Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

Trump those Old Rules with Your Values

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Preface: If you are an Alaka‘i Manager learning the 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha, this posting deals with several of them:

  • MWA Key 3: Value Alignment
  • MWA Key 4: Role of the Manager
  • MWA Key 6: ‘Ohana in Business
  • MWA Key 7: Strengths Management
  • MWA Key 8: Sense of Place
  • MWA Key 9: Unlimited Capacity

Old Rules, your days are numbered!

I’ve been doing quite a bit of one-on-one coaching lately. People are reaching out for help as they encounter the new world of work, and I’m happy to help as I can.

We always start with them describing their ‘new world’ for me, and I’m consistently amazed by how many old rules remain in play, erecting these obstacles that people struggle to understand. Thus, most of the coaching I offer has to do with managing up, and building better relationships with the people they feel are in charge, and in control at their workplace.

Our goal is always positive movement forward: We want to forge a better workplace partnership for them, and more often than not, the boss-employee relationship is the one we address.

Old rules are dispensed by old-thinking managers. By worn out, tired managers. By lazy and careless managers, and managers who are stick-in-the-mud stuck.

Surely those managers are not you!

If you are a manager, please stop for a moment’s self-reflection: Are there any old rules you’ve allowed into your workplace culture just because they’re convenient, historical, or worse, because you haven’t updated, replacing them with one of your own value-based rules?

A healthy workplace culture isn’t created by rules. It’s fostered by the managers who map out that culture’s movement with relevant values (e-book link), and then allow common sense to rule.

An old rule is a sacred cow which keeps fattening itself up in your pasture, lazily eating your resources and tromping through your meadowland, even though it won’t reciprocate in any way, and won’t contribute to the worthy cause of your business. It’s not a dairy cow, it’s not a beef cow, it’s not the father or mother of a hopeful generation. It’s a costly, expensive drain on the character and health of a place — a scar on your sense of place.

Used Cows for Sale

Alaka‘i Managers know they simply can’t afford sacred cows. Not now, not ever.

Sometimes, old rules are self-inflicted. People assume they have to follow them, when in fact, they don’t. No one else notices (no manager cares enough), and people continue down the wrong path. It’s a path paved with frustration, and one road block after another.

Issues define problems. People define potential.

Here’s an example.

In most organizations large enough to have different divisions, there’s been a long-standing old rule that “we don’t transfer problems.” It started with good intentions (most rules do) connected to keeping buck-passing out of the workplace with the culture-driven, value-aligned encouragement to own your problems, confront them head on, and solve them in a way that completely ferreted out any deeply rooted causes. If a problem or issue started with your division, chances are you remain closest to it; your team is likely the best team to address it.

Here’s where that old rule went wrong: We didn’t keep it focused on issues. We applied it to people who didn’t fit in the team or boss-subordinate equation for some reason, and it became an unspoken HR rule everyone towed the line with: ‘Problem people’ weren’t ever transferred either — and more often than not, they can be, and should be as a strategy of optimal workforce development; abundant choice is one of the advantages of larger organizations!

Misjudged people have become our good people souring in poor places, feeling hopelessly stuck or stereotyped. They never had a chance with finding their right fit and new lease on life elsewhere in the company — they were ignored or put out to pasture with progressive discipline, and their true strengths were never revealed. Their managers were tacitly allowed to dismiss them.

It’s been tragic, and still is, the number of times someone representing a wealth of experience and future potential is named a “problem child” because their manager fails to create a powerful partnership with them, and no one else will give them a chance. We are seeing how this old rule turned assumption keeps fresh talent out of hiring as well, because of the chronic dysfunction in the referral process: We still see scarlet letters on applicant chests, and fail to question the other people who put them there.

Coaches like me do a lot of Ho‘ohanohano work with giving people their dignity back: We have to convince them they aren’t broken, that they are strong and worthy, and they do have the talent, skills, and knowledge someone in their world is just chomping at the bit for. We get them to own it and bring it as a golden partnership ready to happen, and happen quickly: We help them define these things with useful and relevant clarity, so they can apply them with a positive outlook and renewed sense of optimism.

