Top performance in any facet of life can only be achieved when someone’s heart is really into what they are doing. Of course, loving what you do is not by itself sufficient as other factors such as talent, hard work, opportunity and luck weigh in. Ultimately, though, excellence cannot exist without desire and enjoyment.
This quite obvious relationship, while recognized and heralded in several facets of human activity, such as sports and arts, is quite often ignored or misinterpreted in a corporate environment. Most people would agree that to be a top level football player, one certainly needs among other things talent, great coaching and the motivation of a lucrative contract, but one must also really love playing football.
Yet in corporate environments, top performance is mostly associated with the desire to acquire wealth and power, stripped of any real enjoyment and love for the work itself. At best, hard work is regarded as a means to an end, the necessary evil that one has to endure in order to succeed.
Thus, the paradox of corporate top performers who excel in their work, but don’t really enjoy what they do. They are just in it for the money.
I don’t buy it.
