Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Your top 5 passions in business?

Discounting your personal life relationships and your religion and just concentrating on leadership and management in business today, ask yourself “What are my top 5 passions or beliefs?”

I’ve been thinking about my own and these are my current top 5:

1 A passion to simplify ridiculous and pretentious language used by managers.

2 A passion to see more power given to front line employees who deal directly with customers.

3 A passion to see a change in the leadership ‘currency’ so that we have leadership based on ethics and integrity rather than “how much money can I make?”

4 A passion to see real re-distribution of wealth to poorer countries.

5 A passion for a shift from the culture of ‘I’ to a culture of ‘We’ – from the ‘individual’ to the ‘community’ – however you wish to define the community in business.

I’d love to hear some of your passions about business.

8 comments:

The Green Market Oracle said...

I am passionate about disseminating the message of sustainability to entrepreneurs and the small business community. Despite the climate of economic gloom, I see cause for optimism. The business community is adjusting to the new economic reality of higher unemployment and lower incomes and this is helping to drive sustainability


To keep reading click The Green Market
http://thegreenmarket.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-normal-and-sustainability.html

Tim Blair said...

1. A passion to teach contentment. When enough is really enough in business. Similar to your #3.

2. A passion to connect world need with business output. Stop designing just for the top 5%.

3. A passion to bring quality of life into business mission. Think about employees needs.

4. A passion to help leaders see that truth leads to trust and that trust is the foundation of all honorable commerce.

5. A passion to truly love those I lead.

Thanks for asking this - it made for a fruitful morning before I settled into work.

Tim

Trevor Gay said...

Hi Richard – Many thanks Sir!

It seems to me that in times of adversity we often see a lot of creativity.

I wish you well with your passion about sustainability. I think the penny is dropping in many places that we have a serious global problem with our beloved planet.

It is irritating to think we are only loaned this planet for our safe keeping and we seem intent on vandalising it.

We should maybe think more about the many generations of our own families that will follow us and what they may say about us.

We have the technological capability but do we have the political will is my question.

Trevor Gay said...

Tim – thank you so much again for your comments. That is a fabulous list that concurs with many of my own beliefs and principles.

Glad this topic gave you some food for thought. One of the many joys of my Blog is how much I learn from commenters.

This was just something I was pondering within myself about “What is it that identifies Trevor?”

Sometimes I just find it helpful to just take a little time to reflect on what is important to me.

Marilyn Jess said...

1. A passion to help others find their voice.

2. A passion to help health care professionals communicate understandably.

3. A passion to coach.

Trevor Gay said...

Hi Marilyn

I use the following George Bernard Shaw quote in all my presentations.

“The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished”

Communication is hard work – it irritates me a bit when people dismissively say communication is all just common sense. In my experience effective communication is hard work and doesn’t ‘just happen’.

You exemplify hard work in your work and training of others in the art of communication.

Well done – keep up the good work.

Your passion to improve communication is a terrific goal.

Mike said...

Redistribution? No way. How about making the pie bigger so everyone gets more of it? If we redistribute we are implying that some have more than they deserve and that we are somehow wise enough to decide who gets how much. That way lies totalitarianism and a world in which everyone is equally miserable. Raise the tide in order to float ALL boats. How much you or I have compared to each other is irrelevant.

Trevor Gay said...

Hi Mike – we disagree but that’s fine – finding common ground is what makes the world go round. I cannot see what is fair about us spending more money on Ice Cream in Europe each year than it would cost to provide a primary education for every child in the world. I would love to believe the concept of trickle down wealth that capitalism promotes does actually work. The reality is that just does not happen in reality – greed just means the more people have the more they keep – the current financial crisis in the world is a reminder of where we get to through greed. The rich just get richer and get poorer.

This from Wikipedia:

“A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth.”

We are not raising the tide so that all boats float – the reality is more boats are sinking.