Quote:
Originally Posted by Karthik
Culture, leadership, passion.
|
I really, really love talking about this stuff. Mostly I talk about it because I think the more I interact with ideas of being successful (talking about it, working towards it, becoming a victim of its pursuit) the better chance there is that I'll figure out all the ways to not go about it, find the one that works, and stick with it.
Success, while it presents itself as a linear, upward slope approaching a plateau, functions more like a web. Culture, leadership, and passion definitely are some of the points in the web. Trying to figure out how these things connect to create success is difficult, if not impossible for a lot of reasons. I think the main reason is that these are not the only points in the web.
Raise your hand if there was never a day in your life where you hesitated to do something you love... something you have a passion for. Maybe you don't want to go to work or school that day. Maybe you're dreading meeting your girlfriend's parents or having to get to the airport extra early. In our case here, maybe you really don't want to stick around after a day of work and/or school to put more work in with your robotics team. I mean, Fallout 4 is pretty great.
If you didn't raise your hand, you're human. If you did raise your hand, you're a liar or you're not human and you should probably expect the van out in the street is not in fact owned by a flower shop.
Passion is the ignition. Nothing great has ever been achieved without fire, without emotion, without enthusiasm. But the United States didn't beat the Soviets to the moon just because we wanted it more.
Commitment and discipline are the legs that passion stands on. Very rarely do beginners get faced with a brutal but universal truth: the gap between being a novice and a master is wider than even the master can comprehend. You really want to make great music, open a successful restaurant, or build a team to take on the Einstein field... that's great! But that first demo, that first dish, or that first robot probably won't be worthy enough to lick the boots of whatever the master of the craft can make. And that's hard to deal with. Knowing that despite your passion for something, you still stand a good chance of coming up short more often than not when you first start out. And that's not just because some snotty dweeb parading around as a critic is going to try to knock you down a peg, but it's because you're disappointed in yourself.
You know what a great robot is supposed to look like, don't you? You know what music you like or what kind of food puts a chef on the map. It's your passion after all! But maybe you're not passionate about it... or not passionate enough... and you doubt yourself. You build your team up and up over a series of years, you make one misstep, and you feel like everyone has just witnessed the fraud you really are. Commitment and discipline will pull you up off the mat when the passion is missing and you're ready to tap out.
You've seen people nail down what works for them to turn their passion to success and you wonder when, if ever, you'll find that special thing that will do the same for you. It may take you 2 seasons. It may take you 10 seasons. But leaving disappointed and broken over something because you think your passion is gone is giving in to the weaker parts of your humanity. We're meant for more than letting just one hit to the jaw knock us out. You have to know that everyone goes through this. You have to know that you can get through this as well. But you must stand strong in your conviction. Stand up for what you are passionate about; not just against those who say you're wasting your time or you're not good enough, but against those same thoughts that creep inside your own brain, searching for whatever cracks in your discipline and commitment they can find and breaking you.
Through discipline, you set deadlines to your work and stick to them. Through commitment, you create a program that works for you and your team given the wealth of available and free resources. Through both of these things you find the strength to slog through a crisis of any and all magnitudes and eventually find success. You create a volume of work to close the gap between yourself and the masters. You build a fortress of confidence to protect yourself from those who try to slow or stop you. You navigate the crucible and become a champion. Through the trials by fire, you create leaders. From these leaders, with these ideas of passion driving commitment and discipline that in turn fuel the passion, you can create a culture that understands how to balance all of that to create success.
I hope.
This tee-shirt collecting gets kind of addicting, doesn't it? - Chief Hedgehog [more] 
I avoid: basis, mitigate, leveraging, transitioning, impact (instead of affect/effect), facilitate, programmatic, problematic, issue (instead of problem), latency (instead of delay), dependency (instead of prerequisite), connectivity, usage & utilize (instead of use), downed, functionality, functional, power on, descore, alumni (instead of alumnus/alumna), the enterprise, methodology, nomenclature, form factor (instead of size or shape), competency, modality, provided(with), provision(ing), irregardless/irrespective, signage, colorized, pulsating, ideate
Linear Mode
