Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

  • Rosa’s Books
  • ManagingWithAloha.com
  • RosaSay.com

3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces

June 25, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Aloha,

This article has been updated, and now appears on my current blog at Managing with Aloha.

You can read it here:

Alaka‘i Managers are the new Energy Bunnies

You know the Energizer Bunny, right? “He keeps going, and going…”

If you are a manager, assume the role of Energy Bunny in your workplace.

Change the title on your business card to Energy Channeler; come on, I dare you. Whatever you have there now is probably more normal, and normal is boring.

Your greatest RESOURCE in any workplace is NOT time (and NOT financing), it IS the ENERGY required to make the time and other resources you have available count for something worthwhile and meaningful.

Your greatest ASSET in the workplace is NOT your people per se, it IS those people with the most consistent energy levels; energy to dream, create, evangelize, and perform magnificently… Read more here…

The articles and essays I currently publish can be found on www.ManagingWithAloha.com (RSS)

Thank you for your visit,

Rosa Say
Workplace culture coach, and author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business: Learn more here.

Seven Ways to Assess Your Personal Brand Assets Beyond A Job

February 24, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Did you just get laid off? This may be your lucky day, one of perspective capture like no other.

No, I’m not being cheeky and sarcastic. This is a time when it is much too easy for us to get stalled on the negatives we hear, and I’ve been challenging myself to be a half-fuller, consistently focused on seeing what’s still in the glass as opposed to what’s spilt out. Losing one’s job can be a big negative, but what’s the far bigger positive?

Have you been an unwitting victim of identity theft?

If you just lost your job, here’s something I still see in your glass: You have a golden opportunity to step back, reclaim your identity, and create your personal brand. Exactly who are you without that job? How do you want to be known from now on, regardless of the next job you decide to take, or better yet, in complete alignment with it (the Hawaiian value of Ho‘ohana), similar to the approach a freelancer will take?

If you have worked with a company for a very long time —or for a short time, yet completely immersed in their brand, especially in what is largely their communications network —chances are you might have been a victim of identity theft, and largely unaware that you were.

  • When you think of the people you most wanted to be an influencer for, did they know you by your name, or as “the guy/girl we call, who works for _______.”
  • Do people talk about that great idea you shared with them as your idea of varied possibility or as the feature of a service or product your old company sold?

Now you could argue you were a good “company man” or a very loyal, non-conflicted saleswoman, but if that job is no more, I urge you to think about getting your complete identity back before you leap into another job you’ll get swallowed up in yet again. Doing so will ground you in greater confidence, and give you more leverage.

Here’s a quick test: Have you always had your own email address (a personal one in your name, not a communal mailbox for the entire family), or are you scrambling to create a new account now that the one you had at work is gone? An email address at work should be for that work only, and you are so much more than your job!

I am not knocking having a job; self-employment is not for everyone. Further, there are many benefits to working for someone else, chief among them the learning opportunities and low-risk safety nets most employers finance for you as an insider to their strategic initiatives, creative brainstorming and innovative processes. Securing a job with a visionary company in diligent pursuit of future growth is akin to continuing your lifelong education.

So you’ve learned (you have, even if mostly by osmosis). Who have you become? I am asking you to focus on you. What have you still got going for you, which are assets you confidently identify with, but now without the extra weight of the job itself? Understand that when you walk away from a job, you walk away with learning ‘deposits’ which have become the assets which are yours to leverage in your future —and I’m not talking about stripping your desk or computer’s hard drive.

Those assets qualify and quantify your Personal Brand

Here’s another way to think of that question of who you’ve become: What makes you interesting? What’s your attraction? Why will people still be attracted to connecting with you and what you offer, no matter what job you’ll be doing next? You have a personal brand: Are you aware that you do? Can you improve upon it now as the first ‘job’ you next take?

I first started thinking about personal branding when I read “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters back in 1997; up until then I was a good corporate soldier. I was an executive officer, vice-president of operations, and most would say I’d ‘arrived.’ Peters’ article shook me up; I realized just how far I still had to go.

"As of this moment, you're going to think of yourself differently! . . . You don't 'belong to' any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any particular 'function.' You're not defined by your job title and you're not confined by your job description. Starting today, you are a brand."

— Tom Peters, Fast Company August/September 1997

I distributed Peters’ article to all my department heads, challenging them to think about it, and then to ho‘o [make it happen for them] becoming CEO of their own Me Inc. At the time our company had a very strong brand, however I suspected that getting everyone to work on their personal brands would prove to be an even bigger win-win; I was pretty competitive back then (much more so than now” wonder why that is”) and I loved the thought of my people dominating their own niche industries (like golf, spa, food & beverage) within our larger umbrella of the residential resort business. It was a strategy completely value-aligned with Ho‘ohana (the Hawaiian value of intentional work), and mentoring them in Alaka‘i (visionary, energy-creating leadership).

