business models

If you worked for me

February 2, 2012 by Rosa Say

If you worked for me, you’d only be working 20 hours per week (or less), yet you’d feel well compensated.

If you worked for me, we’d talk about values all the time. Managing with Aloha would be a verb, not a noun, and you’d ‘get to’ Ho‘ohana.

If you worked for me, you’d Lead with Aloha too: An Aloha Business for 2012

If you worked for me, you’d get the Daily Five Minutes, and you’d give it to others. Conversation and win-win agreements would become your m.o.

If you worked for me, I’d expect you to contribute to our company cause — and you’d want to. You’d be a vocal ambassador of our mission and vision because you share it, and we celebrate our progress often.

If you worked for me, you’d be enrolled in my profit-sharing program and be considered my partner, not my ‘employee.’ We’d be an ‘Ohana in Business.

If you worked for me, you’d get a performance appraisal, but quarterly instead of annually. We’d both look forward to them, and we’d mostly talk story about what we’re both learning, and how we’re growing. I want you to feel strong in my company, and I want you to BE strong.

If you worked for me, you’d be expected to take an annual sabbatical as an extension of your earned vacation time, so you could reboot and recharge, and make Aloha very, very personal.

I’m not alone as an employer with a newly improved business model.

It’s 2012 and these are the ways society is shifting, recognizing that work alone cannot rule our lives if we are to be healthy, and make our best contribution to the communities we choose to dwell in.

Life is short, but you CAN have a positive expectancy in regard to what life offers you.

If you don’t have an Employer/Partner who is waking up to the 2012 realities of human well-being, bid them goodbye and look for a new partnership, one which deserves you and your best possible efforts when you do work. Understand your options. To work for someone is only great when you work WITH them, and they with you.

You can also think about starting your own company: Model Me This.

What would you add to my list?

Let us hear from you! Finish the sentence in the comments”
“If you worked for me, _______________.”

On the 20-hour work week: All in favor?

January 11, 2012 by Rosa Say

There’s an interesting idea which keeps popping up on my radar these early days of our new year, and I love it. It’s an inventive call to action:

Let’s shift what we value in society today, by shifting to the 20-hour work week.

The argument behind this proposal, is that our 40-hour work week has been our convention, but convention isn’t unquestionable fact. Convention isn’t necessarily right, and it may not be that good for us anymore — Was it ever?

The idea is being touted as a sorting-out solution to present unemployment and underemployment levels, wherein we can share the wealth as a better networked society: One job (40 hours per week), designed the old way, can now be held by two people, and designed in a new way (20 hours per week for each of them.)

Breaking free of our convention will be quite radical; it will require adjustments of epic proportion in compensation, legality, managerial mindset, union reorganization” the list is lengthy. But here’s the thing: The possibility of it happening is the unexpected silver lining of The Great Recession. The idea is not that new, however conditions for this change have never been as ripe.

And the reward is absolutely dazzling: A better quality of life for each of us, where work is no longer such a tight shackle. When you decrease the hours in which you labor, you increase the hours available to you for more variety — for what we’ve long referred to as “the spice of life.”

I for one, am fervently hoping this idea of the 20-hour work week gains more traction. Let’s reinvent our ‘Ohana in Business in a big way. We can align this visionary thinking with our Aloha Business model in 2012, I know we can, for this is something I am already doing. I have a 20-hour work week now, and you can have it too, no matter what it is you do.

How can you lead in this effort?
What is the first step that you can personally take, leading by virtue of your own good example?

“Example has more followers than reason.”
~ Christian Nevell Bovee

Here are those blips on the radar if you want to read more:

Cut the working week to a maximum of 20 hours, urge top economists
Heather Stewart at The Observer reports: “Job sharing and increased leisure are the answer to rising unemployment, claims thinktank.”
Fast Company Co.Exist: The Case For A 21-Hour Work Week
“It would create jobs and stop the unsustainable cycle of rampant consumerism. Sure, it would also require a wholesale reordering of our economy, but that might happen whether we like it or not.”
Update, March 1st: Just read this via a Daily Good reprint, but it was originally published last September: Less Work, More Living:
“Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less. That’s the formula. The more time a person has, the better his or her quality of life, and the easier it is to live sustainably.”

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

An Aloha Business for 2012

January 3, 2012 by Rosa Say

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):

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.)
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.

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.

A “wake-up call” isn’t enough

June 4, 2011 by Rosa Say

It takes courage to change, and forge a new future: Have you got that courage in you?

I was not at this presentation, and can only base this on Dan Nakaso’s article written for the Star Advertiser, but I am newly encouraged knowing that Richard C. Lim is our new director of DBEDT, the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Perhaps that “T” should be dropped at the end.

Nakaso wrote: “Future of tourism called into question: The state economic director surprises business leaders with his stark outlook.”

“Lim, who has been running DBEDT for six months, outlined a gloomy economic picture for the islands and said tourism has essentially remained stagnant for the last 20 years and can no longer be relied on to move the economy into a prosperous future.”

He is absolutely right, and being kind in saying it’s only been this way for the last 20 years — try 30 or 40. The business model is broken; it’s dysfunctional, or in many cases, missing completely. Any business models which are in place for so-called Tourism Leadership are sadly irrelevant to our community challenges.

I’m a product of our hospitality industry, as is my values-based Managing with Aloha philosophy, and readily accept that writing this can be viewed as my biting the hand that fed me — but how well did that really happen? What is not mentioned in this article, is the sad fact that tourism has not improved our lot in life locally as its wage-earners either; I would much prefer to see our youth and all residents focus on industries which improve their standard of living individually too — and not just for the community infrastructure needs Lim mentions in the article recap.

Our state (and all communities for that matter) need not do for us, when we can prosper and thrive on our own because we work in more visionary industries.

Even if we blindly claim to be good at tourism, or Aloha-suited to it, it’s time we learned even more, and got good at endeavors which will serve us better, via the industries which rely on building our innovative talents with math and the sciences. Tourism has not sustained us well enough in exchange for all the resources we have put into it, especially when you count up our service-industry poor.

This part of the article absolutely floored me, especially reading who was quoted:

“Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics and chairman of the state Council on Revenues, told Lim that his ideas “provoked a lot of good thinking in this room. This is the first time I’ve heard any of this.”

Give me a break! If we assume he is speaking his truth, how has he come to hold the position he holds? Where have they been, and what on earth have they been doing in Hawai‘i economic circles if this is the first time he and others have “heard any of this?” Do they know how to read and evaluate all their charts and economic reports?

Will anything happen now that this speech has been delivered, or was it simply a way to while away some time for those in the room who are too NIMBY entitled and complacent? (stuck in the quagmire of “not in my back yard” thinking and will-not-try opposition).

Knowing all of which Lim speaks is one thing, and having the courage to do something about it is another when you have so many sacred cows grazing in your home pastures.

We can do better, I know we can. I pray we get the will to do so.

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