Talking Story

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Musical Managemeant: Adele 101 for Managers

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[Not a typo. Read about managemeant here: What’s the meant in Management?]

“I don’t think anybody who’s vaguely conscious has not heard Adele’s songs.”
— Anderson Cooper (Video Clip)

Well Mr. Cooper, that would be me!

I’m what my family calls musically challenged. I appreciate good music when I happen to hear it, and I love to dance, but my music interests aren’t really enough to articulate; they’re sort of a mild, disengaged background awareness at best. I don’t have any playlists in my iTunes library; just podcasts and audio books. I played the piano when I was younger, and I can still do so by reading sheet music, but I never had an ear for it; there didn’t seem to be any talent inside me to uncover and develop. What I’ve always loved and preferred, is soothing quiet, and the natural sounds of my Hawaiian outdoors. Luckily for me, I’ve had other talents which thrive in the quiet.

So as unbelievable as it may sound to some of you, I just learned about Adele Adkins’ story this past Sunday. And not from watching the Grammy Awards, but by catching a commercial about her 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, and then Googling “Rolling in the Deep” on YouTube for the aha moment of recognition; “Oh yeah, okay, I think I’ve heard this somewhere before””

I caught up quickly, for much has been in the media about her winning that prestigious Grammy trifecta of record, song and album of the year, and of 2012’s Grammy night as her comeback arrival from vocal cord surgery. What I’m mostly hearing, is about her story, and how her music poured out of the heartbreak of a failed relationship, one she can now look back on and be happy that it wasn’t meant to be; she has a new love, and she says it’s a much, much better one for her.

And Adele is extremely likeable, relatable. As Anderson Cooper gushed;

“What makes Adele’s success so extraordinary is that she’s unlike most other contemporary female pop singers. She doesn’t have runway model looks, doesn’t dress provocatively, and has no gimmicks added to her music.”

It’s all about her story is something I keep hearing about her, over and over again, and that her songs are so intensely personal to her. It’s easy for her fans to make those songs personal to them too.

That’s always the ‘it factor’ isn’t it. Whether for music or for science, for most anything work-worthy and meaningful, it has to be intensely personal. I doubt that Adele Adkins would call her writing, her music, and her singing her ‘job.’ We don’t hear her music as much as we receive it, and make it our own.

This goes for management too. Especially for managemeant. Pretty simple, really. If you want to manage better, you’ve got to make it personal.

Do you know what truly defines an Alaka‘i Manager? Not knowing everything or most everything about Managing with Aloha, but standing for something in the workplace culture you want to Mālama, and be a fiercely courageous steward of. Value alignment and Ho‘ohana managemeant has got to be intensely personal for you.

Like Adele, standing for the good-health breakthroughs in your workplace culture will make you different, and very, very likeable. It will make you successful. You will be a manager like no other. You will be the boss everyone wants to work for.

Adele isn’t the only one with a self-management story, you have one too. Call it your own Adele-ity if you want to, but do identify your own calling. Be willing to shout it from the rooftops, and sing about it in your own way, and like Adele, know that no gimmicks are necessary. You’ve got your Aloha.

Aloha! Just joining us?

Talking Story is the blog home of those who are learning to be Alaka‘i Managers — those committed to managing and leading with Aloha. Read a preview of the book which inspired this movement, and visit our About Page.

Talking Story with Rosa Say

An Aloha Business for 2012

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Last post, we talked about an approach for the January overwhelm that can appear this time of year, and our talk story about it slanted toward the personal. Let’s talk about your workplace today.

If you are a business owner, or an Alaka‘i Manager — one with Kuleana (a sense of personal responsibility, and personal accountability) within your circle of influence, whatever its scope, AND you have the Ho‘ohana intention to manage with Aloha — this post is for you.

An Aloha Business for 2012

What will the Aloha business look like and feel like? Why will it be the best kind of business to tackle the coming year’s challenges with the greatest prospects of success? What will it take, so it truly thrives and prospers?

Here are my suggestions for you.

STEP 1: Allow your people to design their own work schedules, both where and when, and how much.

If you’re a manager who maintains control of a schedule, it’s time to let it go. To be frank, you should’ve let it go a long, long time ago. If you have a group who works to obey their assigned time on the clock versus the demands and mission of the business, you still have a ‘staff’ and not a ‘tribe’ who will rally around a common cause with the vibrant energy an Aloha-valued business thrives on.

