Sink or swim

Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky face off.

I want to talk about passion and more specifically passion as an increasingly essential currency of business success.

Wayne Gretzky, one of the best professional hockey players of all time, would at the age of two cry after watching the weekly Hockey Night in Canada game. It was a prelude of what was to come.

In my mind, and also as Malcolm Gladwell writes, what made Gretzky great were not only his tremendous skills but his knowledge and passion for the game of hockey. The passion is what led Gretzky to stay longer at practice and to try things that no one had ever tried before. He saw things others couldn’t even though it was right in front of them.

Wayne Gretzky watched hockey games on television, enraptured, and slid his stockinged feet on the linoleum in imitation of the players, then cried when the game was over, because he could not understand how something so sublime should have to come to an end. This was long before Gretzky was any good at the game itself, or was skilled in any of its aspects, or could create even the smallest of chunks. But what he had was what the physical genius must have before any of the other layers of expertise fall into place: he had stumbled onto the one thing that, on some profound aesthetic level, made him happy.

Passion is often misdiagnosed. It gets confused with negativity and objections to change. When in actuality, passion is what drives some of us. And, whether you’re ready to admit it or not, you want and need people like that.

A friend who works for a fairly big media company in a fairly big city sent me the following about a week ago. It’s an excerpt from the book “How” by Dov Seidman. It’s being shared throughout the news organization there and thought of as a tool to use during the transitions that all media companies are making. Here’s the gist:

“Success no longer lies in what we do; how we do what we do now matters most. In a world where information flows and technology connects us instantly around the globe, the rules of the game for business today have changed dramatically.

“In a connected world, individuals and organizations that make the strongest connections win. In the past, our products and services — our whats — were our keys to success. Today, whats have become commodities, easily duplicated or reverse engineered. Sustainable advantage and enduring success — for both companies and the people who work for them — now lie in the realm of how.

“Qualities that most once thought of as “soft” — integrity, passion, humility, and truth — have become the hard currency of business success and the most powerful drivers of reputation and profitability.”

I am a passionate person. I care how we do things. I often tell people I wear my heart on my sleeve and I get a weird look. I need to show passion because I live and breathe this stuff, and love it. There also comes a responsibility with that, and I get that. The knowledge I’ve gained, the projects and strategies I put forth go into adding credibility to that passion.

But I’m not going to feel bad about it anymore or let people automatically discount passion. Its value in successful business is becoming more evident by the day.

Some things I considered while I wrote this:

• Run your own race by Amber Naslund
• 24 traits of a game-changer by Sarah Robinson

Author: Jason Kristufek