The Drucker Exchange quotes an article in Bloomberg Businessweek claiming “truly passionate U.S. employees” make up “a scant 11% of the workforce.”
My first reaction was to wonder if the arts had a higher percentage of passionate employees than most sectors. The Drucker Institute piece mentions the responsibility of the employee to essentially manage their own careers because companies won’t do it for you.
But it also mentions the need for companies to provide an environment which allow passionate people to thrive. This has been a frequent topic recently in respect to the work-life balance employees at arts organizations seek in addition to their desire to make a difference.
“And yet, for all this, Drucker also recognized that it wasn’t simply a matter of employees seizing responsibility. It’s up to their employers to provide the systems and processes and culture for them to be able to do so. Heavy-handed, top-down organizations—those that “rest on command authority,” in Drucker’s words—don’t create the right dynamics for passion.”
When I looked at the Bloomberg article, I was intrigued by the distinction they made between a passion and engagement.
What’s the difference between passion and engagement? Employee engagement is typically used by organizations to figure out if workers buy into the company’s goals, if they like working for their manager, if they find the company sensitive to work/life balance issues, etc. That serves companies well when they want to scale and have workers “engaged” in the task necessary to expand their particular corporate silo.
The passionate worker—the metaphor Deloitte employs is “the passion of the explorer”—are those who view new challenges as opportunities to learn additional skills. That attitude becomes essential, the consulting firm maintains, because the typical work skill will be outdated within five years. “These people are driven to develop new skills at an ever rapid pace and are thrilled by it,” Hagel says. “Passionate people are the most agile.”
Once you think about it, engagement is a different aspect of employment from passion. You can feel engaged by your company and the environment and opportunities you find in your work, but not necessarily be passionate about advancing your skills and knowledge.
An engaged person could advance within the company by performing excellently, but not necessarily advance the company the way a passionate person will.
But a passionate person may not necessarily advance in the company hierarchy. Bloomberg cites the Andon Cord on the Toyota assembly line which any line worker can pull to stop the line and gather the workers when there is a problem.
Like Toyota though, a company needs to create an environment and culture in which passion is valued.
The end of the Bloomberg article notes that those in marketing and management were more passionate than those in accounting and customer service, as were those making more than $150,000.
However, the Toyota example shows that it can be cultivated at all levels of an organization. (And, one hopes, at arts salaries.)