You are your passion. You need passion to do anything meaningful in your life. Without it, you can’t do anything. You are where you are because you were passionate for something at some point of time.
You were passionate about money, about improving your social status, about providing for your family, about the dreams of your children, or about your society and nation…
People and passion
Everything and everyone you believed in, and everyone who believed in you did because there was passion involved. Actually, they are those whom you can call ‘your people.’
There is no way you can deal with people without respecting their passion. You can seek to give their passion a direction. You can seek to make it meaningful or help align it. But people without passion are a liability. People with passion are an asset.
You possibly just need to encourage people to pursue their passion with balance and a holistic view of their responsibilities. They can be willing to do more of one thing while balancing others. But you have to respect it. You have to keep their passion in mind and allow as much space as possible.
The cost of ignoring passion
Tell me, when was the last time you ‘just did a job’ and did it greatly? When was the last time you felt uncared for, unrespected, or didn’t love what you did, yet somehow remained great at it? There is a mismatch there.
Most institutions today operate with an unspoken rule: “Your passion doesn’t matter. Just do the work.”
You are effectively telling ‘your people’: ‘Damn your passion. We won’t even consider it.’ We deliberately ignore and kill their passion, if they have any left at all.
Some are more capable or aligned than others and therefore do more. You might be okay with that, but they will never be able to go further. At least not as far as they could have if they felt their passion was supported by you, your firm, and your business.
But remember, the world is super-connected and at the end of the day, all passions and work are interrelated. Passions have an important role to play in reinforcing each other. The people from whom you seek work are essentially creating a holistic firm where everything works together.
Once you start respecting the passion of your people, they can do things they want to do, not just things you want them to do. Unless they want to do, it will never be enough. Without everyone’s passion coming together, there is no great company.
Passion and purpose
Passion gives you purpose. Passion is about purpose. Passion is being purposed. Passion is respecting purpose. Passion is doing everything required to see a purpose completed.
In any case, your product is not a commodity, is it? Whether it’s the software you sell, the computer ecosystem you build, or the peripherals you make – if you just sell them as commodities, there is no value.
Why are people willing to pay more for an iPhone than a generic phone? I could make a phone with every single feature an iPhone has, maybe even better specs, but it still isn’t an iPhone. It’s just a phone I made. Would you buy it?
Your product gains value when people understand it is more than a commodity. You are more than a commodity.
Building a purpose-driven workforce
The Gen Z won’t listen just because you tell them to. They won’t follow you just because you think you’re wiser. They have no reason to think that because you grew up in a different world. Your social structure, expectations, and upbringing were different. Most likely, your generation grew up where parents didn’t support your passion as they didn’t have the choice. The society, the family, the extended circle was also not ready for it. Those of you who pursued passion often had to fight for it.
But you have forgotten that you are here because you wanted to be here. Imagine if you had been supported by society back then – you would have done even more. You had that capability.
Get rid of the ‘body shop’ mentality
I’m not asking you to be a social reformer. I’m asking you to do it in your business, your university, and your institutions. If you can’t do that, you are just running a ‘body shop.’ If you run a body shop, you will have bodies, not humans.
That is how many ‘Human Resource’ departments are functioning today – curbing employees rather than supporting their passion.
Your people are your most important resource. You can’t do it with machines alone. Even if you fully automate, you will still need people.
So, support your people and their passion. They will believe you when they know you respect them, not just for the money, but notwithstanding the money.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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