Passion Flight

Passion is at once one of the most influential, misunderstood and undervalued factors that determine business success. I believe strongly in passion for a host of reasons, including its connection to purpose and competitive advantage.

Passion is not addressed often enough in formal business, which is why I was delighted to read John Hagel’s latest think piece on the subject. His most important contribution is not describing what passion is, but the corporate passion paradox: Executives eloquently celebrate passion, though the day-to-day practices of the firm seek to contain and mute it. In fact, the presence of passion diminishes among the workforce as the size of the firm increases. Scalable efficiency, which makes big companies competitive, has the result of alienating and prompting passionate people to leave. Hagel argues that because passion is becoming increasingly important for institutional success, institutions must shift from scalable efficiency to scalable peer-to-peer learning. Of course, the institutions that successfully attract passionate individuals will be the ones that thrive in a more challenging world. I recommend reading Hagel’s full argument.

This thinking reflects many observations and views I’ve written about over the years. While firms that successfully harness passionate individuals will achieve competitive advantage, I believe the quest for scalable efficiency is hardwired into the DNA of large organizations. It is like an addiction, becoming more engrained as the size of the organization grows. Therefore, small firms will become more advantaged, and the point at which scalable efficiency produces diminishing returns will become more apparent. On a personal level, Hagel’s argument clearly explains my own career path, where I dipped my toes into big-company life, a few times, yet always returned to passionate start-up life.

What is your company doing to harness passion?

(Photo: sanjayausta)

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Published by Max Kalehoff

Father, sailor and marketing executive.

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4 Comments

  1. Anecdotally, I'm sure a lot of people would agree that 'passion' can get sucked out of a large bureaucratic institution. Proving it is the thing. It's a similar problem to quantifying the value of 'creativity' to a productive society (Richard Florida wrote a book on it..).

    There are some ways I think organisations are tackling it – including 'opinion markets' (ala User Voice) that bring visibility to knowledge sources from the grass-roots level; a good mechanism for cultivating the “care factor” of each employee.

  2. Thanks for your thoughts, Sandra. Your comparison to creativity is a good one, because they're both important yet ephemeral. Being that entrepreneurs and the self-employed are among the most passionate business people, I would imagine that the organizations who do harness passion will be those with entrepreneurial cultures.

  3. Anecdotally, I'm sure a lot of people would agree that 'passion' can get sucked out of a large bureaucratic institution. Proving it is the thing. It's a similar problem to quantifying the value of 'creativity' to a productive society (Richard Florida wrote a book on it..).

    There are some ways I think organisations are tackling it – including 'opinion markets' (ala User Voice) that bring visibility to knowledge sources from the grass-roots level; a good mechanism for cultivating the “care factor” of each employee.

  4. Thanks for your thoughts, Sandra. Your comparison to creativity is a good one, because they're both important yet ephemeral. Being that entrepreneurs and the self-employed are among the most passionate business people, I would imagine that the organizations who do harness passion will be those with entrepreneurial cultures.

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