Drive.

What drives you? How do you find potential? Do you enjoy working with people who don’t have drive?

For me, ‘drive’, ‘inspiration’ and a ‘sense of purpose’ go hand in hand. Lately, I have been meeting more and more people who exhibit a lack of desire to go above and beyond. Their only drive may be family or money.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t disregard the aspiration to do whatever it takes to make and keep a family. But at the workplace, I feel you owe it to your team that you exhibit drive. A sense of wanting to solve problems. Even if you don’t know where to begin.

What’s also interesting is that most often people who exhibit drive are also the ones not chasing promotions. Read that last sentence again… I think it’s because they have a bigger sense of purpose and it fulfils them. They don’t need a 10k pay-rise to suffice this need.

Working in cultures which promote visibility for the sake of promotions is something which does not resonate with me personally. Speaking out for this sake also becomes a common problem in this scenario. Money becomes the only drive. (shakes head in shame)

I often find myself in a position where I am visualising the problems and wanting to eliminate the stress surrounding them. This stress could be caused by the people, the technology, the processes or the lack of drive. The technology piece is the easiest to resolve here. You can read up on blogs, watch talks, attend meet-ups, reach out to your tech circle, etc. The processes can be a bit more trickier. As processes involve people. And people are a far trickier piece to resolve in this puzzle. You may be introducing/eliminating a process which earns some people their livelihood. You may end up over-engineering a simple solution. This is where the visualisation piece becomes extremely important. Don’t go changing something you don’t understand.

But how do you fix stress caused by lack of drive? Are you happy if the people you work with are happy in being? Does it frustrate you that they don’t have a sense of purpose? Does an attitude like this drive you even further? Or do you go back to being as well?

If I look at where the world is today; how some individuals have fought for the right to vote. The right to equality. The right to justice. These individuals definitely had a sense of purpose. And that stemmed from a drive within.

So what drives you today?