Passion for work and 'anasakti'

"People here are not passionate about their work. If you ask them to do something more, they start speaking about their?deliverables, resource constraints and work-life balance. People should show passion for their work and they should be willing to work beyond office hours and on weekends to go beyond their job descriptions", said the senior HR professional.

I did not know how to react to this immediately. There were many themes and assumptions (in addition to many emotions!) in his statement. To begin with, I didn't agree with the assumption made by him that 'passion for work can't be demonstrated during normal office hours'!

If you have been in the corporate world for some time, it is highly unlikely that you would have been able to avoid hearing these kinds of statements about 'passion for work'. While most of these statements are made in the context of 'motivational speeches' (without any concrete action points on this 'passion for work'), this is not just a 'philosophical' issue. It has been observed that while 'passion for work' might or might not have a significant impact on actual job performance, 'perceived passion for work' is an important factor in selection and reward decisions.

So, what exactly is this 'passion for work'? 'Passion for work' is essentially an internal phenomenon (more like a feeling), and internal phenomena are 'better experienced than defined'. The exact nature of the feeling can also be highly individual-specific/subjective. Hence, let's approach this indirectly, by looking at some of the common terms/phrases associated with 'passion for work'.

One of my favorites is 'spark in the mind' - that a person brings to work (and that makes him/her look forward to coming to work!) - that encourages him/her to care deeply about the work and to put in his/her best - and even to approach work as an act of love .

We can also try to define 'passion for work' in terms of its typical behavioral manifestations - increased energy, creativity, commitment etc. This bring us to another term related to passion for work - 'enthusiasm'. If we look at the original meaning of the word enthusiasm ('to be inspired by a god' or even 'to be possessed by a god'), it is not difficult to arrive at the 'work as an act of worship' idea associated with 'passion for work'. Another related dimension is 'finding/ experiencing deep meaning in the work that one is doing'.

I do wonder if one can do anything to develop/enhance 'passion for work' in oneself and/or in others. It appears that it is very difficult to train/'inject'/'program' this 'passion for work' into anyone (including oneself !)- especially on a sustainable basis. 'Passion for work' seems to be a byproduct of more fundamental things like meaning, purpose, talents, basic personality orientations etc. Hence, it appears that 'passion for work' is more like something that we can discover/re-discover and help others to discover/re-discover (as opposed to something that we can directly create).

While this seems promising, we might still find it difficult to align the 'passion for work' that we have 'discovered' to the immediate job requirements/context. Maybe, we should 'let our passions find work that meets them' rather than the other way around. Of course, this is not a simple task - either for the individuals (in terms of actually finding such work, that too over the span of an entire career) or for the organizations (in terms of developing/maintaining the flexibility required - in organization design, job design and in talent management).

This could explain why our senior HR professional came to the conclusion (based on many years of experience in the corporate world) that passion for work requires working beyond normal office hours. However, the problem with this approach/conclusion is that it tries to work around (and even perpetuate) a problem rather than trying to solve it!

From both 'organization effectiveness' and 'personal effectiveness at work' points of view it is worth trying to solve this problem - though it would involve significant amount of effort. By the way, it can also be argued that since passion for work is not easily trainable, using 'demonstrated passion for a particular type of work/job' as one of the selection criteria for that job is not a bad idea - especially if we can find a reliable way to define/assess it.

Another aspect that intrigues me is the possibility of 'undesirable side effects' of this 'passion for work'. For example, I do wonder if 'passion for work' comes as a package deal - along with complications such as too much attachment to the task/job/position, tendency to attempt for local optima (at the task/individual level results) that might not add up to global optima (at the team and organization level results) etc.

On a more philosophical plane, this discussion has similarities with the discussion on the fundamental issue of 'whether happiness and sadness are a package deal' (i.e. "can one be 'emotionally open' to feeling happiness while being 'emotionally closed' to feeling sadness" or "can one reduce one's sensitivity to sadness without reducing one's sensitivity to happiness"- assuming that the person has no major psychological disorders !).

So, is there a type of 'passion for work' that is does not involve attachment? There does exist such a concept (in yogic literature) -?anasakti.?While?anasakti?is sometimes translated as 'detachment', the true meaning of?anasakti?is closer to 'non-attachment'. Actually, there are three related terms here -?asakti?(attachment),?vairagya?(detachment) and?anasakti?(non-attachment). Non-attachment is acceptance of situations (and responding to them adequately) without getting emotionally affected by them. This is similar to the ideas of 'being in the world but not of it' and of 'engaging in tasks, yet not being concerned with rewards involved'. It is also interesting to note that?anasakti?has similarities with Scott Peck's definition of true love.

A person high in?anasakti?carries out tasks with a sense of responsibility and task enjoyment without any additional expectation (while this person does not refuse to enjoy the 'fruits of his labor', he/she does not get hooked on to these conveniences).

Hence, 'being inspired, caring deeply and feeling an intense connection (or even 'oneness') with what one is doing - without developing any undue attachment' is the closest that I can come at this point to the definition of the kind of 'passion for work' that is most appropriate in the context of life in business organizations. ?

Yes, there is a huge difference between finding the concept of?anasakti?and implementing the same successfully in work-life (as a model of the ideal type of 'passion for work')! Finding a term that describes what we are trying to achieve, does not automatically enable us to achieve it. However, we can get some useful ideas from the thoughts/experience that have already been developed around the term, and, this in turn might help us avoid 'reinventing the wheel' in some aspects. Hence, our quest for finding and implementing the ideal type of 'passion for work' continues!

Any comments/thoughts/ideas?