APRIL 2006           

PASSION AND BOREDOM: THE MEANING OF SUCCESS

By Tony Mulkern

              How much passion do you need to succeed as an entrepreneur?  The question might have sounded odd some 15 or 20 years ago, when passion was a subject mainly for romance novels, but since then passion has been spoken of as central to corporate success. 

              Perhaps it started with Tom Peters’ and Nancy Austin’s book in the 1980s called Passion for Excellence.  More recently, Jim Collins in his groundbreaking work Good to Great says that companies become great only when they pursue their passion. 

              I began to reflect on this recently when a very successful entrepreneur, who loves his work and is devoted to his customers, recently approached me for help in dealing with the boredom he often experiences with many of his tasks.  “What a breath of fresh air!” I thought.  Here was a business owner forthright enough to discuss what has seemed to become the elephant in the room that executives do not want to acknowledge or mention:  Not every moment of work is tremendously exciting. 

              No job or profession contains undiluted passion.  To give one illustration, many years ago I actually had the opportunity to coach a Buddhist Master.  An ordained monk, he met regularly, in a very formal and ritualized manner, with select members of his temple to discuss their meditations on the great mysteries of life. This all seemed extraordinarily exciting and exotic to me, rather like a scene from a Kung Fu movie. Though I am steeped in the Western and Christian traditions, he knew I had studied Asian philosophy and religion extensively, and when he heard me speak with fervor on the subject of motivation he was interested in discussing the topic further.  Imagine my astonishment when he told me that the challenge he was confronting was that having to meet with so many temple members to discuss their spiritual struggles was beginning to feel rather boring! (I imagine he was amused at my astonishment and delighted to have taught me an important lesson.)

              There is nothing wrong with a little dramatic emphasis to make a point, but the problem with all the rhetoric about passion is that it promotes a sense of deficiency or guilt if one is not in a state of perpetual excitement.  It suggests that if you as an entrepreneur do not wake up each morning in a froth of emotion about your company’s mission, there is something wrong with you or at the least you are definitely not on the way to the pinnacle of success.

              If you consult Webster, you will find that “passion” is defined as “an emotion that is deeply stirring or ungovernable.”  Apart from the fact that this suggests lack of self-control, emotion is the kind of thing that wanes, that comes and goes, hardly the basis for long-term success.  Self help books as well as counselors aim to help married couples regain the “spark,” or passion, that has faded.  This means it does not last, and if it recurs, it comes and goes. If a couple has commitment to the marriage, then with some work they can “reignite” the passion or excitement.  But notice that the passion is then based on the commitment, not vice versa.

              For this reason, I submit that it is more accurate to speak of success as being based upon commitment, discipline, and zeal. These are fully compatible with bouts of boredom, self-doubt, fatigue, and occasional disinterest, the whole panoply of emotions that characterize anyone striving and doing something worthwhile in the world.  Zeal is an eagerness and ardent interest.  It is founded upon beliefs, judgments, and decisions about what is most valuable, not upon passing emotions.  Commitment is an act of the will to further these values and decisions, and discipline provides the structure for accomplishment.            

              Commitment, discipline, and zeal tend to be longer-lasting than passion.    Feelings may or may not support these at any one time, but with discipline one goes on anyhow.  Also, commitment and zeal generate energy, creativity, and the capacity to capture the interest and commitment of others.

              But what about Collins’ research purporting to show the central role of passion in creating a great company? 

              In fact, the fuzziest part of Good to Great is where Collins talks about passion.  We are asked to believe that at Kimberly Clark senior executives were passionate about disposable bathroom and kitchen paper products and that at Gillette one had to be passionate about deodorant to get hired.  While these executives no doubt took some satisfaction in contributing to the quality of life of their customers, it seems more credible that they were “passionate” about how they could trounce the competition and make a lot of money, and that the more money they made the more “charismatic” diapers and personal hygiene seemed to become! 

