The Hindu Business Line : Can passion and process co-exist?

Recently, while working with a start-up service organisation that had scaled up into a 5,000-employee team overnight, we came across a curious debate – what would make this organisation tick in the future – would it be passion or would it be process?

Both sides had vehement supporters.

The supporters of passion claimed that passion was what had got them thus far, and that it (passion) was the core ingredient of a service business — passion was what drove the entrepreneurial spirit, excited the field force and drove extraordinary service.

On the other hand, the advocates for process argued that in a service business, processes and process adherence were critical, metrics were important and reliability and consistency were pre-essentials and, therefore, process was the right answer!

To compound the issue, both sides also saw the other as detrimental – the passion team saw the process team’s pre-occupation with metrics and process adherence as killing the spirit of entrepreneurship and zeal. On the other hand, the process team saw the former’s entrepreneurial orientation as an ad-hoc philosophy propagating dangerous deviations from policies.

Naturally or accidentally, the supporters of the passion camp were largely people who were part of the founding team and the process camp had new professionals who were just entering the organisation.

We saw almost the same debate being played out recently in an 11-year-old manufacturing organisation that makes high-precision products.

I guess the same debate also rages, covertly or overtly, in many other Indian organisations. Be it a start-up bringing in professionals to help grow the organisation, a national organisation going global, or a domestic company trying to work with an international partner – the debate is similar with deep frustration on either side.

On another note, do organisations have a choice? Most individuals appear to have a strong predilection either for passion defined by instinct and emotional reactions, or for process characterised by a measured, well-thought through predictable style.

However, while individuals may have these personal preferences, most organisations need both – the first, to see them through the first few years of existence and the other, to see them through the years of stabilisation and growth.

This opens up another line of thinking – do organisations essentially need more passion in the early years when everyone pitches in to do whatever needs to be done and do they look at more of process in the following years when roles get clearly delineated and systems are being set up? In that sense, is the debate more about making way for change from the old order of passion driving everything to the new way of process driving everything?

Whatever be it, while there appears to be stages in an organisation’s life when one may prevail to a greater or lesser degree than the other, at almost all times both attributes need to co-exist to run a successful organisation. Today’s organisations need entrepreneurialism as well as systems and processes.

How can we get them to co-exist? I suspect that as a nation we tend to lean towards passion rather than process — given our cultural orientation, our spirit of heart over head and our comfort with ambiguity. Does everyone in the organisation need to possess both qualities or can we obtain balance with some people in the organisation being driven by passion and others being driven by process?

I am afraid that such a choice will only lead to more conflict and frustration. For an organisation to succeed, everyone in the organisation must achieve a happy balance between the two. It is for organisations to prove that the two are not anathematic but can be complementary.

The answer lies simply in the way we define passion and process.

Suppose we were to define passion as being hands-on, having a ear to the ground to gather customer insight, spending time on the field, encouraging two-way communication, being visible across the organisation, setting high standards and raising the bar, inculcating a zero tolerance mindset and inspiring people. And supposing we defined Entrepreneurial Orientation as having a high sense of ownership and working across the organisation in a boundary-less manner and taking a long-term approach, would the process camp have a dispute over that?

By the same token, process orientation could be defined as understanding the organisation, its context and the creation of systems that sit well in an organisation and leveraging technology to improve efficiency.

Perhaps one of the best examples I have seen of the co-existence of the two is a retail organisation where we saw the leader’s passion for serving the customer better translate into a Service Enhancement process that manages consistent service through sheer process adherence and metrics. What’s more, the process also measures the extra efforts that an employee’s passion for service leads him to take.

In essence, passion and process can be channelised to work together and need not be two ends of the spectrum. We just need to be passionate about process and drive processes to keep passion alive!

(The author is a Principal Consultant with totus consulting and can be reached at latha@totusconsulting.com)

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