Key Takeouts From Ignite The Passion From Within Series

Over the last few months the blogs have centred on how igniting the passion from within can amplify the performance of your organization. In today’s blog I am going to provide the key takeaways from this series.

Alan Kay, the celebrated computer scientist, put it memorably some 35 years ago: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”The companies, executives, and entrepreneurs from the blogs that follow are inventing a more exciting, more compelling, more rewarding future for business. They have devised provocative and instructive answers to four of the timeless challenges that face organizations of every size and leaders in every field: setting strategy, unleashing new ideas, connecting with customers, and helping their best people achieve great results. And they are doing it by amplifying the passions of its employees.

Institutions change when we change; when we trade resignation for indignation.It’s time to admit what we have long known to be true: our organizations are at odds with our values—not just in how they foul the environment, misuse our personal data, or corrupt the political process, but in how they treat the human beings whose lives they consume. When this conviction becomes fixed in our hearts and, when we surrender our interests in protecting the status quo, then we’ll have the chance, at long last, of building organizations that are as amazing as the people who inhabit them.

For a deeper look refer to Blogs: igniting the passion from within, why passion matters & igniting passion from within management 

In today’s creative economy, it’s passion that creates the most value.Audacity, imagination, and zeal are the ultimate wellsprings of competitive differentiation. And there’s the rub. These higher order human capabilities are gifts; they cannot be commanded. You can’t tell someone to be passionate or creative. Well, you can, of course, but it won’t do much good. Individuals choose each day whether or not to bring these gifts to work, and as we’ve seen from the data, they mostly choose not to.

For a deeper look refer to Blog: the business case for passion 

Building human-centred organisations doesn’t imply a return to the paternalistic, corporate welfare practices of the nineteenth century.Most of us don’t want to be nannied. We understand we live in an uncertain world, where no one can guarantee our job security. We also understand that individual interests vary, and that no single organization can reconcile all our competing demands. Nevertheless, we expect our institutions to be our servants and not the reverse.

For a deeper look refer to Blog: putting people first

Old organisations are tough to change, but it can happen, and it can start anywhere, even with your team.Despite the barriers of orthodoxy, isolation and irrelevance, there are reasons to be hopeful. Many CEOs understand, at last, that to build an organization that’s fit for the future, you must first make it fit for human beings. One where passion can flourish.

For a deeper look refer to Blog: building communities of passion

Today, it’s hard to imagine a global-scale organisation that exemplifies all the passion-boosting attributes of the Web.But that’s the challenge we should set ourselves as 21st century management innovators – because only by doing so will we create organisations that magnify rather than shrink human passions, and passion matters now like never before.

For a deeper look refer to Blog: reinventing management for the social generation

A distinctive and transformative sense of purpose sets you apart from your rivals. The founders of Cranium didn’t launch their company because they had one good idea for a single board game. Instead, they had a wide- ranging critique of what was wrong with family entertainment— and an unapologetic sense of mission about providing a clear alternative, through board games but also through book publishing, TV shows, and other lines of business that Cranium has begun to enter after its runaway success with games. 

For a deeper look refer to Blog: not just a company, a cause

Passion led organisations create a vocabulary that is unique to your industry and compelling to your employees and customers. And we mean a real, honest-to-goodness, only-spoken-here business language. Whole Foods chairman and CEO John Mackey has developed a business ideology that blends a taste for libertarian politics, a commitment to selling healthy foods and ensuring the compassionate treatment of animals, an eagerness to share financial information and decision-making authority up and down the organization, and a true zest for growth. 

For a deeper look refer to Blog: to ignite passion create a vocabulary

Passion leads to sharing so don’t keep all the benefits to yourself. If you expect strangers (or even employees and colleagues) to share their best ideas with you, then don’t be surprised when they expect something in return. It can be money, it can be recognition, but more often than not what draws people into open-source projects is the chance to push themselves, to develop their skills, to interact with the best people in their field. 

For a deeper look refer to Blog: the sum of us

Challenge yourself to be more open to new ideas and new ways of leading. Leaders who embrace an open-source mind-set ask different questions of themselves than other leaders. Am I the kind of person with whom other smart people want to work and contribute ideas? Can I conduct myself as openly and transparently as the participants in my project? Can I demonstrate personal strength, even charisma, along with intellectual humility? Find the right answers to those questions, and you’re likely to find yourself at the center of exciting open-source innovations.

For a deeper look refer to Blog: passion amplifies when you open up

There’s always a demand for something distinctive. One downside to being honest about the overcapacity, oversupply, and sensory overload that plague most industries is that it’s easy to get scared off: who wants to enter a market that’s already too crowded? But even in the most crowded markets, there’s room for an innovator with something original to offer and something authentic to say. 

For a deeper look refer to Blog: from selling value to sharing values

Brand is culture, culture is brand. It’s a point we’ll make in detail in the next few chapters, but it’s worth highlighting here: there is a direct connection between a company’s identity in the marketplace (how it relates to customers) and its performance in the workplace (how it relates to employees). 

For a deeper look refer to Blog: small gestures, big signals

Advertising to customers is not the same as connecting with customers. With the notable exceptions of Netflix, which blankets the airwaves and the Internet with ads for its service, few of our maverick brand-builders rely on big-bucks advertising to send messages to the marketplace. 

For a deeper look refer to Blog: share passions to make organisations greater

From next week we move from ‘igniting’ passion to PASSION MANAGMENT

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