immigrant, and we’ll pick the latter every time. . . . Tenacity is a necessity” [emphasis is mine].
Your Passion Is an Important Part of Determination
One of the seminal management books of the last few years is
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't
. In it, Jim Collins and a large team of researchers set out to determine why some companies “make the leap” from a good company to a lasting, great company. Although the book’s focus is on Fortune 500 firms, its central findings also have important implications for you.
Collins stresses that successful companies ignite the passions of those involved. He finds that to achieve lasting success, even large companies need people to be excited and energetic about what they are doing. He further notes the special nature of passion: “You can’t manufacture passion or ‘motivate’ people to feel passionate. You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passion of those around you . . . The good-to-great companies did not say, ‘Okay, folks, let’s get passionate about what we do.’ Sensibly they went the other way entirely: We should only do those things that we can get passionate about.”
In essence, you must choose a business that ignites your own passion. To prosper, you must combine two factors: your skills and a commitment that releases the excitement and energy that causes you to do your best work and to stick with the enterprise. As you build your business, you will inevitably need a healthy determination and a strong passion to work through the unavoidable ups and downs on the road to success.
In his discussion of passion, Collins makes an additional point: It can be the outcome of your business, not the work itself, that ignites your excitement. “This doesn’t mean, however, that you have to be passionate about the mechanics of the
