Larry Smith is frustrated. He’s angry. He’s bewildered. The professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada has spent his entire teaching career coaching students to find careers they love, but he still hears excuse after excuse for not following one’s passion. Smith channeled his emotions into an inspiring, passionate, and humorous TED talk: Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career.
When I saw Smith’s talk I knew I had found a kindred spirit because I write extensively about the connection between passion, leadership and success in books and columns (see Homeless Man Turned Millionaire Offers Best Advice I Ever Got). I contacted Smith and we enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation about passion, leadership, and communications. What you see in the TED talk is essentially thirty years of Smith’s frustrations reaching a boiling point. “Wasted talent is a waste I cannot stand,” Smith told me. “My students want to create technology. I want them to create really ‘kick-ass’ technology. I want them to be passionate about what they’re doing.”
Smith’s premise is simple. There are plenty of bad jobs, he says. Those “high-stress, blood-sucking, soul-destroying” jobs. Then there are great jobs, but very little in between. Smith says most people will fail to land a great job or great career because they are afraid to follow their passion. “No matter how many people tell you that if you want a great career, pursue your passion, pursue your dreams…you will decide not to do it.” Excuses, he says, are holding people back.
My conversation with Smith was inspiring, insightful, and thought-provoking. Below is an edited transcript of our hour-long discussion.
Your 15-minute TED talk has garnered over one million views. Does that surprise you?
Yes. I did the TED talk at the request of my students. Also, because I normally teach 3-hour blocks, I took it as a personal challenge. It’s a short period of time to say something meaningful. The excuses were the ones I have heard many, many times for thirty years. I’ve heard the excuses so many times I can’t stand it anymore. Since the excuses were real, I think they resonated with people watching the TED talk because they recognize the excuses.
What is the one thing you want people to know about having a great career?
Find and use your passion and you’ll have a great career. Don’t do it, you won’t. It’s as simple as that. People don’t look for their passion because they haven’t tasted it. If you’ve never tasted what it’s like to get up in the morning and be pleased to go to work, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Let me play devil’s advocate. I’m passionate about golf but I’ll never be able to make it a great career.
Just because you’re passionately interested in something doesn’t mean it has to be your career. You might have to look for more than one passion. Some passions may afford a career and some may not. That doesn’t change the fact that if you love golf passionately you should play whenever you can. You’ll get pleasure out of it and that may be enough. If you need to put a roof over your head and food on the table, then look for another passion. But look for another passion. Don’t look for a regular job and hope that on the weekend you enjoy golf enough to get you through the whole week. Living for the weekend is a grisly thing. I have trouble imagining a life in which you live for the weekend: two of seven days you have a life and the other five days you wait to have a life. We live in a world where people think that finding a passion is so rare that if you find one you’re the luckiest person on the planet and the possibility of finding two is just bizarre. It isn’t. We have multiple passions. Once you taste how sweet it is, you’ll want it more.
I write about inspiring leaders. Are leaders who are passionate about their roles better leaders?
Fascinating question. It’s not an easy answer. Passion is essential for a great career and I think it’s essential for a leader but there’s a difference between essential and sufficient. I know inspiring and passionate business leaders who have a tangible effect on an organization, where everyone rises to a higher standard of performance. The leader has inspired you to do more than your job. However, passion does not always make you a hero. What if you can talk about something passionately for two hours but can’t listen? Just because you’re passionate about a goal does not mean that the strategy laid out to achieve it is correct. Great leaders listen and take action based on what they have been told. Passion is essential but it not sufficient.
I love your quote, “People find their passion by immersing themselves in the human experience.” Can you expand?
Get out doors. Do it all. Talk to as many different people as you can. Read as much different stuff as you can. Go out and see things—industrial tours, museums, walk on the street and look at what you see. Plug yourself into the whole array of human experiences. Don’t do one of them. Do all of them. And if you do, how can you not find something that you can’t stop thinking about? Read things outside of a narrow band of books, talk to people outside of a narrow band of a few friends.
You and I certainly agree on the importance of passion in having a great career and in being a great leader. I was surprised by the despair I saw while speaking in Europe last year. Italians, Greeks, and other young Europeans told me that they have no hope of ever finding rewarding work. It was very distressing to hear young people say they have no hope especially in a world that has so much to offer.
I deal with this issue on a daily basis. I’ve done interviews for Danish, French, and Russian media on this subject. Young people across Europe are struggling badly and unemployment numbers are bleak. It comes down to entrepreneurial orientation. The goal of many educated young French is to join public service. I think public service is an honorable career and I’m a public servant, but you can’t have half the population—the future leaders—wanting to be public servants. You’d think that telling them to make their own job is like telling them to fly to the moon. They don’t accept it. But there’s still an economy in Europe, it’s a huge marketplace. Yes, there’s a failure of political leadership, but there are still fundamental opportunities in Europe. I see opportunity all around the world, but as the world changes good jobs are disappearing. The model is dying and that’s why passion is becoming so important because they will have to make their own way.
You said the rule for finding your passion is easy: the mind cannot stop thinking about that which it loves. What can’t you stop thinking about?
I’m always thinking about enterprises—those of my students and clients. Starting an innovative business is one of the most intellectually engaging things any man or woman can do. That’s what I try to help my students understand. It’s also the most difficult thing to do because you have a vision of something that doesn’t exist.
Getting back to your 15-minute TED Talk. Why didn’t you use PowerPoint slides?
Why would I need them? They would be intrusive in that kind of presentation. If PowerPoint is used all the time, it loses its impact and becomes a distraction. I’m not anti-PowerPoint, but for many people it’s a crutch to remind them what they are going to say. I’m also old-fashioned. I believe it’s my job to keep my audience focused on the idea. It’s the ultimate job as a speaker to keep the audience focused on an idea. In some cases the ideas might be complex and it’s useful to have visual aids like a picture. But for me the topic was like having a conversation. PowerPoint would have intruded in the dialogue.
Larry, I’d like to thank you for your time.
Carmine, let me add one more thing. When I see someone off, I do not use the “L” word: luck. I don’t even use the word in exams. My students will never hear me wish them ‘good luck.’ That is what is wrong with our world. Too many people have decided that at the end of the day it really is just about luck. It is the great excuse to avoid applying effort to an endeavor. I wish my students something different, as I wish you. I wish you success.