It started on a visit to Microsoft. I entered Building 26 of what were then 28 on the seemingly endless Redmond campus, and felt something. I realized I had felt that before.
It had come on a visit to Nike, years before, on my first of many visits to pick up some prototype shoes which they had me test in the early 80s. Nike employees were passionate. That feeling was so intense, in fact, that when their director of marketing Rob Strasser left Nike to assume the same role at rival Adidas, most Nike employees, when they would see Rob approaching on a Portland sidewalk, would cross to the other side to avoid him.
I felt that fire in Milwaukee, too, when I entered the headquarters of Harley-Davidson.
These companies share a palpable trait: passion. I am far from alone in recognizing it.
Ian Anderson, former CEO of Unilver, had seen it, too. When I mentioned my encounters with passion to him late one evening in 1998, Ian's entire body rose up in response. "You are so right," he said, in his unforgettable Scottish brogue. "When you walk into the great companies, you can feel it...it's incandescent," Ian said, while glowing himself.
Jim Collins has seen it, too. In Good to Great, he concluded from his diligent research that great companies focus on whatever they can do better than anyone else, on that which drives them economically -- and about which they feel truly passionate.
Two other professors -- a group more inclined to focus on process than feelings -- noticed it, too. In their influential 1994 book Competing for the Future, Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad observed that every successful company must articulate a statement of strategic intent that "contains pathos and passion."
Collins, at least one reporter and I all have detected the passion at one of Colllins's good-to-great companies, Gillette, too. "People who aren't passionate need not apply," a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote in a story explaining the failure of an outstanding business school graduate to land a job with Gillette. The candidate's failing? He lacked passion for deodorant.
Anyone intrigued by Gillette's passion for seemingly banal tasks like flossing and shaving should explore the story of the company's creation of the Mach 3 razor and its successor, the Mach 3 Turbo. (Check the The New Yorker archives for an excellent article.) But you still may ask, what difference has their passion made to customers? To answer that, shave just once with a Turbo. As Mr. Anderson would say, the experience borders on the incandescent.
Increasingly, I find myself seeking out passionate companies, on the theory that they will thrive and take me along for the ride. And thankfully, I still feel that passion, 24 years into this fascinating career.
I hope you do, too.
A question...
Is Islamic-based terrorism a long-term threat when the young people of these countries seem to view the faith as a relic? Wondering this, I asked my Turkish hostess how often her mother prayed. "Five times a day, like most of her friends." And my hostess? "Never." How many of your friends would you call devout? "Less than one in twenty." I was quickly reminded of looking around Hong Kong in search of evidence of Buddhism, or indeed of any faith. Finding nothing at all, I asked a young man why this was so. "In Hong Kong," he said, "the religion is money."
The Lighter Side
A movie not to miss: Crash. Go.
A book to read, or read again: The Great Gatsby. Clear, brief and remarkable storytelling.
A major disappointment: Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Summary: 1) Snap judgments are very good except when they aren't. 2) There's no way to tell beforehand which it will be. His Tipping Point, while it offers as an insight something marketers have known for decades -- we simply called people with enormous influence KOL's, or Key Opinion Leaders -- was engaging and brisk. Blink meanders, perhaps in search of an editor.
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Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 14 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 13 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National |
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Speakers' Association convention, and has made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis and is the father of six. |
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