Cornerstones features the writings of Jennifer StJohn and the Fusion Group editorial team. Enjoy these insightful and engaging essays for a different take on business, life and the pursuit of success and serenity.
Forgiving Faster
“I concluded a particularly humbling foreign assignment and came home to lick my wounds. The Boss, after a solicitous interval said, ‘Are you going to be laughing about this in 20 years?’ I responded, ‘Well, yes…’ He smiled and said, ‘Why not laugh now?’”
—J R StJohn
There’s a lot of time wasted in self-flagellation over momentary failures. The one thing we know for sure about mistakes, confusion or misfires, is that they are in the past.
An
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Add Nothing
Thirty Spokes share the wheel’s hub.
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Put up timber for a room,
Where the room isn’t,
There’s room for you!
Shape clay into a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.
Therefore, the profit in what is
Comes from the use of what is not.
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tsu
Asian Sacred Text
We see people furiously
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Stories, Atoms & Truth
“The universe is not made of atoms, but of stories.”
— Muriel Rukeyser
The Speed of Darkness
American Poet & Political Activist
1913 – 1980
Not Atoms. Stories.
Is the United States or Canada made strictly of atoms? Are they substantially different than the atoms of Russia, Syria, Sierra Leone?
The stories however, are different.
Land of the Free. Home of the Brave.
Give me liberty or give me death!
Founding
Making & Keeping
Stock offerings are launched by making promises.
Lofty stock prices are guaranteed by keeping them!
Elections are won by making promises.
Legacies are secured by keeping them!
Weddings are begun by making promises.
Marriages are secured by keeping them!
Mortgages are begun by making promises.
Mortgage Backed Securities are made valuable by keeping them!
We’re in the business of helping clients master the art of story building and story telling
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Promoted? Step Up!
“Promotion is not an honorific for time served.”
Many people, after years of dedicated service, are promoted. Whereupon, they immediately fail in the new role. It’s not the nice new shoulder boards; it’s not the scrambled eggs on the shiny hat brim. It’s the fact that they have not gotten their head around what the new role means, requires, demands in the way of changed perspective, behavior and demeanor.
You don’t get to be the same person you’ve always been.
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