Business and Passion

Now, here are two words that seem antinomic—at least at first sight.

A few weeks ago, while I was teaching a class at HEC in Paris, a top executive asked me the following question: “We always talk about passion in business, passion for doing business, but is passion really compatible with business?” I asked him to clarify and the following dialog ensued:

-         What do you mean by compatibility?

-         I’m referring to what you just told us. You insist on the importance of managerial skills, beyond leadership. You also talked about the “ability to make trains arrive on time.” Managers thus have the uneasy task of conducting operations with discernment within a well-defined organizational framework, while accounting for established governance.

-         That’s right. This is the managers’ role in a company. But what does that have to do with your question?

-         Well, I feel that managers need to keep a cool head to succeed, which seems incompatible with any sort of notion of passion. Still, business owners and management professors continue talking about it in all contexts. I just wonder why.

The answer to this question is not so obvious.

Is it legitimate to talk about passion in business?

Talking about passion in a professional context is not a matter of course. The most classic definition tells us that passion relates to an intense and irrational emotional state that overwhelms someone to the point of sometimes making them become mad. But in business, a top executive must keep everything under control. Nothing may be overlooked. Nothing left to chance. This is actually how the act of managing is defined.

Unlike leadership, management does indeed consist in managing the business in a well-established environment. And, as I often like to say, the word that comes to mind in this context is “control.” This also throws us back to the origin of the expression “being under control.” You’ve all heard someone say “don’t worry, everything’s under control” while walking down a hallway. For, what we expect from a manager is that s/he has the situation in hand, that you can sleep with peace of mind.

So, assuming that we primarily seek to control our actions, why would we let ourselves succumb to passion?

Mere comprehension is not enough!

This answer actually seems the most natural to me. And here’s why.

While managerial action is essential, it is not enough to reach out-of-the-ordinary goals, objectives that exceed usual standards, that are beyond what can be expected even from the best of teams. As I’ve already mentioned in previous posts, to take action, managers call on the cortex—the part of the brain that rhymes with rationality. We’ve been brought up—you could almost say programed—to act this way. But in doing so, we only trigger one thing: comprehension. Yet, comprehension alone does not make things happen.

We’ve all attended conferences during which speakers talk about their strategy, their view of the world or at least of their project. They provide figures, charts, and tables to feed the reflection and you are seduced by the relevance of their speech, the logic put forth and the flow of their spirit. And yet, you do not necessarily change your way of doing things as soon as you leave the auditorium. You resume your activities as if the talk had never taken place, as if it didn’t have the slightest impact on you. What really happened is that the speaker addressed your cortex with his or her own cortex. It’s an intelligent being talking to other intelligent people. So, what happens next?

You also need passion!

If you want to reach for the moon, train teams on other galaxies or send out unprecedented ripples, you need to go beyond mere comprehension. However, the cortex is no longer involved when it comes to going beyond comprehension. Great leaders are well aware of this. Because, to achieve this, we need to reach into emotions and they are located in another part of the brain: the limbic system.

We subconsciously associate passion with a thrilling life. Nobody wants to lead a routine life. Everyone wants to feel—at least once—what it’s like to burn from within for something or someone, without there necessarily being any sort of logic behind it.

The same goes for business. You can manage a business efficiently and remain in the realm of perfect rationality, but you can also seek to go beyond classic management to boost teams and achieve unexpected performance.

Passion is what makes us surpass ourselves!

Passion reveals the fervor, the extreme enthusiasm, an irresistible momentum, a boundless motion that drives us, guides us, stirs us deep down inside.

Passion provides an advantage for those who know how to deal with its convulsive jolts: it triggers action. This is due to the fact that, while the cortex generates comprehension, the limbic system can get action underway.

If the magic word to be associated with management is “control,” the one that best defines leadership would be “change.” Now, change has something to do with creativity, motion, persuasion, the desire to stir things up, to challenge the status quos, and to participate in the questioning of concepts or facts that you thought were established for good.

All this requires a great deal of passion. Passion allows you to rally others behind you, to get them involved in a strong and confident movement. Bear in mind the most abridged definition of leadership, which reads: “a leader is someone you want to follow!”

We really need passionate leaders. And the good news is that anyone can become a passionate leader at their level, by being the one who can make a difference at a given time, on a particular topic.

In the end, to succeed you must find the right balance between the “cortesian” logic of daily actions, on the one hand, and, on the other, the passion to bring about great changes!

Since passion is infectious, we need passionate leaders, enthusiastic alchemists, at the head of companies, institutions, political parties and governments to create collective emulation and the desire to surpass oneself!

And these are characteristics that can be found in modern leadership theories.