              This interpretation is corroborated when Collins discusses Wells Fargo’s triumphs in a newly deregulated industry.  CEO Carl Reichardt, Collins says, made the bank great by not running it like a traditional bank and by “relentlessly” focusing on the “simple…idea that ‘there’s more money to be made in Modesto than Tokyo.’” 

              To put it another way, did passion lead to success, or did the success—owed to competitive zeal, commitment, and discipline—create the passion? 

              The emphasis on “finding your passion” suggests that successful firms must mirror not-for-profits in the centrality of their mission in providing motivation.  Some do, such as pharmaceuticals seeking cures for deadly diseases and contractors providing body armor for American troops.  But not all do or must. Ignoring this important point can lead to hypocrisy at its worst and at the least confusion between core commitments and marketing tactics. 

              For example, I frankly have found few executives or entrepreneurs who have a passion for excellence in customer service in the same way that Mother Theresa had a core mission of selflessly serving the “poorest of the poor.”  For business leaders, outstanding customer service is a business tactic, subject to change, like any other tactic.  In fact, in many industries, such as insurance, software support and airlines, there are frequent complaints about deteriorating service, precisely because excellent service has proven to be a money loser for all but a tiny, elite niche.

              Employees often sense this lack of authenticity in the professed “passion” of the company.  Perhaps this is one reason that parallel to all the talk about passion has been the development of deep employee cynicism, best symbolized by the comic strip Dilbert, and among younger workers a perpetual pose of ironic distance from anything authority figures urge them to take seriously.

              For many if not most entrepreneurs, if there is a core commitment bordering on a passion it is to make money, as the following story illustrates.  

              Before getting married, I accompanied my fiancé to Singapore, her country of birth, to meet her extended family and was introduced to an uncle, a retired entrepreneur who, along with a partner, had made a fortune by creating and operating a small commuter airline that ferried workers between Singapore and the nearby oil fields of Indonesia.  Being an avid pilot myself at the time and wanting to test the “passion hypothesis,” I said to him, “To have been so successful, you guys must have always had a great love for flying!” 

              His response was instructive: “No, not at all,” he said with a shrug.  “My partner and I just looked around to see what would make us the most money and decided that was it.” 

              There is nothing wrong with simply being a smart business person deeply interested in making a handsome living and growing the firm with handsome profits. If you are providing a useful product or service, creating jobs, creating wealth for employees and the general society, being a good citizen, and providing a source of social interaction and arena for others to develop their talents and skills—while perhaps also giving generously to good causes—you have an enormous amount to justly take pride in. Bravo to you! The assumption that there must be a deeper passion is rooted in either an unrealistically romantic view of the world of work or an ideology that claims making money is somehow wrong.

              At this point, someone might ask, “But is that all there is, making money and being successful?” The answer, of course, is “No.”  What else then is there?  Before suggesting an answer, I would point out that to ask the question is to assume that business should somehow provide the all encompassing meaning of one’s life, a bigger burden than the free market, capitalism, and business were ever designed to bear. Many people answer the question of what else is there in some combination of  “God, country, family.”   To take the case of my wife's uncle with the commuter airline again, he was also deeply involved in the Methodist church, built a villa for himself and his extended family, and was a part of that generation that built Singapore into an economic powerhouse after the devastating Japanese occupation of World War II. 

              This example is consistent with my general experience which tells me that the most successful entrepreneurs owe their success to the fact that they rigorously adhere to some semblance of life balance and draw their inspiration from more lasting sources than a profit and loss statement. The least successful ones I have observed tend to be “fanatics” for their business, another favorite word of Tom Peters.  Passion, by its nature, tends to be all consuming, and therefore competes with life balance.   Peters admits as much in his lectures, which would indicate that the kind of excellence he extols is incompatible with emotional, physical and spiritual health, not to mention family stability. 

              Your business should not be your religion, or take the place of love of family or country.  Once you have made the commitment, however, whenever you are engaged in it, give it your all and then some more, whether you happen to feel like it or not at times.  I can promise you the results will be exciting!

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Copyright, Mulkern Associates, 2006