisite for success in business is seriously damaging: it deludes new and potential entrepreneurs into believing that if only they can find their 'true north', then their business venture will surely succeed; and it is hijacking (or at least hobbling) the development of serious leaders with genuine depth.
Here's the problem with selling passion as a fundamental of business success:
1. It's largely a fiction: Sure, there are a cluster of usual suspects who get rolled out in every 'passionate leader' discussion: the aforementioned Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Tony Hseih and (insert your personal favorite here). There are any number of problems with this roster, but let's focus on just three:
First, every one of these people are successful because they're brilliantly competent, not because they're passionate.
Second, most of these folks, brilliant as they are, know how to mix great PR and communication skills with a laser-like focus on a world-class strategy, which is a complex and nuanced skill. Reducing it to 'passion' demeans them and their accomplishments.
Third, for every poster child for passion, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of counter-examples -- business leaders that only you or I or their employees or their immediate family have heard of, because they're just quietly getting on with being successful. If we all had to be like Tony Hsieh to succeed, the economy would be screwed.
2. It gets in the way: Have you ever actually worked with somebody who is driven, night and day, by raw passion? It's tiresome in the extreme and highly ineffective. It makes everything a drama, posits challenges where there need only be action, and disrupts needed rhythm and focus from the daily routine that ninety percent of business tasks are composed of.
Don't get me wrong. I love meeting 'permanently passionate' people. I even enjoy the odd cup of decaf coffee with them. Maybe even lunch (maybe - so long as it's two courses, max). After that, I want to get back to the real world, where the rest of us live.
3. It doesn't do the job: There are times when passion is an important part of a leaders job, but those times are limited. If I attended spin class (which I don't) I'd want my spin class leader to be passionate, but for one reason only -- that's part of the deliverable. Don't get me up on my toes and this thing isn't going to happen. But my muffler replacement guy? No thanks. I just want him to be competent. And my top sales person. And my GP. And my VP Accounting. And my CEO. I want competence over passion, any day.
When you're 24-3 down in the playoffs, it may be great to see your team barreling into the next huddle like viking invaders with their hair on fire, but it only means something when they step up and competently execute a 14-play drive that ends in a touchdown.
Soaring oratory in a difficult time can help raise morale, but it actually means something only if you have an effective strategy and world-class execution to back it up.
And in both cases I know which one - passion or competence - is optional.
The passion-driven leader may be pretty to watch, but selling people on the concept that passion means everything for business success? No thanks. I'll take competence -- even mercenary competence - every time.
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Les McKeown is president and CEO of Predictable Success, the leading advisor on accelerated business growth.
You can download a free chapter of Les's Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-seller "Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There" by clicking here.
Follow Les McKeown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lesmckeown
I respect your opinion, and I disagree.
You "might" be right when you say, "Passion is not a requirement for business success". However, passion is absolutely required for fulfillment and happiness in life.
Passion sharpens competence.
Without passion, competence can never be complete.
Regards,
M. A. Tohami
www.TransformationalMotivation.com
You say:
"You "might" be right when you say, "Passion is not a requirement for business success". "
...and that's exactly what I'm saying.
You then say:
"However, passion is absolutely required for fulfillment and happiness in life."
...which is not something I address in the post at all.
Heated agreement all round :)
- Les
But to live a life - and build a business - on a hollow, soul-less existence? I don't get that. I've been there...it ain't so fun.
I have a whole theory about thriving businesses that when I ran it past my business professor in college, he looked at me like I had either slept through lecture or smoked something before class...But my gut told me I was on to something. It took me 39 years to find it - but I believe I'm on to something much deeper than logistical, rational business theories taught and employed today.
That's not to say that you're doing it wrong....there is no right or wrong....I would say that there is more than one way to build a successful business. Not convinced it's either/or.
I believe you are correct on many levels - and this topic is the classic clash between rationalists and spiritualists (I use "spiritualists" loosely -- soul-based entrepreneurs may be more accurate).
I believe there is a soul to business - and it's valuable. More valuable than competency in an either/or model? Still need to think about that one.
Appreciate your article.....it's helped me develop my thoughts further.
1. The opposite of passionate is dispassionate, not soulless. There are many, many things that even a good soul will agree are good to be dispassionate about.
2. I'm not arguing that passion as an invalid emotion. I'm arguing that it isn't it a fundamental requirement for business success. Like it or not, there *are* a lot of highly successful businesspeople who are dispassionate. I'm not saying that's necessarily or always a good thing, but it is demonstrably true.
'Soul-based entrepreneurship' (as you so eloquently describe it) is a wonderful thing - wonderful enough not to require anyone to insist that it is the *only* way to success.
Thanks again, Randi.
I've been around enough successful business people to know the difference between those that were in a competent routine and those who were "moved by a deep purpose - still optimizing their outcomes". I choose the latter because that individual passionate about getting the job done will soon find their competency (if they were passionate about the right things). They will be innovative and generally more productive. They will be around longer, and as a leader inspiring followers to do the same.
The individual just going through the motions may be highly competent, but in the end, is not the best leader, doesn't keep improving in their area of expertise, eventually succumbs to who? Someone with the ambition to gain knowledge and experience.
