Passion for Work
Jim Collins talks about acquiring the skills of a level 5 leader. A level 5 leader, in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, is a leader who puts “ambition first and foremost for the company and concern for its success rather than for one’s own riches and personal renown.”
His example of Lou Gerstner resonated with something I sketched in my notebook a few years ago. Jim Collins describes how he interprets Lou’s evolution to a level 5 leader. With a very poignant quote from Lou about IBM. Lou Gerstner “fell in love with IBM” – and that was the point in which he transformed into the highest level leader.
Accidental Creative is an online community that I have been a member of for several years. In a discussion some years ago on the importance of engagement, Todd Henry sketched out an idea much like the one illustrated here. Ensuring engagement in the creative process is key to productivity. Allowing for ebbs and flows and exploratory activities keeps the engagement high, as well as many other things like belief in the value of the project, it’s goals, etc.
I quite like the terms he uses. (There is such a wonderful distinction between willing compliance and malicious obedience.) One of the gaps for me in the model was the context of the work. I think that is useful to think about a level of engagement in both the content of your work and the context of your work.
This is true for medicine. I move up and down the arrow (mostly near the top I am happy to say) in terms of my passion for healthcare and my work in the inner city. I would not be able to sustain that level of commitment without also having similar engagement with the context of my work – the organization and the people. Perhaps that is part of what is needed in the sustainable transformation of level 5 leaders. There is a creative excitement to both the content of your work (doing the right work) and to the context of your work (doing the work in the right way and in the right place). Perhaps this is what Lou Gerstner discovered at IBM.
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