The Ten Commandments for Business Failure - Don Keough [55]
“Happiness!” No one really knows what it is, but this country was founded on the conviction that it could be attained.
I have my own view of what happiness is in the context of a business career.
The old saying “Tell me what you love and I’ll tell you who you are” is true. Love has been around a long time. The word comes from the ancient Vedic, or Hindu, word of the Sanskrit “lubh,” meaning desire. A major component of happiness in the business world is finding something you love doing, whatever it might be, and then finding a way to do it. To have success you have to have a high level of unadulterated desire to get up and go to work.
Warren Buffett says, “I tap-dance to work every day.” That has been my philosophy as well.
It’s not that work has to be fun. That’s a misconception promoted by some of the more giddy human resources people who like to talk about team spirit and sing “Kumbaya.” Work, real work, is often very hard, exhausting at times. Rallying the troops (as Neville Isdell did in the Philippines) is not telling people to have more fun. It’s telling them to work harder because they are capable of doing better. They deserve, for their own self-satisfaction, to perform at a higher level. The hard work itself is what takes you tap-dancing into the office. It’s that passion to solve the problems of the day.
If you really want to fail, lose that passion for whatever it is you’re doing. Get that spring out of your step. Say to yourself, “That’s good enough.” Or “That’s not my job.” Or “I don’t care.” Or “I’m retiring soon anyway.”
We all know people who have done this. They are the gray-faced automatons found in every workplace—the people who seem to stew in their own misery, cursing the darkness rather than lighting a candle. We all know them, and they are failures. Even if they manage to make a good living, they are failures because they have set such low expectations for themselves and everyone around them.
I have never met a successful person who did not express love for what he did and care about it passionately. I have never met a business leader or a political leader or a journalist or an artist or teacher or doctor, or anyone, who is really great at what he or she does who does not display a genuine passion for that work—so much so that if you ask them they’ll tell you they can’t imagine doing anything else. They seem almost a little crazy about it.
I know that in this age of careers that can span many jobs at many different companies the notion of passion seems antiquated. How can you be passionate about anything that is going to last only a few years, and then you’re going to move on to something else? What’s the point?
All the more reason why you have to be passionate.
At the outset I said that I had no surefire how-to formulas for success. And I don’t. But I do have a couple of bits of advice on how to develop passion for your job. I strongly believe it can be cultivated.
Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage.”
In his influential sociological work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman elaborated on Shakespeare’s observation, noting that whatever we do, we all have to be performers, in one way or another—and often in several changing roles. The store clerk performs for her customers. The waiter performs for his patrons. The lawyer performs for his clients, for the court, and/ or for his associates. The doctor performs for his patients and/or for his associates. The executive performs for his employees and/or his superiors.
To succeed in our various performances we have to strive to make an emotional connection with the audience, whoever that audience might be in a particular setting. You have to create, within yourself, an intense emotional drive for what you are doing at the time you are doing it. See yourself in your role. Understand what your role is at that moment.
In high school I was complaining about a boring subject. My mother said, “Donald, there is no such thing as a boring subject. What’s boring is your refusal to try to find what makes it