Do we want first graders grabbing controls of a 747 yelling "I can do it I can do it"? haha. Well that is the problem with forcing choice between passion and competence. Magic happens when you get both at once eh?
Thanks for provoking thought.
Thanks for your comments, none of which I disagree with :)
I'm not saying it isn't great when there is passion in the picture, I'm saying it's intellectually deceitful to say that it *has* to be there to succeed. You and I might prefer if it was, sure, but wishing don't make it so.
I would apply the principle to solopreneurs just as much – if not more – as to bigger businesses. Many solo-preneur business are started by dispassionate people, either because of historicity (how many perfectly competent, successful doctors or lawyers have you met who went into the profession just because it was expected of them from their family), sheer need (every first-generation immigrant business you see) or sheer opportunism (did Mark Zuckerman start Facebook because he was passionate about social networking? I think not).
Does the fact that these (then) solo- or micro-businesses were not built around a passion for the thing itself make these bad people? Or somehow redefine the businesses as unsuccessful?
Passion is lovely to have (mostly). It’s just intellectually deceitful (or at best wishful thinking) to teach people that they won’t have a succesful business without it. It’s sort of the start-up equivalent of the women’s magazines that perpetuate the myth that you can’t be happy unless you’re thin and ‘pretty’.
On the other hand, competency + motivation leads to success, but where does motivation come from if not from passion?
Motivation comes from many sources: Intellectual curiosity, fear, ego, hubris, greed. Passion is one source, sure - and a good one, but not the only source of motivation.
- Les
Fair distinction, but my point still holds. You can be successful with or without passion (noisy or otherwise :) - see my response to Mark above.
- Les
Yeah, I totally agree with you. Passion is not _needed_ to succeed. Certainly there are plenty of people good, and great, at what they do without being passionate about it. And it would be untrue to tell entrepreneurs they can only be successful if they are passionate about their new company.
However, on the employee/worker/entrepreneur side of the coin, it makes your life and your job much more enjoyable if you are passionate about what you're doing. Not an annoying, overwhelming, in-your-face passion, but a real interest in your job.
Personally I would rather be doing a job I enjoy/am passionate about than one I'm not. I think working towards a world where more people can say they are passionate about their job is a good thing.
But to proclaim that entrepreneus need not be passionate about their startups is to say a skilled football player just needs to work on skills and not worry about clutch plays to win the game. I think everyone saw the Jay Cutler fallout. Dissmissing passion from an entrepreneurial startup or a growing company as idealist and silly is ludicrious, even when you are talking about such business people as plumbers and mechanics.
Of course moving from a startup stage to a mature company/business person, passion is expected to be tempered a bit. But the ingredient that gets an aspiring entrepreneur from idea conception to business transcends aptitude: it's passion to make a difference in the world or his/her own life. It's the companies born in the basements, garages, and dorm rooms accross America. To reduce entrepreneurial success to competance I believe isn't telling the whole story.
See my response to Mark above - what you say is something I wish was true, but it isn't. Having launched over 40 businesses myself and helped hundreds of others through my new venture incubation business, I know and have worked with many, many people who have launched successful businesses without being in the last passionate about it. They came instead for many reasons, fear, lack of options, boredom, simple opportunity, buckled down and made it work.
Might be mundane and unexciting, but it's true. We might yearn for every new start-upper to be the stuff of 'The Social Network', but most aren't. They just chose an option - self employment - and did it without fanfare.
- Les
Thanks for your comment!
It's perfectly possible to be dispassionate and successful. I'm not saying that's good, or desirable - it's just a fact. All that's needed to be successful in business is to find a viable market, then execute. The emotional link between the market and execution *might* be passion, but it can also be fear, greed, boredom, familial pressure, social norms, lack of options, ego, arrogance, curiosity, anger, revenge or a hundred other things.
I've started 42 businesses in my time and I was passionate about some, and not at all passionate about others - some I just went into because of mercenary opportunism.
It's just a harsh fact, like the lights going on at the disco at 2am - when you look at it in the cold light, passion is fine, but it just isn't a fundamental necessity to start a successful new business. Nice when it's there, I agree.
What's worse than passion without competence are the legion of employees (are you listening millenials) that steadfastly refuse to be competent in or diligent about anything for which they lack a passion--which entails almost all endeavours except "networking".
To paraphrase an old TV show: "That's why it's call work, and not Happy Happy Fun Joy Time!"
I have to say, at the risk of more opprobrium, that you don't even have to do meaningful work to build a business success. There's a lot of crap out there that's very successful, and produced rather cynically - think of mopst of what is marketed to the pre-teens.
Again - as with 'passion' - I'm not arguing that this is a good thing. I just want to be intellectually rigorous when we start defining what is fundamentally necessary for business success. Truth is (and this truth is ugly), all that is fundamentally needed is a viable market and execution. The link between the two can be made with passion, with cynicism, with fear, ego, revenge, lack of options, determination and / or a hundred other emotions.
Now we have grown "men" shedding "tears" publicly (Beck, Boehner)... something that would have been considered too effeminate a behavior for a male to actually engage in... much less pretending to engage in just a few decades ago. I couldn't understand this sudden desire to be a "male crybaby" until I read your post; They are trying to dispay "passion", and since the room is full of puffed up roosters, they must display in a different way.