Passion for your work

I loved this post from Kathy Sierra. One favorite part was the difference between “passion for the company” and “passion for the work”:

Passionate about the work:

* Scores well on the 4-question test:
- keeps up with trade/professional journals
- knows who the key people in the industry are
- would spend his own money, if necessary, for better tools
- if they were NOT doing this as their job, they would still do something related to it as a hobby

What makes me like this is that I’ve been working both on my own small business and at a University for over a year and it’s fascinating to see the differences between a large and a small organization. But something that doesn’t really change is this concept of passion.

At Birch Lake Studios, we have sometimes struggled with passion for the work vs. company. In the company, we want to succeed. This can be measured (in no particular order) by dollars, public perception of our company, client satisfaction, personal satisfaction, etc. But sometimes those things are in competition. We might sacrifice dollars and do better work. Or we might back off a bit to keep a customer happy. It’s a dangerous tension, and one that you must manage according to your personal and professional goals.