5 Whys

How do you define a great meeting?

May 20, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Andy Stanley said, “The best thing a leader can bring to his team is his energy.” (quoting Bill Hybels)… another reason that I’d encouraged you to Ho‘ohui: Huddle up, and Bring back the staff meeting:

Having regularly scheduled staff meetings has become a no-no, something we avoid like the plague in workplaces. Why?

Boycotting staff meetings is absurd. Meetings are not a problem dear manager; bad meetings are. And make no mistake; you need them.

The solution is simple: Have good meetings!

I left that last statement as is, so how so? How do you have a good meeting?

Photo credit: “God, I hope we get to perform this sometime” by Nosha on Flickr

To have the noun, define the verb

I think you have to very simply define that word ‘meeting’ by thinking about why you have them at all. Fact of the matter is that meetings exist in organizational structures like some brick or pillar which has been in the building forever, but is no longer foundational or even functional. It’s just there as part of the cultural auto-pilot.

I talked about this a little bit with David Zinger, the employee engagement guru, and he said that if he was chairing a meeting, he’d be sure to “Sit at the same level, be part of the circle, listen to all voices, care about relationships and results.”

That tells me David wants to really hear from the people there with him: He is starting with his why. Starting that way takes him directly to his action verbs as a leader.

From a contextual standpoint, a good meeting is a great conversation involving more people. I like to keep it simple, and define meetings that way because it reminds me to honor the conversation part and make sure it is ever-present in my meeting agendas. It helps me treat each meeting as a brand new event — who is coming? i.e. Who are my guests? — so that I focus on individuals versus audience.

But those are my whys, and it’s okay if your energy-creating (leading) or energy-channeling (managing) why is different: Just be sure it is intentional.

So this posting is not going to offer you a listing of all the elements that go into constructing a great meeting agenda: that would be condescending I think. As an Alaka‘i Manager you can take care of content. My advice is to define your why.

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My mana‘o [The Backstory of this posting]
Each Thursday I write a management posting for Say “Alaka‘i” at Hawai‘i’s newspaper The Honolulu Advertiser. If this is the first you have caught sight of my Say “Alaka‘i” tagline, you can learn more on this Talking Story page: About Say “Alaka‘i”. There are some differences in this Talking Story version, most notably that all links will keep you here on this blog.

What are you leading?

May 11, 2010 by Rosa Say

We’ve taken one look at managing (What are you managing?) so how about giving this question a turn” What are you leading?

Best case scenario, the two questions do go together

Leading will define the overarching why you bother to even ask the 5 Whys which drill down for root cause in the first place: You lead to be an evangelist, and to champion a cause you feel deeply committed to. You don’t want that cause to be sabotaged by poor work, mediocre work, the work of irrelevancy, or some other disastrous draining of the energies you value — the energies which keep your team on course.

So it might be helpful to ask the question another way:

What’s the charge you’re leading, and why do you bother?

Then talk about your answer in your next team huddle. Present it as the why of your workplace.

Your “overarching why” is why hard work should matter — why all work should matter. Everyone in a workplace can use reminders of the bigger mission you stand for, a mission that gets repeated with passionate intention.

For instance, it might sound like this: Imagine a workplace huddle where a manager talks about why a certain process is taken nice and slow, so it’s not rushed, and gets maximum care and attention to detail, one customer at a time.

“We take these extra efforts because we know our customers don’t get this care from anyone else but us: They remember the extras. They talk about them, and when they do, they remember our names and they remember us, because what they’re really talking about is us, and who we are, and what we’re all about. They tell stories about what happened when we served them, and those stories are where our reputation comes from, a reputation we can feel good about because we earned it. They come back, and they’ve become friends and raving fans who are still customers, voting in support of us with their dollars and not just their compliments and stories. They become the customers we like having around, and enjoy serving, and all because we took our time and care about this one process.”

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone considered that, or a similar statement of your passionate “why you bother” to be their Why they work in your workplace? It also becomes why they work for you. For as we well know, following is not a passive activity.

What you lead is your Passionate Why

Passionate whys will get repeated as the language of intention of your culture, and they will play out in the workplace. They replace those emotionless responses that can be traded among worker bees in hushed tones — the ones who aren’t blessed with evangelist bosses who lead as vocally, wearing their own passions on their sleeves” responses like, “We do it this way because that’s the way work is expected to be done here.” That may be a true statement too, but it doesn’t have that same zing to it, does it. It doesn’t move you, or cause you to lift your head up, and leading needs to move you.

perfection is a tied up beagle puppy — “I thought this was so we could go somewhere, not so you could tie me up!”

Ka lā hiki ola; it’s the dawning of a brand new day.

I think that redefining our leadership whys is one of those silver linings in the dark clouds of these recessionary times. It is easier to make mantras again, and rise up out of our past routines because we know we must — those past routines hadn’t worked as well as they should, and everyone knows it. We aren’t held back as much, and reined in as we used to be.

And we can lead with small, everyday details just as much as we can lead with big, earth-shaking ideas. Call it ‘informal leadership’ if you prefer: Leadership in smaller doses is very appealing.

So what are you leading, still committed to it, and still very passionate about it?

For many, the answer is, “I’m leading my own life in an entirely new way.” And that is a fabulous answer, an ‘Imi ola answer! It certainly appeals to me, and any Alaka‘i Manager would see it as their opportunity to say, “That sounds so exciting and promising! Please tell me more: Give me some details, and tell me what I can do to support you.”

