“Fluff or Substance? That is the question!”
- Floating Social Question
We've been careful over the years not to push our clients too far out of their comfortable corporate envelopes – after all, this is about business and about how to be more effective at it! But after thirty years of deep appreciation for the people who get up every day and turn the wheels of democratic capitalism, we think it’s high time to acquaint you with why Fusion has always seemed to be so succesful! To be blunt, it's about the difficult marriage of the extremes, the eternal union of the practical and poetic – the daunting combination of the granular with the great.
It's not just about the practical stuff, like "Ready, Set, Go!®" and the internal structure and pattern recogniton that make presentations – stories – easier to recall and repeat. It's not merely about the pretty stuff like making a presentation stick in the mind by adding a dramatic picture, or about building your own signature.
What makes Fusion really sink into the DNA of a successful client and become part of the "skeleton under the skin" is that slippery human potential stuff... the big ideas – like service to one's clients, team, family and community. Human beings are not just packages, not just analytical thinking machines; but miraculous composites of body, mind and spirit. We're not selling a religious brand here, but a simple recognition that a human being is something really special all by themselves – a little piece of the infinite wrapped up in a package accompanied by an appearance, a style and a personality – driven by an individual personal desire to accomplish something special. While we all want to survive, we're more interested in thriving – and enjoying the process. This is a fundamental plank in our approach to training and personal development. The "secret sauce;" that slippery human potential stuff— is baked into the product at Fusion.
It’s a touchy thing though. The minute you introduce a big idea – like the transcendent human spirit – to a discussion; the entire human potential parade of crazies, nuts and politicos are not far behind. One has to be careful with big ideas, so they don't run away with the practical results we hope to achieve in training. That's why Fusion has always been careful to pair every big idea with a practical tool for applying it in daily activity. A big idea without an application is merely fluffy. A tactical tool without a larger context is merely a “trick.” For example: an eye contact exercise is not simply looking at someone, but combined with a sense of how to look and whom to address it becomes more than an exercise. Eye contact then is not empty, not mechanical, but the doorway to a deep conversation. Truth is, every Founding Idea at Fusion is big, and potentially scary, unless you manage the discussions and keep returning to our basic discipline – it's about results.
Of course none of the big ideas are worth much if you simply talk about them for days on end. You have to put them into practice. So one notices that we are pushy, aggressive and demanding about getting people up in front of their peers to prove their competence through demonstration.
More than a few clients have lost track of the big ideas in their rush to get practical and go after sales results. They've extracted the granular ideas in our mix, and put them to work with machinelike dedication — never noticing that they also removed the greatness. They are out there, many of them mindlessly breaking every story into three boring and soul-less parts. Sometimes criticizing Fusion for no longer being magical...Hmmm…maybe there is something to the idea of mind, body and spirit. Fusion – dealing as it does with the whole human being – allows one to emerge from the miasma of dogmatic cynicism that tends to characterize a merely ‘balance sheet’ approach to business.
Fusion. If it were that easy, anyone could do it. But the real path requires a dedication and attentiveness to getting a mix of lofty and low just right... day after day. That's the hardest task of all. This stuff works because it harnesses the power of the perennial wisdom to the day-in day-out discipline of getting practical results – in our estimation that's why we’re all here! We think getting results in a classy, elegant and lofty way is about as good as it gets!
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