2020 - The Year of Dispassionate Passion

As I reflect over 2019, I like to take stock of what I accomplished and didn’t accomplish. The process of reflection gives me an opportunity to think about my favorite moments of 2019. Joining X - the moonshot factory in April 2019 was certainly a highlight. If you read my last piece, then you know that my personal values and X’s values/principals are in perfect alignment. At this point in my career, I want to be a part of an organization that thinks not 10% impact but 10x global impact; marrying big social challenges with advanced technology solutions to ultimately improve the lives of all beings sharing the planet. If you feel like I do, I would encourage you to join me here at X by checking out our X - Careers at X and seeing if there is an opportunity that makes your heart sing. If not, send over a LinkedIn message and let’s grab coffee in the meantime.

Another highlight for me in 2019 was getting the opportunity to share with @Brendan Browne, LinkedIn’s VP of Global Talent Acquisition about how we at X - the moonshot factory think about our daily work as recruiters; leveraging one of my favorite organizational principal’s - dispassionate assessment or being dispassionately passionate. Last November during Afrotech in Oakland, I got a chance to sit down with Brendan to tap an episode of his show “Talent on Tap”. It was my opportunity to share how I’ve been empowered at X to re-imagine Talent Acquisition. I consider myself to be a person not with the right answers but rather a person with the right questions. Being ‘dispassionately passionate’ about how you do your daily tasks, the projects you manage and the products you produce means to constantly ask yourself: Is this still the right thing to do for the organization? Is this still the right process? And if not, iterate or kill it and start anew.

It’s a scary thing to do to question your own brilliance, trust me, I get it. I mean it was a brilliant idea at the time, right? But even brilliant ideas can stop making sense if execution is not producing desired results. Iteration is a hallmark of innovation and the cornerstone of Silicon Valley. 

Check out my chat with Brendan:

You don’t have to be an employee of X to embody our principals. Every one of us can be “dispassionately passionate” and assess our work regularly, then iterate wherever you are. It takes courage but I can guarantee that you will see an increase in better ideas, products, and processes if you do. 

Reporting from the Orbit that is X.

Yours truly,

Rachel