Some took me up on that challenge, and they began to create their own personal brand identities, and their own futures. Amazing what they have accomplished since then. Me? I would create Managing with Aloha as a values-based operating system (the book came later) and establish three different business entities and www.JoyfulJubilantLearning.com. Some didn’t take the challenge, and I don’t think it is coincidence that they are the ones who still work for the same company, now struggling through the values shift of an ownership change, not yet starting their personal legacy work. They’ve chosen to keep working on someone else’s dreams, and not their own. However I prefer to think they just haven’t yet arrived at their ‘readiness day.’

Have you? Could this be your Brand Readiness Day? It’s never too late to start working on securing your identity and building your brand. You may not get laid off, but one day you will stop working in a ‘job’ —if it’s not the economy, it will be due to your aging. Will you have started building a legacy which belongs to you and your ancestors, tipping it toward self-propelled momentum? Or will you still be toiling on the legacy belonging to your ex-employer and their brand? It’s something to think about, and there is no better time to start than right now.

7 Ways to Quantify Your Personal Brand

Here are some questions to consider, even if you still have a job: If you were to strip that job away, what are you left with?

I encourage you to write out your answers to the questions which follow —start a personal brand seeking journal— for they will quantify your present assets in the form of ‘commodities’ that are quite marketable. These questions can help you realize your own worth whether you choose to work for profit (self-employed or as a free agent) or for a paycheck (for a new employer, but now newly confident of the cards you bring to the table).

  1. What physical property is still yours, and always will be, in the form of the skills you have?
  2. What intellectual property is still yours, and always will be, in the form of the knowledge and information you have?
  3. What mental property is still yours, and always will be, in the form of the learning approach you now apply to new studies and your reactions to changing trends, generating new ideas for you?
  4. What historical property is still yours, and always will be, banked in the form of your qualifications, and more importantly, the locational experiences bundled in your credibility?
  5. What good habits did you groom, which likely will always be your habits, forming the production ability you are fully capable of continuing in a self-contained, self-sustaining way?
  6. What were the specific activities you became known and admired for, which will always be your strengths, manifested as they are from your innate talents?
  7. What social networks are still yours, and always will be, in the form of the relationships you have created that were both personal and professional?

And since they “always will be,” what can you now do with these assets you have, fully claiming them as part of your own identity, pure you and no one else, and with no needed apron strings to any company? — Not to the old one, and not solely to a new one.

The writing out of your answers is both important to your self-awareness, and highly useful: Think of journaling your answers as a 1st Draft. If you seek a new employer, these are the things which should be on your resumé as your qualifications: Do not settle for a job which does not celebrate you! If you decide to freelance, jump into self-employment, or slowly build a new business by moonlighting, these are the assets you will translate into your calling card, and a listing of the products and services you offer.

If you can then go deeper into this self-reflection, you will begin to see how you are unique, and how you already do have the stirring beginnings of a personal brand. With a second draft, you can apply that ‘why interesting; why attractive’ question to each one of the seven questions to understand why your assets give you a magnetic quality in your personal network. You can then begin to ask yourself more self-attuned questions connected to future planning: What will be your edge, your defining glory, and the building block of your legacy to come?

Yes, I’d say your glass is way more than half full. Don’t miss realizing it is, and drink deeply.

Next time”

”let’s drill deeper into this, and into the concept of personal branding for Alaka‘i managers and leaders.

Meanwhile, you might want to take a look at this discussion in the archives: Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch.


~ Originally published on Say “Alaka‘i” ~
7 Ways to Assess Your Personal Brand Assets Beyond A Job

Milk’s good” Got RISH?

January 8, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

2010 Update: I made the decision to bring Say “Alaka‘i” here to Talking Story in late May of 2010 when the Honolulu Advertiser, where the blog previously appeared, was merged with the Star Bulletin (Read more at Say “Alaka‘i” is Returning to the Mothership).

Therefore, the post appearing below is a copy of the one which had originally appeared there on January 8, 2009, so we will be able to reference it in the future when the original url it had been published on is no more…

Hibiscus

Milk’s good” Got RISH?

As appears on Say “Alaka‘i” today: Milk’s good” Got RISH?

Sunday’s question (Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch) and Tuesday’s follow-up (There are 2 Decisions Made with Every Hire) got me thinking that this is as good a time as any to be adding RISH to our Definitions and Context category here. Just as milk makes your teeth and bones stronger, RISH does wonders for the bones of your company ”“ your labor.

