The definition of pragmatism is a practical, matter-of-fact way of approaching or assessing situations or of solving problems. Quite a bit has been written on the question of “Passion vs. Pragmatism” and which is the correct path towards being successful. It has been said that Francois Mitterrand, the former president of France used pragmatism as his passion and that he only used tactics throughout the course of his presidency, to the dismay and frustration of his friends and enemies. However, his 14 years in office made him the longest serving president in the history or France.
In life if you are in the process of starting a business or challenged with leading and growing a business, it seems that those who are successful support passion, but have to be pragmatic at the same time. I would argue that passion has to be the dominant gene. Passion brings vision and from that vision grows ideas, which become a finished product or service. Obviously, unchecked passion can put a person or a company at risk. It happens when the “sales team”, gets excited by a customer’s product suggestion and they want engineering to tool up to develop and manufacture based on their excitement. It is also like have the same person who is responsible for product engineering be the quality control manager as well. Under that scenario there may be a tendency to let shoddy work or mistakes get out the door.
Passion is an intense emotion and it has been used to strengthen a word or a phrase. Examples of this are passion fruit, passion food, passion play, and passionate love affair. There is little doubt that when passion is used as an adjective, we get a clear vision of its meaning, which is why we should always follow our passion. When kids are young, they have wild ideas on what they want to be when they grow up. As parents, we cringe and know that our kids will eventually come back to reality. In fact, most parents tamper their children’s passion and crush their enthusiasm. I am “Guilty as Charged”, especially when my oldest daughter wanted to move to Hollywood to become an actress. It’s that innate sense of guiding our loved ones that drives our passion to protect. This story happens to have a happy ending, because our daughter came to work at Static Clean International, our own family owned business. As a customer service ambassador, she shares the same passion that drives our static eliminator brand loyalty into an increased presence in the global economy.
