Driven by passion
Achiever
By Antarpreet Singh

l Mohan Singh Oberoi, born at the turn of the century in Bhaun, a small village, started his career in 1922, as a clerk in Hotel Cecil, Shimla. Twelve years later, Mohan Singh became the sole owner of Hotel Clarke, another big hotel in Shimla. That was Oberoi’s first hotel. In the last sixty years Rai Bahadur M.S. Oberoi has set up five star hotels in almost all parts of the world. Mohan Singh used to tell his children, "When you grow up, you will find Oberoi hotels everywhere".

l John Sculley, a young marketing executive in Pepsi, had a passion — to get ahead of Coca Cola. People laughed at the idea because Coca Cola was too strong and big for the Pepsi at that time. Sculley stuck to his plans, heavily invested in research and targeted wealthy middle-class children. In 1978, Pepsi for the first time in US history surged ahead of Coca Cola in terms of market share.

WHAT drives ordinary people like Mohan Singh Oberoi and John Sculley to produce such extraordinary results? A recent research conducted in Canada by a renowned psychologist, Professor Robert Vallerand, shows that passion has a strong association with success and achievement in one’s life. In his research, Professor Vallerand studied 525 people and found that almost one-third of them didn’t have a specific goal in life.

These people also rated quite low as far as the index of general satisfaction in life was concerned. Two-thirds of the people had moderate-to-strong ‘passion’. But not all who had a strong passion were successful in life. Strong passion cuts both ways. Vallerand’s study showed that those with strong passion could further be split into two distinct categories — people with obsessive passion and others with harmonious or productive passion.

Vallerand found a strong correlation between harmonious passion and achievement in life.

It’s harmonious passion which drives people to success and growth and going by the results of the study conducted by Vallerand, not many people have a strong harmonious passion.Vallerand research could be seen as an extension of what psychologist David McClelland did 30 years ago in his path-breaking research on achievement motivation. McClelland was the first to identify factors that led people to produce extraordinary results. McClelland showed through his research that achievement motivation isn’t something which is inborn — it’s a learned behaviour. McClelland also came to India in 1964 and developed a training programme for 15 potential entrepreneurs in Hyderabad. The training facilitated the development of a strong will to excel (harmonious passion). The entrepreneurs showed a significant improvement in their business activities after training.

The research on high achievers in the recent times has produced interesting results. Contrary to popular belief, researchers have established that high achievers with harmonious passion, never take high risks. In one of the experiments, the subjects were told to throw rings around objects. They were free to choose the point from where they had to throw the rings. High achievers neither went too close nor too far from the targets compared to the rest in the group who would either stand too close to the objects to make their task easier or would just play blind by throwing from a large distance to get higher rewards. High achievers would carefully select a point to throw.

The research showed that high achievers always took moderate risks and never gambled.

Achievement motivation continues to be a topic of intense research and study. The Indian society in general has a lot to learn from these studies. One of the most depressing features of our society is the lack of desire to achieve something extraordinary. Societies driven by harmonious passion like the USA and Japan have produced excellent economic results in the past.