RISH stands for Recruitment, Interview, Selection, and Hiring. See all those HR hands shooting up, saying, “I know, I know!”???

Ah, but do they? The game is changing people; we all know that… What does RISH mean to a winning company today?

Consider RISH as a series of questions: They are the questions every business needs to answer in a manner congruent with the value-alignment which best engenders the organizational culture they thrive upon.

RISHy Questions

I would say that the questions each of these steps of Recruitment, Interview, Selection and Hiring seek to answer haven’t changed all that much. However the answers are not necessarily the same as they were a few years ago, or as recently as in the past six months:

  • Your answers should shift, adapt and change each time workforce demographics change —and most HR professionals will tell you that workforce demographics change constantly.
  • Your answers should shift, adapt and change each time there is a shift in your business model —and there are a lot of business models changing right now in order to survive” Leaders don’t wait for any cycle.

RISH answers can also fluctuate wildly from company to company, for not every business shares the same values, even when within the same industry. When your answers are known by job applicants, they can brand your desirability as a prospective employer, or as one to steer clear of. After all, a business is a collection of people in-company: Their reputation is one a prospective candidate is fully aware of inheriting, gaining it by association.
So, what are the questions?

For Recruitment:

Who are you seeking?

  • What does “the best possible person” for a position mean to you?
  • What combination of talent, skills and knowledge and industry/position competencies is most desirable, and what values are you hiring for?
  • What do you consider “ready to hit the ground running” to mean? Conversely, how much training are you willing to give someone, or might you even prefer to give them?

Interview:

How will you know when you’ve found them?

  • What must you cover to learn if the candidate you are interviewing IS that “best possible person” you have defined via answering your Recruitment questions?

Selection:

What choice is made in each possible Interview outcome?

  • What happens if you cannot find your best possible person? Do you hire the best available, or do you wait and outsource meantime?
  • What happens when you have more than one person to choose from? How is your choice made, and what is done to ensure those you do not select remain your fans?
  • What happens when “the best possible person” becomes available, but there is no job vacancy for them? Is there another way you can ‘employ’ what they potentially can offer you?

Hiring:

How does someone start working with you in the best possible way?

  • What is involved when an offer is made? What is the crucial up-front knowledge that must be covered for both the candidate and the company?
  • What must happen during a new employee’s 90-day orientation and at-will period, and how might this differ based upon a specific position? Why?
  • What happens if you discover your Selection decision erred in some way?

Collaborate on your answers!

If it’s time that you sit with these answers, consider how you can optimize the process. Get your team together and tackle them as a collaborative exercise, for doing so is an excellent way to reexamine the values which contribute to several key structure and stress points within your organizational culture. You are likely to find the exercise one where both training and recommitment happen to the values you hold dear.

Your people truly are your greatest asset, and your RISHy processes should not be risky business. Are you due for some newly revealed answers?

The Top 7 Business Themes on my 2009 Wish List

December 28, 2008 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

2010 Update: I made the decision to bring Say “Alaka‘i” here to Talking Story in late May of 2010 when the Honolulu Advertiser, where the blog previously appeared, was merged with the Star Bulletin (Read more at Say “Alaka‘i” is Returning to the Mothership).

Therefore, the post appearing below is a copy of the one which had originally appeared there on December 28, 2008, so we will be able to reference it in the future when the original url it had been published on is no more…

Hibiscus

The Top 7 Business Themes on my 2009 Wish List

From the Say “Alaka‘i” mailbox:

You get to visit lots of different workplaces, see different approaches, and listen to people’s ideas. What do you think will be the trends which emerge in business over the course of 2009 for Hawai‘i?

Gosh, that’s a million dollar question!

I don’t feel I am that great at predicting trends, for we human beings are so unpredictable —and in many ways I like that we are” I think our gut-level impulsiveness has a direct correlation to our creativity. However I can share what I hope will be the themes which emerge, and I am encouraged, for I think many of our business leaders are already talking about them.

These top my 2009 Wish List for Hawai‘i Business because they will simultaneously deliver two vital behaviors to us in the process of our pursuing them: Leadership courage, and management reconstruction.

Altogether, the theme I am encouraging within the coaching I currently do, is “out with the old and in with the new.” My list would be the same for the private and public sectors, profits and non-profits, and for social entrepreneurship (itself a trend I hope continues to flourish).
7 initiatives are on my list:

  1. Impatience for Change and New Ideas
  2. Financial Literacy
  3. The Entrepreneurial Mindset
  4. Aloha asset creation via a Ho‘okipa obsession
  5. The Role of the Manager reconstructed
  6. Talking Story Grows Up
  7. Training Becomes Learning Constant, NOT Budget Luxury

These are very likely to be the themes you will see I write most about in my blog posts here too. For now, I will explain each briefly.

