Infect others with your enthusiasm for your idea, and you have a movement. How people handle good ideas is an interesting consideration.

Some people believe that their idea is so good, their logic so elegant, that their idea should sell itself. Therefore, they shouldn’t have to do anything to sell it to others.

Other people believe that they don’t have to get their people excited about their business idea.

They feel that all that’s necessary is to tell people what they have to do to execute it. They expect that the idea is as compelling, cogent, self-evident and clear to others as it is to them.

It seldom works in these ways, because people come to new ideas from their own frame of reference. Some people are ripe to make the connection, but most are not.

If you are going to help them take your idea and make it theirs, you’ve got to help them connect to it.

People will sign on to a job for many reasons and often without regard for anything more than dollars and benefits. They try to get as much as they think that they can. You try to pay as little as you have to. This is how employment occurs. However, it isn’t how extraordinary performance happens.

How do you explain the fact that two people with the same education and experience can perform so differently once they are employed? The difference is character.

It is this array of traits, values and motives, which we call character, that constitutes the difference between others and ourselves. It is this same array of personal motives and traits that you try to focus and deploy as the leader of the enterprise.

It is difficult for you to simply direct this, or order this to happen. It’s like trying to demand that people be enthusiastic. It’s never the same as it is if they give it up voluntarily.

In order to achieve that level of enthusiasm, it has to be an idea that resonates with their inner motives and values. It is for a compelling purpose that we’re moved to willingly give our best.

There are two ways in which this happens. One, the employee folds his or her personal agenda under that of the enterprise, because the person feels that they are better people for being enrolled in your purpose – that your ends are that worthy.

The second is that people feel that by collaborating in the success of your business idea, they can maximize other goals or ambitions – that their other ends are better served through committing to this enterprise.

When both factors are combined you have the strongest combination of motivators; a worthy idea that serves your people’s other goals.

The Passion Of A Winner:

There’s a commercial currently running on television, where a firm’s employees are celebrating the fact that they work for that firm. There’s a good deal of hollering, people are jumping for joy, exchanging high fives, etc.

Of course it’s pretend, and overly dramatized to make a point. But stay with the idea for a moment. Think of teams that perform at the highest levels: great symphony orchestras, championship ball teams, top research teams, top combat units and the like. What do you assume is their level of enthusiasm?

It’s high. High morale, an esprit de corps that’s almost palpable, and an eagerness to get to the doing of what they love to do, characterize such groups.

An outsider can feel the energy shared among the teammates. Can you think of a high-performance group that doesn’t share these characteristics? Now think about your company.

On a scale from one to one hundred, how would you score the enthusiasm of the people working with and for you? Could the score be better?

Are you satisfied with where your company’s needle rests on the dial?

Why are you willing to settle for less than a score in the 90’s? Do you think it is unrealistic to expect that people would be eager and enthusiastic to work in your company?

Do you struggle with your own level of enthusiasm? Do you believe that nobody is enthusiastic about his or her work? Explore your own thinking. Your expectations have a lot to do with the level of enthusiasm displayed in your outfit.