"Reason is a very light rider, one easily shook off."
Jonathan Swift
17th century Irish born English satirist
Business places a high value of the ability to reason but are people any better doing that at work than they are in their personal lives?
I don't think so.
Bill-
ReplyDeleteI've long argued that what separates an executive from rank and file employees is the ability to blur reality a bit (ignore reason) and ask for the impossible.
The thing is, if you keep asking for the impossible, eventually (maybe 1 out of 100 times) you'll actually succeed. Making you a hero.
I agree with your assertion that too few people actually use reason in work and in their personal lives.
But, just sometimes it's good to throw reason overboard and just go for it.
Question...if memory serves me, you've started several successful companies. When starting those ventures were you driven by 'reason' or passion?
I agree with you Tim, it is good to sometimes disregard reason, acting on emotion, but only when you can afford to lose whatever is at stake.
ReplyDeleteAs to the companies I've started.
I really can't say I was ever "passionate" about any of them if the definition of passion is what we find in the dictionary ("strong and barely controllable emotion".) I was enthusiastic, optimistic, hopeful, scared, and a few other adjectives, but never passionate.
Moreover I've always been suspect of mission statements that claim passion over what is essentially non passionate commerce. Love the wine, furniture, food, clothes, stereos, vehicles, etc. you make but to the point of barely being able to control your emotion? Claims of passion in business strike me as being as believable as do claims of love in the porn industry. "Yes I love you, that will be $500 please."
The "reasoning" part of it came when I got tired of being down sized, politically sidelined, or at the very least never really aware of how good or bad things were in someone elses company. At least in my own venture I would know that much, which, along with some financial success, more often than not turned out to be true.