Is Passion For Your Work Necessary?

In the HBR Blog entry To Find Happiness, Forget About Passion author Oliver Segovia suggests that following your passion is not the path to career happiness and success. He argues, "Forget about finding your passion. Instead, focus on finding big problems". He goes on to suggest the place to look for "big problems" is in something that excites or interests you or, as he says it, "Look into problems that affect you in a very personal way".

Several people have criticized Segovia for what they consider just renaming passion. That overlooks what I consider the most important section of his blog post where he says, "Putting problems at the center of our decision-making changes everything. It's not about the self anymore. It's about what you can do and how you can be a valuable contributor. People working on the biggest problems are compensated in the biggest ways."

As managers, we're always looking for people who can tackle the biggest headaches. We assign our best people to the biggest problems. And we reward their successes. Wouldn't it be great if our employees came to us with the attitude of wanting to tackle the biggest problems they could handle? Shouldn't that be our approach to our boss and our work too?

For more on this topic, read Passion Pays. And for what happens when passion dies, read Larry Doesn't Work Here Anymore.