I attended the NAPS conference back in September. I left angry and frustrated after listening to Don Schmincke defiantly explain that success in our companies is not about mastering processes, metrics, goals, or strategic analysis. Hadn’t I just filled three exercise books with notes on exactly that, ready to fly home to Japan to change the face of recruiting?

Wasn’t the NAPS conference all about the processes of recruiting, content, metrics, scripts, function, industry specialization, and location?  Not to Schmincke — he indicated that these are important but are not the main drivers of our businesses.

I now had more questions than answers. Why had I started my own firm eight months earlier? What was our mission at our new company, Morunda KK? What was our dream, our purpose? Was I crazy?

Schmincke spoke of Viktor Frankl from his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor, observed human behavior as a prisoner in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. He discovered that it was those people that had a dream, purpose, and passion that survived the concentration camps, and those that didn’t perished.

Don Schmincke had rekindled the desire that had led me to recruiting ten years earlier. I started to dream and imagine in a way I had not done for a long time. The words of Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman in the World) sprang to mind, “I’ll greet this day with love in my heart for this is the greatest secret of success.”  Passion and love drive profits, not processes.  Our attitude determines our achievements in life and in business. Passion always triumphs.