"Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings."
Author
This is the last in the five-part "What is Fusion?" series. Our purpose here has been to let our clients and friends see past our well-known communication specialties, and experience a deeper look into the soul of the firm.
Does Purpose have dimension? Size? Comparative Scale?
In our mind, Yes.
It's one thing to decide that one's life purpose is to sing – quite another to sing lead tenor in the Tabernacle Choir. Or Vienna. Or New York.
What about to feed one's self? To feed another? One's family? What about creating a strain of hearty wheat that extends harvests sufficiently to feed millions?
We suggest that Purpose can possess both magnitude and altitude. It can be both big and lofty. Or not...
Brings to mind the idea of Noble Purpose. Greatness.
Hard to have this conversation in the same world with "Jersey Shore" and MTV. Perhaps the reason it's so difficult to find motivated people today is that many conversations (at least in the public sphere...) have turned from greatness to the mundane. People seem less interested in summiting Everest than in the summit of the social scene in Mountain View, CA or Manhattan.
A perfect example is the fall from greatness of strategic planning. We are saddened to witness the devolution of planning from a moment to discuss changing the world to changing our profit plan. From changing the industry to changing our income stream. Perhaps the reason people are so involved with engineering their own careers today, is that the corporation seems so bent on its own ascendance or simply "so bent." It's easy to become sad and discouraged by focusing on the obvious bad in the world. We prefer to focus instead on discovering the hidden good. We've noticed that everyone dreams of – and hopes for – a lofty purpose (even while staying focused on keeping the family fed), and that one part of leadership is putting people back in touch with their own basic nobility and of their deepest aspiration for more.
Nobility is an attitude... which can turn a strategic planning retreat from an exercise in profit enhancement (or loss apportionment) into a quest. It's what turns the planning discipline from something barely tolerated into something we hunger after and reach for – a Cornerstone of Corporate Culture... Your job is to find the coals of creativity and interest in your corporation and fan them into the bright flames which can forge nobility and greatness.
Hey, maybe this is just "those zany people at Fusion" speaking, but we believe that life and work can become once again noble, and that greatness is within reach. One approach: treat strategic planning as something that begins with an imagined noble purpose rather than searching for ways to increase income. With immense respect for our highly analytical teammates; amounts, equations and calculations are all about the "how's, when's and who's" of life. When you finish with that, it's just "yawn, what's for dinner?" – it's all body and mind stuff. A Noble Purpose however, elevates the discussion from "How" to "What and Why?" and involves the heart and spirit... mobilizing the whole being – probably why we think holistics is worth pursuing. Nobility is about the "Why?" No one gets excited thinking about mere survival. But everyone has a hero inside just waiting to be called to service at the round table.
Application
1. For Yourself: It's hard to get excited about putting food on the table, especially if it’s just for yourself. Maybe you need to imagine something loftier. What about starting a soup kitchen?
2. In your Family: For you mothers, fathers, mates and partners...that band-aid, bowl of soup, advice on homework or picking up at the playground may not feel noble, but it is in their eyes.
3. In your Business: It's not just about the numbers. No business is. Every business is founded on serving a need. Decades – or even centuries – of success can obscure that fact and leave everyone merely serving the balance sheet. Unfortunately, such companies are on a downward trend – whether they know it or not. Imagining better is the first step to putting the organization back in the service of a noble purpose.
Join us in imagining a more noble future!
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