Ho‘ohana Aloha

Duty calls, and we eagerly respond…

Seth Godin published a blog post which is getting a LOT of attention, called, “Memo to the Modern COO.” In it, he states that there should be 2 objectives of the job of the post-industrial chief operating officer today; increase alignment, and decrease fear. I agree with him, and I love those objectives, however Godin excels in thought provocation, and there’s more to it than that. How many managers, now tweeting it, and Facebook updating it, and LinkedIn to his blog post, will actually dig into it tangibly, own it in their current circle of influence, and do something practical and useful about it? How many managers will read what he suggests, immediately apply it, and then get better at it?

This post was written as a follow-up to my recent articles on habit-building (they are listed from newest to oldest on this page.) Theory is all well and good, now let’s make it real for you.

We define HANA ‘ELEAU on Managing with Aloha today. Excerpt:

We use the word ‘good’ quite a lot in our MWA language of intention (Key 5), because GOOD, and the state of being glowing with good, has to come before GREAT in the ways we largely think about it as ALOHA-worthy.

Good work will preface great accomplishments, and any side effects within the doing, are usually the beneficial offshoots of good. Good work is our consequential work leading up to great, happening in smaller, more achievable chunks of rightness. We tend to recognize good more easily than great, for great tends to be rare and more elusive, but it is reachable, and good gets us there. When we feel good, we know it. We also know, that we can feel good more often than we do; a lot of our limits are self-imposed ones.

We who are Alaka‘i Managers do what we do, because everything good about Ho‘ohana for others is our constant goal and purpose. The specifics of that goal will change as people come into our lives: We do our intentional work one person at a time. For us, the task at hand is all about that person, and about what’s best for them as they ‘IMI OLA to seek life and strengthen their faith in their present abilities and in Palena ‘ole, their future capacities (Key 9).

And work? It’s a fantastic vehicle for those future capacities. Work is our enabler, and it delivers our livelihood as we earn our keep. However…

Work can have its’ dark sides to overcome…

Alaka‘i Managers shine when they become workplace students. We study the work which is being done by our people, and we help them become power users, smart, confident, and happy about what they do. We want them to shine in what they achieve because they actually do it perceptively, and they do it well. We intercept work in progress so people don’t settle for shortcuts, or get overly frustrated with hit-or-miss fiddling as opposed to smarter learning. We make the right tools available, and we eliminate obstacles. We give our people opportunities to apply what they’ve learned and practiced, so they can reap true usefulness from devoting their best energies to work and workplace mission, and continuing to grow within that work.

I had a conversation with a gentleman reader, which started this way: “Hey Rosa, I have a 4th management sin for you…” prefacing this, published last week: The 3 Sins of Management — and the Cure for all 3.

He suggested the 4th sin was ‘insensitivity.’ After hearing his story, I have a stronger word for it: Stupidity. Stupidity we, as Alaka‘i Managers, must refuse to tolerate.

His story is a downer for me; it’s one of those all-too-common reasons the profession of management gets such a bad reputation, and deservedly so in these instances. We’re better than this! …

Sounds like Lōkahi to me:

GOOD MANAGEMENT IS LIKE THE BEATLES

from October 2004

“My model of management is the Beatles. The reason I say that is because each of the key people in the Beatles kept the others from going off in the directions of their bad tendencies.

“They sort of kept each other in check. And then when they split up, they never did anything as good. It was the chemistry of a small group of people, and that chemistry was greater than the sum of the parts. And so John kept Paul from being a teenybopper and Paul kept John from drifting out into the cosmos, and it was magic. And George, in the end, I think provided a tremendous amount of soul to the group. I don’t know what Ringo did.

“That’s the chemistry [at Pixar] between Ed [Catmull] and John [Lasseter] and myself. It’s worked pretty doggone well. We talk about things a lot, and sometimes one of us will want to do something that’s really stupid, or maybe not stupid but … oh, I don’t know … maybe not the wisest thing in the long run for the studio. And, you know, at least one of the other two will say, ‘Hey, you know, I think there’s a better way to do that.’ So we’ll all slow down and think it through, and we usually come up with a much better way.”

~ Steve Jobs via Fast Company

managingwithaloha:

I recently sat with a college counselor who wanted “the 411″ on Managing with Aloha from my perspective as the book’s author. She’s new in her role with a local college which has used my book in their MBA program for several years now, and she called me for an interview when she began to read it. Our conversation was wonderful in taking me back to the basics, so much so that I re-wrote a FAQ page for www.ManagingWithAloha.com recalling her questions, and the highlights of our conversation.

We’ve been at this — our Talking Story conversation surrounding MWA — for nearly eight years now, a long time as the world of online conversation goes, and I thought you might like to review this with me: Is there any way that you’d like to return to the basics of your MWA foundation?

Read more: Back to the Basics.

Sounds like a book for my reading list. 3 things jump out at me:

1. We largely associate brand with a product or a service, yet what Alaka‘i Managers must do, is associate company brand with the growth and development of people.
2. I love how Stengel articulates his “five fields of fundamental human values.” Check them out, and ask yourself if you, as a manager, could be graded on your own results with them in your next performance appraisal!
3. Stengel categorizes the people that run The Stengel 50 as business artists. Love that, as the growth potential of being the MWA partner.

Received these questions from a friend of mine, a professor teaching a college course on the “Emotional Health in Organizations” and thought I’d share my answer with all of you who read Talking Story as well:

How does one effectively “lead up” in their organization, if it is still managed like the Industrial Revolution? How does one BEST change the culture from within? Is it REALLY possible…since the key leader always defines the culture of the organization????

Yes, it’s possible, if you are willing to do what it takes…