1. Impatience for Change and New Ideas

One of the first posts I had written for Say “Alaka‘i” was, Leaders Don’t Wait for Any Cycle, and it remains one of my hot buttons: Virtually every single business model in every industry must evolve and improve, and we cannot rest on our laurels. Long before this recession hit us with economic reasons, we were talking about the demographics ones, for the generational character of our workplace has shifted dramatically. The evidence of our need for new ideas and substantial change is blatantly clear; we know the old way isn’t working. Yet our sense of urgency and commitment to the action steps needed is not as clear, and our hesitation is driving me crazy. We need to get more impatient —and more courageous.

The good news? Everyone knows this, and resistance is at an all-time low (more on this silver lining with no. 3 below). So what in the world are our business leaders waiting for?

2. Financial Literacy

The change we need to see happen in business requires our collective intelligence, and there best be NO leaders or managers who ever make “need to know basis” judgments or valuations of anyone else in their organizational culture, especially when it comes to the financial literacy of a company’s business model. Let people judge for themselves when your sharing is “too much information” for them; chances are they are far more intelligent than you give them credit for.

Further, they must be involved. Every stakeholder in every business needs to relearn everything financial, understanding how they directly impact each variable and each fixed cost (of which there are really very, very few). Money itself is not evil; on the contrary, it’s liberating. Ask anyone who doesn’t have it! Money is simply currency we need to be putting toward better use. The filter for this “better use” is value-alignment, where we do what we believe to be good and right. (as in virtuous values.)

3. The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Connected to financial literacy and our evolutionary business models, business leaders and managers need to understand there is a cool silver lining of our current economic mess: Entitlement mentalities of the past few years are at an all-time low, or are gone.

We have never been in a better time to teach each other (again, collective intelligence versus hierarchal dictation) to groom a new entrepreneurial mindset, where we ALL work for profit versus paycheck, and we ALL create the intellectual property we can continue to market successfully as we age and must self-sustain our increased lifespans. Retirement is an outdated concept; any Baby Boomer will tell you they are not expecting to retire —not ever. Even if they could afford to, they would be totally bored. What will you do when your body is too old to keep toiling, but your mind is still working better than it ever has before? The answer is in your entrepreneurial mindset. A business can have one too.

4. Aloha asset creation via a Ho‘okipa obsession

It’s high time we stop paying lip service to the Aloha Spirit and get it back again. The only way I see that can happen is for us to return to our Sense of Place as a Hawaiian island chain of diverse yet connected communities which are Lōkahi [harmonious and unified]. This is a tall order to be sure, one requiring much Ha‘aha‘a [humility and open-mindedness] from many of us, but it is a societal order of civility and mutual respect we MUST work on.

We must live true to our values before we can work with them, manage with them, and lead with them. There are several values, inherent to our ancestry that I would love to see thrive and flourish again, and the one which comes to mind most for me is Ho‘okipa, for it is more than good customer service: It is a gracious, virtuous hospitality borne of Aloha as the unconditional acceptance of all others, and Lokomaika‘i, the generosity of good heart.

From the Say “Alaka‘i” archives:
Hawai‘i’s Primary Recession-Proof Strategy is Ho‘okipa

5. The Role of the Manager reconstructed

Managers matter, yet we still don’t quite understand why they matter and how. Managers still work and operate in that vast wasteland called “middle management” where they are babysitting the mediocrity tolerated in our organizations instead of being stewards of the smart, professional, and mission-based disciplines which make them healthier. I am afraid that until the role of the manager changes, nothing else will.

A future preview:

Marketing Guru Seth Godin is enjoying some success right now with his latest book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, and I will review it in a future blog post. In short, he seeks to elevate leadership —and I applaud his ideas in that regard, however he does so at the expense of management, and he depreciates the worth of managers nearly every single time he mentions them. I understand the comparison he is trying to make, however please don’t buy in to that notion that we don’t need managers —he is dead wrong.

6. Talking Story Grows Up

‘Talking story’ might be just as important to our Hawai‘i communities as is ‘sense of place’ and our cultural values of Aloha. We have a way of communicating with each other that is an exceptionally positive expectation, unspoken yet pervasive in our islands, and that expectation is this: Create a good relationship first, and do your business transaction second (even those ‘business of life’ transactions) and then that transaction will be good too.

