Passion Vision Commitment Action ©

Wednesday, 27 Feb 2008

In my talks to business groups of late, I have been sharing the four ingredients for success that I have lived by since beginning Intrinsic - Passion, Vision, Commitment and Action, and how each of these essential elements support each other through the various stages of a business life. But these ingredients aren’t just for business people – they can be applied to any career, study and life in general.

At the beginning of any venture, most people start out with masses of Passion and varying degrees of Vision, Commitment and Action. It’s natural, when you have an idea you get pretty excited – the dreaming is the fun part! This is the time to use your Passion and excitement to really develop a powerful and compelling Vision – whether you’ve got the next big idea for a brand new jewellery line to adorn the masses or you’re studying a language, it’s your Vision that will keep you going when long days, challenges and obstacles kick in and your Passion gets rocked. Your Vision is your guiding light when times are wonderful and when times are tough. Your Vision keeps the Passion pulsating.

In a business and in life, Commitment keeps your dream alive and your Vision a real possibility. In this day and age, we’ve almost become commitment phobic! Your Commitment is the drive for you to do whatever it takes to make your goals happen and to be resilient to the uncertainties that confront you from time to time. On the odd occasion the Passion wanes – lets face it, we’re not robots – and when you feel you’ve lost a little of the early Passion, it’s Commitment that keeps you going.

You can have the most exciting Passion and an awesome Vision and even be totally Committed to your cause….but unless you are prepared to act, to take the steps, to show up on the page, to jump ahead and actually do them, then all you have is a great dream. Action produces results. Action makes a dream a reality.

When we started Intrinsic we were Passionate about making a positive difference to the world. We had a strong Vision of where we wanted to go and how we wanted to do it. Even with just Jamie and I at our humble kitchen table we knew way back then the sort of culture we wanted to develop at Intrinsic, the type of people we wanted to work with and what we wanted to achieve. The Vision board we created in the first weeks of our business - nowadays a little tattered and torn - still excites me to see how far we’ve come and how far there is still to go. Yes, we’ve made mistakes along the way – that’s all part of the learning and growing process and our Commitment, has allowed us to take the challenges and turn them into opportunities. However, none of what we’ve achieved would be possible without taking continual Action. Action when all the right conditions present themselves, Action when we’ve been faced with adversity. Action when the Passion is flooding and Action when we’ve felt totally depleted.

Passion, Vision, Commitment and Action are all essential ingredients to fulfilling your dreams. Individually, each element is valuable, but when combined they create a powerful recipe for success, not just to a great enterprise, but to a great life.

Live, Love and Share the Dream

Adèle xx