I work full time as Director of Marketing for a 35 person software company and spend the rest of my time working on 24PageBooks. One is a job (a good one), the other is a passion (all passions are good, IMHO, as long they are not destructive). I recently read yet another blog post about how start-up founders eventually need to hire a CEO, i.e. a ‘grown-up’, to run the company.

I don’t think so. Once you hire someone to hold the reins and keep everyone on mission you have just turned your passion into a job. Why would any self-respecting entrepreneur want to do that?

I’ve been musing about this since I took my current job,musing about the differences between ‘real’ jobs and unconventional jobs like freelancing or consulting. I am fortunate to be a creative, that is I write and make things. There is almost no reason to treat creatives, salespeople or other self-directed employees like traditional workers, parking us in a cube and keeping us there for 40 hours a week. It is not the best way to utilize this kind of worker. Instead of hours worked the operative metric should be jobs done well. Companies like Best Buy, at its corporate headquarters, have started down this route with there being almost no required hours, policies, etc. You simply do your job well and keep others aware of what you’re doing while keeping up with what they are doing. This helps turn a conventional job into a ‘passion job’. Their experience has been that there was no loss in productivity even though many employees only come into the office for the occasional meeting. And meetings are far more efficient.

Obviously this doesn’t work for jobs that are tied to a location like retail workers, construction, etc.. But many of those jobs are entry level or skilled labor and working remotely will increasingly be a perk of moving up the ladder.

This is all driven by the ability to communicate with anyone from any place and the ability to access information from anywhere.

I think the move from jobs, to passion jobs to passions is a major spark for innovation. The smartest, most competent and creative people are the ones who thrive in an unstructured situation and those are the kind of people who turn ideas into passions. That’s a pretty good description of innovation.