STRENGTHS-BASED DISRUPTION AND IDEA(L) DEVELOPMENT

DON’T SHIFT RESOURCES, SHIFT PARADIGMS.

Getting rid of a problem is only as good as what they are replaced with. One can pull weeds all day and never plant or cultivate a flourishing garden. One can strive to alleviate the symptoms of a virus but never address their deeper causes. Of even greater value, we see that good can and should always come through the challenges we face. To miss this is to miss out on such things as insight, cultural enrichment, greater visionary like-mindedness, deepened meaning, the growth of human capital, and the vast improvement of things like customer service, workplace engagement, and employee satisfaction. And that is where Flume comes in.

Making use of Flume’s uniquely integrative and first-principled framework, and through what we call strengths-based disruption, our division of Idea(L) Development has three integrated foci:

Flourish subcultures of felt humanity

Culture is felt in, through, before, after, and above all. Stretching from the leadership to the team, throughout the entire supply chain and unto to the clients or customers, it is not secondary, it is primary and total. And there is no escaping it. Every entity has a culture. Meaning, the question for any organization, company, or government is not if it will have a culture, but rather, what type of culture it will have? Facing this reality, therefore, organizations have two options: have dominion over its culture and intentionally cultivate one of humanity and excellence, or ignore it and allow a culture of confusion, discontentment, and disunity to breed in its place. Flume exists to help entities cultivate the former.

Provide clarity concerning multiculturalism, human nature, and human diversity

Before we are clients, customers, employees, or employers, we are humans first. Yet, humans are diverse, and we live in a culturally diverse world to boot. Wherein, the problems with contemporary interpretations of human and cultural diversity are legion. Typically offered but a few options regarding how to navigate this world, people find themselves confused, afraid, hostile, or conflated into any given side they do not wish to be identified with. At the heart of this confusion, we find a misunderstanding of human nature, human diversity, and the nature of worldviews. And that is where Flume comes in. Flume exists to empowers organizations, schools, companies, and governments to diffuse the many false dichotomies active in our societies, navigate cultural relativity without becoming morally relativistic, to ground our diversity in our common humanity, and to develop the ability to disagree in the world of ideas without being disagreeable toward those with whom we disagree. In short, it is a humane and culturally humble way to approach our diverse world, it is our hope for fostering greater peace in both the private sector and the public square, and it is what Flume exists to help foster.

Foster organic flourishing-focused visions and solutions

We should want to flourish. We should want all humans to flourish—individually and collectively. For an organization to flourish, then, it should have this in mind. Not just to help its team fulfill the low bar of completing job descriptions but also tend to their motivations for doing so. And humans can only be motivated in so far as the work we complete is aimed toward a higher goal, including our goals to possess the good life in every area of our life. For organizations, companies, or governments, then, this means preventing turn-over cannot be the goal. That would merely be tending to weeds, not growing anything. Rather, organizations must be flourishing-focused. They ought to provide the means (the training, empowerment, and upward mobility) for its team members to deepen their meaning and grow their potential toward higher goals. To not have this necessarily tempts leaders to stifle the potential of their team with the hopes they stay effective in that role alone. And no human desires to have their potential stifled. It is a mode of decay and purposelessness that robs us of our deepest motivations. So, even if it means we run the risk of seeing our team members flourish their way out of our team, then so be it, because it would be a truly signifier of a healthy organization, not a sick one. Ironically though, it also makes for such meaningful places to work, that it’s harder to walk away from. And this is what Flume exists to offer.

To inquire about our services, including how to sign up for a free half-hour consultation, contact us here.