Sunday, December 26, 2010

Money, safety or passion?


"If a man is called to be a street-sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street-sweeper who did his job well.” (Martin Luther King, Jr)

When you recruit some one in your organization, do you have any knowledge about their motivation to work?  Do you have any concern about their motivation to work in your company? Or how about you and your organization? When you run the business or work, what is the highest motivation when you work?

Here is the real situation and I believe many people in organization have the same reason when they work or running the business. First, of course, it’s all about money; how much money I can take in business? How big my salary if I take the position? How safety I am in financial if I join in that organization? And so on. It also happened to me before. We try to get more and more money for general reason: financial freedom, at the end.

Second is about safety at work. Many people try to be safe at their work. They only do they work as they responsible to and sometime; maybe often, they try to avoid changes or additional work or enlargement in their job. These people satisfy with their current condition. Even they don’t like their job and sometime you will hear their complaint about the job or the organization, they still stay in their current position. Have you had experience about that? Or maybe you?

Both reasons we’ve discussed will make us burn out one day. You might be often hearing about complaints or dissatisfaction to the company. And many of them are from your employees. Not only about compensation they get, but also working hours, management, benefits, their supervisor, etc. Or you maybe work so hard, spend your 10 – 12 hours to do your job but you become exhausted. You feel the company doesn’t recognize your effort to the company. At the end, you can find them in the company engagement level.

Third reason is the ideal one for many organizations. They work with their passion. But, how many people who work in their job with passion? How many people do you know who work with love and give impact to the company productivity?

Let’s do a reflection to our self. Do I love my job? Do I even like it? Do I find my work as interesting as spending eight hours a day watching paint dry?

Have you do research in your organization the people who love their Monday? Or your self. Do you love your Monday? Or you really want to make your days to be Friday? Many people don’t love their job. This fact is making them have no expectation they should have. Work is often seen as the means to an end. The phrase is “do your job so you can pay your bills.” Very ironic, isn’t it?

Then, what should we supposed to do? Do you still remember what most do you like to in your time? Or do you have something for dreaming of in the next ten years that make you very enthusiastic with your life? Three words. Find your passion. Do something you love and make you full of live in days. Or you don’t even know your passion because you swamped with work and didn’t notice the time.

I found my self so exhausted before I do what I love to do. Yes, I do my job so hard and I got a good compensation of it. I work more than 10 hours a day to finish my job. But, do I really the job I do? No. I really don’t. I only try to give my best in the job but without passion. I only talk about responsibilities but not passion or self-fulfillment.

Is there anything we can do in finding our passion? Of course. A company also can help their employees to work with their passion. There are some actions we can do for it.
First, help them to find their real passion. And you will say, yes we want to but we have no idea what to do. Sure you can. You can help them to find their passion by potential tools. It is very useful to find their potential and you will get some benefits from it. You also will have a brief description about their current position. Are they right function based on their potentialities or not. Second, create the potential development plans to maximize their potential and opportunity to move in a different function suitable with them.