Ho‘ohana Aloha

People will quickly point to all kinds of reasons for their dysfunctional workplace culture.

“Who has time for innovation when there’s so much other stuff to be done?”
“We work with equipment harking back to the time of the dinosaurs.”
“Nobody walks by this street corner anymore; our storefront is useless.”
“We can’t afford anything. When will this recession be over?”

And the biggie:
“Our boss is clueless and completely out of touch.”

There are exceptions to the rule, however.

Those exceptions are the people who do good work.

[ … read more … ]

It’s hard to stay positive in a negative world.

Eric Chester is an acclaimed expert on school-to-work transition, and is the author of Getting Them to Give a Damn. In this article from his new book on work ethic, he covers 4 obstacles managers are likely to encounter in the attitude adjustments necessary in healthy work cultures:

1. Negative is Hip
2. Work sucks
3. “I was born too late.”
4. “This isn’t what I was promised.”

Related reading on Talking Story:

• The 3 Secrets of Being Positive
• Staying Positive in a Negative Workplace

Scott Belsky offers a new manifesto for those we’ve called freelancers and mavericks in the past, updated for today’s digital habitats… read to see if his principles of “Free Radical-ism” ring true for you - is this your currently chosen work ethic?

I have a photoset on Flicker I’ve dubbed “The Ways of Work.” It’s rather sparse compared to my other sets on the photo-sharing site despite my Ho‘ohana obsession (Ho‘ohana being the MWA value of work) because I shy from taking photos of people unless I have their permission, something the spontaneity of candid working shots isn’t always that conducive to. I’m adding a few now though, because of a few scenes I caught in a recent visit to Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

As I upload them, I’m re-reading a book I picked up there as my souvenir of an earlier trip, and I keep nodding at the memory of what I witnessed a week ago, though the book was published in 1999.

And it strikes me: The ‘ways of work’ should always be this simple and pure, and we often complicate them far more than we need to…

Why is Japan going back to work?

I went to work today. Normally that wouldn’t merit a blog post, but in a country with nuclear emergencies, multiple earthquakes, rolling power outages and an active volcano, the normal stuff starts to get noteworthy.

Am learning more, and getting more witness-based news from Eryk, a former newspaper editor from Maine now teaching English in Japan with the JET Program. He writes:

The nation’s geographical position has ensured that disaster is a part of the landscape.

This has contributed to two survival mechanisms in Japanese culture: It’s own brand of resigned pragmatism and an organic respect for social order.

Do follow the link and get introduced to his blog. His newest post is equally provocative: On Watching the News in Japan