Finally, someone said it

Posted by Robert Merrill on February 9, 2012 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment

In the Harvard Business Review, Scott Anthony blogs, “Don’t Confuse Passion with Competence.”

One thing I’ve noticed about business writing—at least popular, influential business writing—and business thinking, is that it tends to reflect the last compelling anecdote, in this case, Steve Jobs. He was successful, and he was passionate, so passion must be the key to success.

Mr. Anthony reminds us that passion is important, especially for the innovator, because there are going to be a lot of skeptics and setbacks. He also reminds us that passion alone isn’t enough. As the talented wags at Despair.com put it, “When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by redoubling your efforts, there’s no end to what you can’t do!”

Despair.com posters are really popular in engineering and IT shops, populated as they are by bright people made cynical by having their professionalism and personal lives sacrificed on an altar ablaze with someone else’s passion. Mathematicians have a very clear way of talking  about such things. “Passion,“ they would say, “is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success.”

I would have worded Mr. Anthony’s post slightly differently, and said “Passion Can’t Replace Competence,” or my nearly universal phrase, “It’s not that simple.” Success is a complicated recipe, but that doesn’t sell books or motivational posters and doesn’t appeal to people who would like things to be simple. Likewise, “passion,” at least the screaming, desk-pounding manifestation, doesn’t appeal to sensitive people like me who like peace and quiet and safety. Yet sometimes it’s just what thick-skinned, complacent people need.

The Christian metaphor for a healthy congregation is a healthy human body, with many members, each with a specific function, no one more or less important, interdependent, some needing and receiving an extra measure of modesty and protection, and all making up a whole that is not only greater, but completely different than the sum of the parts.

Just look at our country, the United States of America. We need passion. We also need calmness. We need simplicity and clarity. We also need subtlety and nuance. We need emotional appeal. We also need to do the math. We need immediate action. We also need deep, lasting change.

As I wrote in one of my first posts, I’m probably not at all like you. And that’s precisely why I might be useful. If I get the chance.