Value and Passion

I keep hearing and/or reading the same advice over and over again: “Do work you love by finding your passion.” This advice is offered by a number of sources and echoed by those who feel it rings true. While I feel it is important to like and even be passionate about what we do, I fear that this advice could help to entrench feelings of discontent unnecessarily among those who are not happy with their jobs. That same discontent could result in the same apathy and lack of change those who say, “find your passion” are trying to combat. Perhaps the discussion around encouraging the discovery and execution of passion needs to be augmented and tempered with the discussion about making changes where we are.

Here are some important questions for us to ponder:

• What am I most focused on, the work I do or the reason I do the work?
• Subsequently, what do I not like about my work, the job or the reason I do the job?

I feel these are important questions because their answers make all the difference in the world in regard to whether we enjoy what we do, whether we are passionate about it, and what our tolerance level for the work is going to be. I have yet to meet someone who says that they love every single detail of their work. We all have to create things, deal with people, and address some kind of legalities or process. One or all of these things creates, at some point, frustration and perhaps even contempt for what we are doing the moment it becomes challenging. Does it mean you hate your job? Does it mean you need to do something else? Maybe and maybe not.

Some do work where the aforementioned frustrations happen on a recurring basis, which is tiring at best and defeating at worst. The good news is that things always change. Even better news is that we can be the catalyst for that change.

Regardless of the business we’re in, that business exists because of people: created by people and created for people. If we shift our attention and focus to those people for whom we are doing the work, should that not rekindle whatever passion we think is waning and/or nonexistent? Are we really supposed to be passionate about/love our work or the people for whom we do the work (i.e., internal and external customers)?

In another post, I mentioned that my domain is not system administration. That is my job, but not my passion. My passion is helping people work smarter using technology and my current work gives me a medium through which to do that. It would be very easy for me to let the grind of process, technical issues, approvals, etc. get me down and feeling bad about my job, but the realization that I am helping people keeps me liking my work and enjoying what I do. Would I enjoy other work that allows me to help people? Absolutely. Does that mean I should go and pursue other work? No.

So if you’ve been inundated with others (or yourself) telling you to pursue your passion, quit your job, find other work, etc., please take a moment to ask yourself these ever important questions and take a careful inventory of what is going on. It could be that you need another line of work to achieve the satisfaction you deserve. It could also be that you can be the driver for changing the things you don’t like and find extreme fulfillment in making things better right where you are…for you and everyone around you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts,
John

Right for the Job

I sometimes wonder how often the right person for the job is weeded out or overlooked because of his or her resume. Let’s say you are a hiring manager and you have a choice between two candidates. One has 100% of the job requirements (experience, education, etc.), but you don’t like the person. The other has 80% of the requirements, seems to have a good work/learning ethic, and you can tell this person will be great to work with and will work well with others. Which one would you choose? It seems like a no-brainer, right? Now think about how likely it is that the 80% candidate will make it through the screening process based on his or her resume. I am thankful to have worked for managers who cared more about the person than the paper, but I cringe at the thought of how rare these managers are and how many managers have hired the wrong people for the job because of it.

This principle is not just applicable to managers and hires though. We assess people based on their “resumes” all the time. It could be the clothes they wear, what they do for a living, what they believe, or what they drive. It is always more important to care about the person more than the paper. How many people have we weeded out of our lives because of what we perceived on their resumes? Who knows…they could have been the right person for a job we need them for now.

~ John