Even businesses with operating hours can successfully put their work schedules in the hands of their people, and should do so. You replace the schedule the manager has controlled (and refereed, yuck) with an agreement: Allow your emerging tribe to self-organize around necessary coverage first, and then self-direct, filling in the blanks with the rest of the work. Those ‘blanks’ are the opportunities to go above and beyond mere coverage, illustrating for you the work they choose to do because it is most important, either to them, or to your customer, and aren’t those the two groups of people who count most in the workplace equation to begin with?

You’ll be in for a might-be-rocky adjustment at first, but I promise you, the self-sorting, self-directing, tribe-loving work of your people will begin to reveal its treasures. They will surprise you, delight you, and fill you with pride.

If you’re arguing with me in your head with this, insisting that, “well fine, it doesn’t have to be me, but I’ll probably need a lead,” that lead will emerge — your people will elect their most trusted peer. Let it happen and stay out of it, for you have other things to do (read on!)

A related read in the archives, about giving permission: When Managers Say the Right Things. To be an Alaka‘i Manager, work on this deliberately: Speak with those two critical intentions of giving permission and sharing your appreciation.

STEP 2: Value-align your Customer Service with a value-mapping 12×12.

Imagine what it will do for your business — your profits, your cause, your reputation, your standing in the community — if you improve your customer service x12 in 2012! This is how you get there:

Begin a value of the month program which will focus on work-aligning the answers to just one crucial question month after month, a two-fold one: a) What does this value mean to us, and b) How do we share this value with our customer?

Sometimes the answers will have to do with changing what you allow a customer to do or not do: The answers which emerge as the month goes by won’t only be about you and your tribe. That’s good: Get rid of your sacred cows, reinvent and innovate, move forward and get better.

Start with the values which are most important to you, and work your program with the 12th of each month as day 1: Keep that x12 number in mind every way you can, and have this program take you through next year’s holidays to January 11th, 2013. For instance:

January 12-February 11: Ho‘okipa, the value of service in generosity.
February 12-March 11: Mālama, the value of caring, compassion, and stewardship.
March 12-April 11: Kākou, the value of communication, and inclusivity.
April 12-May 11: Lōkahi, the value of teamwork, cooperation and collaboration.
And so on.

What you will begin to discover — and it will surprise you how quickly this happens — is that your self-directed tribe will apply this value alignment to everything else too: That’s the magic of value immersion. You, as Alaka‘i Manager, take the lead with inspiring the charge for the customer, because they won’t always speak for themselves with the same “me too!” urgency that your tribe will. In fact, think about bringing favorite repeat customers into the program as well: Ask them to be your mentor of the month!

STEP 3: Realign your own Ho‘ohana as an Alaka‘i Manager.

If you tackle my first two suggestions with full commitment, you will be able to redesign your own day-to-day work as a manager — and as an emerging leader — because of the natural replacement of tasks that happens for you.

It won’t all be peaches and cream at first, for you have to get through the crucible of change that leads to the good stuff. For instance, you may discover that some people leave the tribe (or are forced out) because their comfort zones erode and they can’t evade the radar any longer — ultimately a good thing. Taking care of your tribe will always be Job One of the Alaka‘i Manager, but you are progressing magnificently, and growing as your people grow in their own self-direction. Keep your eye on the prize!

Eventually, there will be two game changers you can concentrate on from now on, because you have brought them into the realm of your “adjacent possible” (see footnote):

  1. The development of your people: How can you mentor their growth? Start here: Are you doing the Daily Five Minutes yet? then review this: Annual Appraisals, and then key in to ‘Ike loa, the value of lifelong learning (Review chapter 11 in Managing with Aloha.)
  2. Your business model: Re-sort out the financial common sense and innovative sense of your business model — compensation, profit-sharing, reinvestment, community philanthropy, all of it. Become the leader you haven’t had the time to become up to now, for that time is here.

I know you can do this, for you are an Alaka‘i Manager.

I won’t be posting again until January 12th or later, so you have the time to plan this, have your group meetings necessary, invite customer mentors and get started. Do write me if you have a question, or encounter a speed bump and we’ll talk story about it.

We ho‘ohana kākou, and always with Aloha!
Rosa

… if you ache for something fresh to read between now and my next posting, remember that you can always click over to my Tumblr, Ho‘ohana Aloha, and see what finds are getting added there.

Footnote: “Adjacent possible” is an environmental condition I learned about in Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. “The phrase captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation… the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself” — if you, as manager, are willing to take that leap into a better future, bringing your workplace with you.

Irresistible

Are you just catching up with our Ho‘ohana Community now? Here are links for our most recent talk stories this week:
January 1: What do you know to be sure? Hō‘imi ola.

