Have you ever wondered what makes great companies great? Of course you have!
There are lots of things great companies have: great products, great marketing, great value propositions, sometimes market dominance, etc. The thing that great companies have that I think is most universal and most important is passion!
Passion is a people thing. All companies have people, right? And good companies have competent, caring and hardworking people. Great companies have people with something more valuable than those things.
Passion is defined as “a powerful emotion” in the dictionary. And that’s incredibly important to success in a great company! We think of successful people in terms of capabilities and work ethic. But I think the very best are on fire emotionally about what they do! It’s not our heads that drive us to the top but our hearts!
I recently purchased a new Cirrus aircraft to use in our business. The salesman told me to enjoy the delivery process and the people who “are passionate about building the best airplane in the world.” Clearly, for Cirrus great products are important. But people are more important. And specifically a certain kind of person according to my sales rep: “passionate” people.
We know passion when we see it. It’s the email that gets returned on Sunday afternoon. It’s the instructor who is patient and works with you until you get it. It’s the enthusiasm of the receptionist who greets you at the door. It’s the guys who stay late to correct a problem. It’s the employees who wear company logos on their days off. It’s a lot of other things too.
Cirrus is a middling sized company with 7,000 employees. That’s a couple of extra decimal points compared to most small insurance agencies. Cirrus is a great company! But your company can be great too! Size has nothing to do with it. Passion has everything to do with it!
Go find your passion and give yourself over to it. Refuse to hire people who aren’t passionate! Help your employees build their own passion about the business or help them find another place to work! Nurture your passion and grow it. Be in business for a reason that you can’t wait to go to work in the morning for and you will have a great company!