I once had a boss who said that your strengths are your weaknesses. This is a statement that for me rings very true. Your strengths are your weaknesses apply in spades to the entrepreneurial characteristic of passion.

While passion is the glue for the vision and the driving force behind the dream it can also be the poison in the kool aid or the seed of irrational exuberance. Passion needs to be tempered with reason and objectivity. The entrepreneur and dreamer needs to be able to pull themselves out of the weeds to objectively evaluate their situation.

There is a great Stephen Covey story from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” of the habit “sharpen the saw” that helps to illustrate this point. The story comes form the managerial level of his four levelled organizational model. The key factor at the managerial level (supervising people) is empowerment. The managerial level is essentially driven by founding teams vision and the empowerment is the leaders ability to inspire the team.

Our scene starts with a dedicated team working very hard to clear a path in the forest. There is a dead line to meet and the team is working extra hard to get the job done. The leaders have instilled a sense of urgency in the team and everyone is fully committed to clearing the path. Everyone has their head down and is working extra hard. There is much chopping and hewing of wood. The forest is very dense and it is difficult to get a sense of direction. The team leader hires a consultant to climb a tree and get a view from above the forest, then report back to the leader.

The consultant yells down from the top of the tree to the leader “we are in the wrong forest!”.

The leader yells back up “shut up we are making progress.”

Being passionate about your dream or idea is great and probably the most essential characteristic you can have to succeed. However, do not let your passion blind you to outside advice. Temper your passion with an open mind and objectivity.

Cheers,
Ian Graham