Hau‘oli Makahiki Hou — Happy New Year!
I sincerely hope that 2011 ended with ma‘alahi joy for you (contentment), as it did for me. I am flush with the lush generosity of Mahalo (an elemental gratitude) as I sit and write this for you. Good endings help us create good beginnings…

January 2: Value Verbing: Theme 2012 with your Aloha Spirit

In my Makahiki letter, I’d said that I love this time of year because it is Ka lā hiki ola (the dawning of a new day) at its most pervasive moment: We human beings collaborate in self-care, and in our Ho‘ohana intentions. The whole world seems to be in sync, as we collectively look back to assess what we’ve come to know. We corral our confidences and our strengths, and then we look forward, expectantly, and with hopeful optimism knowing those confidences and strengths are packable and adjustable: They’ll remain with us, and they’ll remain useful.
What’s not to love? In a word, the overwhelm.

Written for January of 2010, and a good read to review: The ALOHA Point of View

Purchase Managing with Aloha at Amazon.com in hardcover, or in the Kindle Store.

How Great Managers Hire: Fit, Role and Relationship

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Dear Manager,
How do you recruit, interview, select and hire (RISH)?

You have a position to fill, and I assume you’ve done your prep work well: You have seized the opportunity at hand to re-evaluate the vacancy completely, whether adding to your team or replacing someone. You’ve played devil’s advocate, asking yourself why you need to hire, and why this particular job is mission/vision/cause-critical: The job is worthy (it’s important) and worthwhile (it’s desirable).

All of that defines the job at hand, but it doesn’t necessarily describe the job-holder. Not completely. When Alaka‘i Managers select someone and hire them, they’ll be hiring for fit, role and relationship.

Hire for the future, not for the past

In my early days of being a manager, I would conduct hiring interviews as most rookies do. I’d look over their job application or resume as the candidate sat in front of me, and I’d ask whatever clarifying questions came to mind, without understanding my first mistake — hiring from their point of reference instead of mine.

It wasn’t until a considerable amount of trial and error, selecting three poor gut-choices as my interview questions for every shot-in-the-dark fortuitous one, that I realized something that would forever change my approach: The fine details of a person’s past experience was not as important to me as the likelihood of what they would do going forward, having the benefit of retaining that experience.

What had they learned, and what would they now do with their most valuable lessons? What would they do with me, and with the job I offered them? How could I imagine the job getting further defined with their personality and character (their Aloha), their signature Ho‘ohanohano distinction, their ideas and probable growth (‘Imi ola)?

Within my interview process I had been filling in the blanks of a candidate’s past. What I eventually learned to do instead, was fill in the blanks of their most probable future, a future I would have a role in. [For more in that regard, read The Role of the Manager Reconstructed].

When the interview was over, there was really only one question I needed to have an answer for: If I hired this person, what was I getting myself into as their manager?

Try This - 1
Try This - 1 by Lululemon Athletica on Flickr

Would this person be self-managed? Would they be a star, comfortable in their own skin, yet eager for more learning, and possible change? Was this person ready for leadership in whatever circumstance the world would place them in, or would I as their manager be required to work with them in their self-leadership arrival process — and if so, to what degree?

Could I feel their energy? Would we constantly be forging a partnership we were likely to both flourish in?

Most managers learn these lessons eventually, but RISH is one of those areas in which you really want to speed up the learning, for mistakes are costly. Trial and error is a lousy way to learn how to hire. So reflect on your own hiring process, and if you manage other hiring managers, have the talk story to help them prepare well, and make better hiring decisions:

  • What is FIT all about in this particular position? We’ll often cover teaming concerns when we first answer the FIT question, but what about values? Values will be the primary behavior drivers.
  • What will be the ROLE of the person you hire, and what then, will your ROLE be as their Alaka‘i Manager?
  • What is the RELATIONSHIP you are expecting to have between you, and how will it evolve in the time they are part of our workplace culture? Will you both be open to welcoming change when it must happen? Will this be a person you will constantly look forward to having conversations with, eagerly giving them your Daily Five Minutes?

Then before you make your final decision and get ready to extend a job offer, ask those same questions of the candidate, restating each to frame their expectations. Do they demonstrate a commitment to deliver on your shared expectations?

When all is said and done, it will be their job, not yours.

Aloha! Just joining us?

Talking Story is the blog home of those who are learning to be Alaka‘i Managers — those committed to managing and leading with Aloha. Read a preview of the book which inspired this movement, and visit our About Page.

Talking Story with Rosa Say