When talking story grows up and really, truly comes to the workplace with us, we will enjoy another kind of evolution, one in the way we communicate with each other and create a larger verbal asset. Our ancestors had a great word for this: They called this ‘asset’ the mo‘ōlelo. Can you imagine how little we would know about our heritage today without it? What is the mo‘ōlelo we have stopped creating for Hawai‘i’s future generations?

7. Training Becomes Learning Constant, NOT Budget Luxury

Business has a very annoying habit, one we fall into way, way too often: The moment money is tight, training gets cut from the budget in our first wave of belt-tightening. No need for me to go into why that is a very bad idea; we all know it, yet we do it anyway.

I think that shifting our vocabulary might help us break this habit once and for all. Equate ‘training’ with learning from now on (in fact, replace the word totally), for you certainly wouldn’t cut continuous learning from your budget, would you? (Auwe” we’d be in really deep kim chee then!)

In 2009, please set this goal: Learning will be inculcated into our organizational culture as a non-negotiable constant and sacred essential. And by the way, more seminars don’t constitute learning either; we’ll talk about ‘Ike loa (the Hawaiian value of learning) more as time goes by.

Let’s Talk Story:

What are the trends that YOU hope will emerge?

What are the intentions YOU plan to set in motion early in 2009?

I am pretty confident that we WILL see a lot of these things, for business has no choice if it is to survive and get healthy again.

What I wish for most? That the big business we call Hawai‘i government is the first to lead the way in each of these areas. The willingness to discard their comfort zones, partisan alliances and “incumbency mindset” is THE leadership courage we need from them most.

Next Page »

Search Talking Story your way

RSS Current Articles at Managing with Aloha:

  • Do it—Experiment!
  • Hō‘imi to Curate Your Life’s Experience
  • Kaʻana i kāu aloha: Share your Aloha
  • Managing Basics: The Good Receiver
  • What do executives do, anyway? They do values.
  • Managing Basics: On Finishing Well
  • Wellness—the kind that actually works

Search Talking Story by Category

Talking Story Article Archives

  • July 2016 (1)
  • April 2012 (1)
  • March 2012 (6)
  • February 2012 (6)
  • January 2012 (10)
  • December 2011 (1)
  • November 2011 (4)
  • October 2011 (17)
  • September 2011 (8)
  • August 2011 (6)
  • July 2011 (2)
  • June 2011 (2)
  • May 2011 (4)
  • April 2011 (12)
  • March 2011 (16)
  • February 2011 (16)
  • January 2011 (23)
  • December 2010 (4)
  • November 2010 (1)
  • October 2010 (1)
  • September 2010 (4)
  • August 2010 (1)
  • July 2010 (4)
  • June 2010 (13)
  • May 2010 (17)
  • April 2010 (18)
  • March 2010 (13)
  • February 2010 (18)
  • January 2010 (16)
  • December 2009 (12)
  • November 2009 (15)
  • October 2009 (20)
  • September 2009 (20)
  • August 2009 (17)
  • July 2009 (16)
  • June 2009 (13)
  • May 2009 (3)
  • April 2009 (19)
  • March 2009 (18)
  • February 2009 (21)
  • January 2009 (26)
  • December 2008 (31)
  • November 2008 (19)
  • October 2008 (8)
  • September 2008 (11)
  • August 2008 (11)
  • July 2008 (10)
  • June 2008 (16)
  • May 2008 (1)
  • March 2008 (17)
  • February 2008 (24)
  • January 2008 (13)
  • December 2007 (10)
  • November 2007 (6)
  • July 2007 (27)
  • June 2007 (23)
  • May 2007 (13)
  • April 2007 (19)
  • March 2007 (17)
  • February 2007 (14)
  • January 2007 (15)
  • December 2006 (14)
  • November 2006 (16)
  • October 2006 (13)
  • September 2006 (29)
  • August 2006 (14)
  • July 2006 (19)
  • June 2006 (19)
  • May 2006 (12)
  • April 2006 (11)
  • March 2006 (14)
  • February 2006 (14)
  • January 2006 (7)
  • December 2005 (15)
  • November 2005 (27)
  • October 2005 (22)
  • September 2005 (38)
  • August 2005 (31)
  • July 2005 (34)
  • June 2005 (32)
  • May 2005 (27)
  • April 2005 (28)
  • March 2005 (36)
  • February 2005 (33)
  • January 2005 (35)
  • December 2004 (13)
  • November 2004 (24)
  • October 2004 (22)
  • September 2004 (28)
  • August 2004 (8)

Copyright © 2021 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in