Photo credit: tied up beagle puppy by greenkozi on Flickr

Discover the power of 5 Minutes: A book excerpt from Managing with Aloha

What are you managing?

May 9, 2010 by Rosa Say

Simple question, yet so many different answers are possible!

Explode my life again, in chaos and agony, by Gui Trento on Flickr

Let’s be sure that the answer we’d admit to ourselves doesn’t stop at “the team at company XYZ” or isn’t “I’m not really sure.”

I don’t intend to be rude; we managers can get caught up in a lot of fire-dousing as opposed to significant work of our own. Are you catching yourself, and refocusing on your own Ho‘ohana whenever that happens?

Let’s look at this from two perspectives, first to answer the “simple question” and second, from the standpoint of managing as a verb (a hot-button theme with me for any who might be newly joining us).

1. What are you managing?

Hopefully, your first reaction is, “Don’t you mean ‘who’ am I managing?”

Alaka‘i Managers (those who manage with Aloha) focus on people over the process. Is the process important? Sure it is, however you-as-manager aren’t the one actually engaging with the process, or at least not as much as your people are. You want to work with them, not for them, and you want to be their coach and champion — so is that the process you are managing?

Use the 5 Whys to dig deeper, and get to your answer. For example:

What are you managing, and why?
— I’m managing the process by which we ___________.

Why that particular process?
— Because it’s the one which is currently our most costly and time-consuming (a possible, fairly common answer, but certainly not the only one).

Why is it costly, and how can you coach your people in improving it?
Why is it time-consuming, and how can you coach your people to be more efficient? (And by the way” how would you better utilize the time you’d free up?)

I stopped at a third why, but you get the idea. According to Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet, who created a blog inspired by five why questioning:

“Five Whys is the Japanese philosophy of repeatedly asking why to find not only the direct sources of your problems, but also the root of those sources. It’s about thinking long-term and looking both ahead and behind, not just in the present.”

2. What are you managing, if managing is a verb?

Verbs rock and roll: They keep stuff moving. As a verb like no other, managing keeps work moving in the best possible way. So is that what you’re doing?

Here’s an excerpt from Business Thinking with Aloha:

“Work rocks!” because verbs are doing the rockin’ and rollin’. Verbs get work done because they grab our attention, and pack action into intention. They can’t sit still, and they take us with them as they make things happen. Nouns can be pretty attractive, I’ll grant you that, but they just sit there. Verbs add dynamic movement and vitality. They add verve and vigor and they zoom. When stuff starts moving you better be paying attention, and when Ho‘ohana intention enters the picture you’d best hold on.

Now as great as verbs are already sounding here, there are certain verbs which are a cut above the rest, and two in particular which are absolutely extraordinary. Together they form a partnership which is very focused on working with human energy as its engine. Those two verbs are managing and leading.

To be a manager like no other, an Alaka‘i Manager Rock Star, “What am I managing?” is probably a question you want to revisit often.

— “What am I managing TODAY?” is a great question to sit with as you have your morning coffee or make your early commute: Turn your car radio off and talk to yourself (seriously.) Then ask yourself those 5 Whys again, from the standpoint of Why the first answer you came up with?, for there’s likely some reason your first answer is front of mind for you; get to the gist of it. Challenge Your Most Brilliant Self: Burn Your Boats.

— “What am I managing IN THE NEXT HOUR?” is a great question to grab your focus back when you’ve been super-helpful to everyone else, but realize you need to stop and take stock of your day before it gets away from you completely. Ask the question midday or right after lunch: Big bummer when we do this at the end of the day and start scrambling, or worse, we don’t get to it at all and slink home for the day feeling we didn’t really get much accomplished.

— “What CAN I be managing in the coming WEEK?” is a great question to sit with as you do your Weekly Review, for it will help you be proactive and not reactive: Learn a 5-Step Weekly Review, and Make it your Habit. When you have a burning desire to get something done, and you have planned for it and scheduled it, it is SO much easier to just say “No.” to those little fires that come up. You delegate better, using all your resources and you curb any impulse you have to micromanage:

So let’s try this again: What are you managing?

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Connections

1. One more link which may help you with this:

“we managers can get caught up in a lot of fire-dousing as opposed to significant work of our own.”

Stay out of that trap of acceptable versus accomplished:
Feeling Good Isn’t the Same as Feeling Strong

2. Are you currently within a 9 Key Study? Learning Managing with Aloha: 9 Key Concepts. I am adding this posting to our Key 4 category, the Role of the Manager Reconstructed: What other connections fall within your personal value alignment?

In today’s workplaces, managers must own workplace engagement. The “reconstruction” we require in Managing with Aloha is so this expectation is reasonable, and so it is valued as critically important: Managers can then have the desire and ‘personal bandwidth’ for assuming a newly reinvented role, one which delivers better results both personally and professionally.

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My mahalo to Fred H. Schlegel for inspiring this post today. These thoughts came to me after I had read one of his recent Frog Blog posts, What are you selling? and found that the managing question naturally popped into my head: It’s a great post ~ do take a look. Thanks Fred!

Read the story behind the book: Imagine having a Thought Kit
Get your copy from the Kindle Store, or on Smashwords.com