HJBR Sep/Oct 2019

54 SEP / OCT 2019 I  Healthcare Journal of Baton Rouge dialogue column Consultant’S CORNER Purpose is the indwelling and inextin- guishable mission which is motivated and moved by an undulating rhythm of altru- istic values. Purpose creates organizations, causes compassionate care to be delivered, and compels the stewardship of resources. While purpose curates healthcare delivery and financing systems that maximize re- imbursement, minimize costs, and mitigate risks—all endeavoring to create meaning- ful patient outcomes—it has become a cli- ché, a headache, an unnecessary hindrance that is to be sacrificed to the cult of speed, misinformation, and volume. However, the most successful organizations and the most successful leaders understand that purpose is paramount to all other values, all other transactions, and all other resources. Passion is necessary to forward your pur- pose. It is jet fuel for your mission. It is the fulcrum for the lever of purpose. Passion is also an unstable and disloyal friend. Impul- sive and capricious, passion can be just as destructive as it is beneficial. Yet today, pas- sion—frenetic exuberance—is the preferred currency of management and the preferred language of communication. Individuals do not like to struggle with the gritty, grinding, and transformative power of purpose. Although the key to successful and thriving organizations who produce ex- traordinary results, today the idea of being moored to a singular and intractable ob- jective is overwhelming and thought to be claustrophobic, prohibitive, and a relic of arcane management (and living). Instead, organizations are laden with individuals who operate using only the accelerant of passion. Whimsical and arbitrary, individuals prefer passion to the contemplative and deliberate slowness of purpose. Exit Here Never Allow Your Passion To Undermine Your Purpose In a world of vanishing attention spans, the inability to focus on a singular goal, the desperation to prove uniqueness, and the impatient demand of immediacy, we are confronted with ever escalating hyperbole, hustles, and hysteria. Unfortunately, all too often purpose has become supplanted by passion. Purpose and passion are comple- mentary, but cannot be conflated.