Ho‘ohana Aloha

Today’s coaching. In part:

I hate job descriptions. What we need instead, are strength descriptions.

The expectation of conformity is as foolish as watering a seed and expecting it to bloom into an animal or piece of machinery.

A Short Review:

Do the Work is one of those short, “Here’s a helpful kick in the behind, so you won’t feel you’re all alone” kind of books. You can breeze through it in one sitting to know what it’s about (as I did one evening), and then keep it on your Kindle to go back to whenever you do need that kick instead of wallowing in any “Woe is me” waste of time. Lord knows we all need that kick sometimes.

This particular kick focuses on giving the reader a how-to, one with pushing through their own resistance and any lack of confidence when facing a work project.

More added to the full posting on Talking Story, including info on the Domino Project incentive and a few resources.

Easter is unrestrained, enthusiastic abundance.

It’s a basket of treats which never gets empty if you look hard enough.
Look by closing your eyes and feeling what’s there.

I love all of it, and that there’s a lot to love.

I love the lead up of Lent and Good Friday (good Catholic girl that I am), and
I love the glory of the day when Easter arrives.
I love that we expect that glory, and that wonder.

I love the pastel colors, and even the fake Easter grass.
I love seeing the Peeps in the market, and
I love getting that craving for marshmallow, and for
Cadbury malt.

I love the Easter Eggs, and everything we do about them, and with them.
I love the decorating with homemade dyes, and
I love making bunny footprints with flour.

I love our creativity, and even our indulgence.

I love all the chocolate and all the sugar.
I love that I will eat Easter’s treats without a shred of hesitation or guilt.

Oh! How I love the blooming.
I love the flowers — there are so many to love!
I love the greenery too, both lush and still tender,
The leafing (is that a word?) that is everywhere.

I love the art.

I love the playfulness that Easter critters inspire.
I love the chicks and bunnies, birds and butterflies.
I love them all showing us their softer sides,
All willing to become characters which are cartoons of themselves.
Even frogs wear Easter well.

I remember how we made Easter bonnets in kindergarten.
Do you?
I wish we all still wore Easter bonnets now.
Crepe paper, feathers, ribbons and all.
And no matter how old we have become.
We could still wear them well… silly grin included.
(Those red hat ladies are on to something.)

I love that Easter happens in the Spring.
(especially when it happens in April, and not in March).

I love that Easter day means Easter Sunday.
Sunday is elemental peacefulness.
Sunday is thankfulness and gratitude.
Sunday is Mālama time.

I love our reverence on Sunday, and our humility.
Our awe.
Our respect.
And Ha‘aha‘a as a value that looks like laughing no matter how you pronounce it.

I love the Palena ‘ole exuberance of Easter.
I love the joy of its Ka lā hiki ola flavored promises.

Easter renews us.
It’s vibrant.
It’s hopeful.
It’s a beauty which is very, very good for us.

It’s even beauty in that plastic, yet amazing Easter cellophane;
Purple, yellow, pink, and a
Green that isn’t really green at all,
But some kind of cool bluing. Prisms.

I love that Easter is about Faith.
I love that Easter is about Believing.

It’s amazing resilience, and Resurrection, I know, but you know what else?
Easter is a day to love your life, just as it is.
And yet,
Easter is also a day to think about flourishing in new ways.

So do that. Flourish.
Love Easter with me, and feel it love you back.

Take the post link to see the version of this poem on Talking Story with pictures.

Jacki Lyden for NPR on how nearly all journalists in conflict and disaster areas take risks.

See also: A Photojournalist Remembered, a tribute to Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros.

Both posts offer other, related links, such as: Two War Photographers On Their Injuries, Ethics

I love good questions. Received this one yesterday:

“What is ‘gainful employment’ — how should we be defining it?”

Well, the word ‘should’ sends up red flags for me, and I prefer to answer with another question, not to dodge the issue, but to better frame it: How do you want to define it? What can our gainful employment be about?

I offer you a strategy in this Talking Story post:

• Focus on what you truly want
• Be reasonable in your expectations
• Trust in your gut level intuition

I am finally allowing my own book-collecting habits to change in what I think is a more reasonable way, but still, I can completely relate to how Ebert feels: His essay is delightful. For example…

I still have all the Penrod books, and every time I look at them, I’m reminded of Tarkington’s inventory of the contents of Penrod’s pants pockets. After reading it a third time, I jammed my pockets with a pocket knife, a Yo-Yo, marbles, a compass, a stapler, an oddly-shaped rock, a hardball, a ball of rubber bands and three jawbreakers. These, in an ostensible search for a nickel, I emptied out on the counter of Harry Rusk’s grocery, so that Harry Rusk could see that I was a Real Boy.

I cannot throw out these books. Some are protected because I have personally turned all their pages and read every word; they’re like little shrines to my past hours.

Snippets, these presenting the difference between culling and surrender:

The vast majority of the world’s books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It’s just numbers.

There are really only two responses if you want to feel like you’re well-read, or well-versed in music, or whatever the case may be: culling and surrender.

Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. It’s the sorting of what’s worth your time and what’s not worth your time. It’s saying, “I deem Keeping Up With The Kardashians a poor use of my time, and therefore, I choose not to watch it.” It’s saying, “I read the last Jonathan Franzen book and fell asleep six times, so I’m not going to read this one.”

Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and that this fact doesn’t have to threaten your sense that you are well-read… It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to, and if you assume there is somewhere to get to, you’d have to live a thousand years to even think about getting there, and by the time you got there, there would be a thousand years to catch up on.

Culling is easy; it implies a huge amount of control and mastery. Surrender, on the other hand, is a little sad. That’s the moment you realize you’re separated from so much. That’s your moment of understanding that you’ll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there’s something being performed somewhere in the world that you’re not seeing that you would love.

It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really.

See also: Roger Ebert’s Journal for the Chicago Sun Times ~ Does anyone want to be “well-read?”

Is there a lesson here, beyond the obvious leverage of having company reach large enough to rival Amazon.com and other book sellers? (for I increasingly believe that smaller is better for most of us… well explained by Seth Godin on the Economies of Small.)

Should more companies be bold enough to write about their values (for that is what Schultz is doing), publicly giving us their essay - one we will buy, and write book reviews about - with the underlying message of, “you can hold me to these values, and the vision I talk about, expecting, no, demanding, that I walk my talk not just personally, but throughout the fiber of being woven in each Starbucks business decision and managing m.o.”

I think that courage would make the world a better place.

The author has to articulate a very clear message which shares experience over opinion (for any readership at all), and we readers have a way of holding people to their word, especially when it is in writing. This holding business accountable, is the “response of the market” at its best. Government too. Private or public sector should not matter. Neither should profit or non-profit.

Previously tumbled April 14th: The Biography of Howard Schultz of Starbucks

A timely essay, in light of my post for Talking Story yesterday: Why I blog, circa 2011 (and about ‘real books’).

As Ehrenreich writes:

The emphasis shifts with each telling, but every writer, editor, publisher, bookseller, and half-attentive reader knows the fundamental story.  After centuries of steady climbing, book sales leveled off towards the end of  the 1900s.  Basic literacy began to plummet.  As if television and Reaganomics were not danger enough, some egghead lunatics went and  built a web—a web!—out of nothing but electrons.  It proved a sneaky and seductive monster.  Straight to our offices and living rooms, the web delivered chicken recipes, weather forecasts, pornography, the cutest kitten videos the world had ever seen.  But while we were distracted by these glittering gifts, the internet conspired to snare our friend the book, to smother it.

Opinions flourish on the “death of the book” with those opinions are rooted in our reading and writing habits, and that’s natural I think; our feelings intensify to the degree of our engaging in those processes. My post yesterday was an example, being (in part) about what I consider ‘real books’ to be, and as such they’ll never get away from me completely, or from others like me willing to publish them ~ and I think I have lots of company in that.

I enjoyed the historical coverage of Ehrenreich’s essay, and do recommend it. It is fairly long, but very well written.

“Writing has been bottled up in books since the start,” wrote American poet and journalist Robert Carlton Brown in 1920.  “It is time to pull out the stopper.”

Mark Fuller, CEO of WET Design, sounds like a leader who has fun leading his company toward excellence: How’s that for a novel concept, fun? It shouldn’t be… if managing and leading your team isn’t enjoyable for you, you really should do something else.

Snippets of his interview with Adam Bryant:

I really love coming to work to develop the workplace and the team. I think it’s either a virtuous or a vicious spiral, and it’s exposed when you go to hire somebody.

To get really good talent, you need to be doing interesting stuff. Take a great kid out of college or somebody from another company — they’re not going to come if there’s not something really interesting to work on. I suppose you could throw gobs of money at them or something, but that’s not the idea. So you need to build the company so you have great talent, and great projects, and a great environment. You get those three, and then they just feed off of each other.

And this sounds like a philosophy similar to the one we have for the Daily Five Minutes:

Q. Why improv?

A. Improv, if properly taught, is really about listening to the other person, because there’s no script. It’s about responding. I was noticing that we didn’t have a lot of good communication among our people.

And about ideas, and expecting mistakes:

We also encourage people to put their ideas on our walls… The point is to get people to put their stuff out where other people can see it. We don’t want a culture of, “That’s my idea. I don’t want anybody to see it. Maybe they’ll find a flaw in it.”

…So one of the things I will do is to start some meetings by saying, “Let me tell you where I just screwed up.” That sets the tone of, we’ve got to put our mistakes out there. They don’t call it “learn by trial and success.” You learn by trial and error.

Would you describe these as qualities, or as values?

Passionate curiosity.
Battle-hardened confidence.
Team smarts.
A simple mind-set.
Fearlessness.

Adam Bryant shares book excerpts on each of them, as C.E.O. offerings of “myriad lessons and insights on the art of managing and leading.” His new book is called “The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons From CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed.”

Love this.

He begins with,

Like many young Ph.D. students, I was deeply impressed with my own intelligence, wisdom and profound insights into the human condition. I consistently amazed myself with my ability to judge others and see what they were doing wrong.

… and you know a good story is coming!