RE: Summing up and moving on (I hope)

Please let me chime in here about passion, vision, objectives, etc. I
know Ron's personal style only from one public speaking engagement and a
few beers afterward. I also now executive management and the passion Ron
speaks of is the same but also different. I am tasked (beside sheparding
all our IT projects) with maintaining and coordinating our Balanced
Scorecard. The BSC includes Mission, Vision, Culture, and all the
measurables you could ever want.

Our Mission and Vision statements contain passionate words, but when
those words are conveyed to upper management they are done so with calm
focused tenor, when they are conveyed to the "troops" stronger more
forceful words are used. At the same time when we sit with our parent
company's President he speaks in animated tones, lots of hand waving,
strong inflections and the fire and passion of an entrepreneur. On the
other hand we have other senior execs that share the same goals and
objectives but a quite and reserved about conveying them in public.

My take on all this is it is a matter of style on the surface. However I
know from direct experience here many - including me at times and my
peers become very nervous when the "revolutionary" comes along and
starts "preaching" about how passionate we should all be about
something. The first rule of speaking is "know your audience." For the
senior folks quite, reserved, focused, numbers based, predictive,
discussions are the norm in our engineering construction mentality. The
same could be said from my petrochemical, pulp and paper, shop floor
manufacturing experiences. 

Maybe in the dot com, ecommerce, internet business development world
there are different styles. I just sat through a meeting with a web
development firm doing work for "work force transition" and there not a
word said about how "cool and creative" our new web site will be. All HR
folks, slow, boring, methodolical, unpassionate discussion about state
of the art processes for finding people new jobs. If that an been a new
"gadget" buying site we'd all being jumping up and down about all the
new and fancy gadgets.

ITS CONTEXT AND DOMAIN ALL OVER AGAIN

So what is one man's passion or lack of passion is another's lack of
passion or steady progress.

Glen B. Alleman 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Walton [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 12:32 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [XC] Summing up and moving on (I hope)
> 
> Ron Jeffries wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 11:35:23 AM, Bill Walton wrote:
> >
> > > Level of Passion, either positive or negative, is generally a
> contra-indicator for decision
> > > makers in the business environments I work in and am interested in
> discussing here.  The
> > > decisions these folks make impact the lives of hundreds, more
often
> thousands of people;
> > > employees, customers, stakeholders of all sorts.  They do not
trust
> emotion as a sound basis for
> > > decision making.  Passionate presentations are discounted as
> unreliable.
> Decisions made on the
> > > basis of passion are considered unreliable.  People who make
decisions
> on that basis are
> > > considered unreliable.  The folks I hoped to engage when I created
> this
> list are unlikely to
> > > spend the time to participate in a discussion here if it appears
that
> passion, rather than
> > > reason, is the basis for discussion.
> >
> > In my forty-plus years as a programmer, manager, executive,
consultant
> and
> > custodian, I have not found the above to be true.  I have found that
the
> best
> > people in every organization are driven as much by passion as by
reason.
> They
> > use reason to choose actions about which they are passionate.
> 
> Passion drives us to develop the hypotheses, collect the evidence,
etc.
> that
> we will apply in our decision making processes.  Passion does not
drive
> the
> decision making.  At least, as I've said, not in the business
environments
> I've worked in and am interested in discussing here.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > > Passion has it's place.  It does not have a place in the
discussions I
> hope to see conducted
> > > here.  I apologize in advance to those who are offended by my
position
> on this topic.  I'll
> > > understand completely if you choose not to participate based on
that
> constraint.
> >
> > You seem to be saying that we should discuss things here that we do
not
> care
> > about. I'm almost sure that's not what you mean. So please clarify?
> 
> As I said above, I expect participants here to channel their passion
> productively.  For purposes of this discussion group, that means using
it
> as
> a motivator to drive the development of hypotheses, the collection of
> evidence, etc. and the presentation of same in a reasoned,
business-like
> manner.
> 
> Best regards,
> Bill
> 
> 
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