And not just coaches like me. That’s what ALL Alaka‘i Managers do.

“People catch their own weaknesses.
Your job, is to catch and encourage their strengths,
and those strengths aren’t usually clear.”
— Failure isn’t cool. Neither is weakness

What other old rules are still roaming your workplace meadowland?

Beware of Invisible Cows

Question and freshen your rules constantly.

Rules can be good. For instance, I use them to clarify our managing and leading verbs, but if you use them, honor them in a Language of Intention. Be sure they’re YOUR rules and not assumptions you’ve allowed into the culture which were actually inherited from someone else’s intentions and values.

TED Talk: Barry Schwartz on our Loss of Wisdom

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In thinking about common sense [Required of all Managers: ‘Common Sense’ only it isn’t] I remembered an exceptional TED talk by Barry Schwartz.

Could it be that the real crisis goes farther, and that we have stopped being wise?

“Change talking”

In the time since I’d first listened to this, I’ve been using three phrases in my Language of Intention [MWA Key 5] thanks to Schwartz: Moral will, moral skill, and practical wisdom. They are being used for the value-mapping process within my own companies. All three are attractive concepts I’m wowed and Aloha-aligned by, and as you know, I believe that language of intention works to effect change: This is “Change talking” ~

  1. Use clearly defined vocabulary which inspires you.
  2. Weave those words and phrases into your daily Language of Intention, i.e. make them personal, relevant, practical and useful.
  3. Speak to what you want, and speak into it often. Speak into it as a driving force of your Ho‘ohana.
  4. Now walk your talk.
  5. Keep talking. However don’t just broadcast, converse. Learn from people.

You’ll feel you need value-aligned actions if you keep talking about them! Your integrity will cry foul if you don’t honor your good words by giving them life — ‘Imi ola life.

“There’s no story I can tell you, that is as powerful
as the story you can tell yourself.”
— storyteller Iain Thomas

Getting back our Practical Wisdom

Please take the next 21 minutes to watch this presentation: I was so grateful that Schwartz was true to his notes for his message was very well written. A complete transcript is available at TED. I would have titled it more positively, as Getting back our Practical Wisdom, for I think that is the true value of this talk and the inspiration Schwartz offers us.


Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom:
Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.

My transcript notes/ related links:

Preface:
The rest of this post is me using my blog programming+data bank for me, and my own deep study, though you are welcome to use it too if you find it helpful… at first it will look like a ton of self-promoting links, and it is self-serving in a way: What I did was pull out parts of the TED transcript I found most compelling, and then I linked it up with what I have written in the past so I could see where I stood with these concepts, i.e. as I spoke of above, making them personal, relevant, practical and useful.

  • If I want the moral will, moral skill, and practical wisdom Schwartz speaks of, where am I with them now? (The links hold my clues.)
  • What more must I learn? What are the obstacles? Where is the value-alignment [MWA Key 3] which will help me best?
  • What begs revisiting (more “Change talking”), for I got started with it, but it’s not yet inculcated into my trusted system, or into my workplace culture?

If there is anything here you would like to talk story about more, let me know…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is the job description of a hospital janitor [scrolling up on the screen.] All of the items on it are unremarkable. They’re the things you would expect: mop the floors, sweep them, empty the trash, restock the cabinets. It may be a little surprising how many things there are, but it’s not surprising what they are. But the one thing I want you to notice about them is this: Even though this is a very long list, there isn’t a single thing on it that involves other human beings. Not one.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Practical wisdom,” Aristotle told us, “is the combination of moral will (do right by other people) and moral skill (figuring out what moral will means, and requires of them).”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It takes lots of experience to learn how to care for people. The good news is you don’t need to be brilliant to be wise. The bad news is that without wisdom, brilliance isn’t enough. It’s as likely to get you and other people into trouble as anything else.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Scott Simon said, “Rules and procedures may be dumb, but they spare you from thinking.”

When things go wrong, as of course they do, we reach for two tools to try to fix them. One tool we reach for is rules. Better ones, more of them. The second tool we reach for is incentives. Better ones, more of them. What else, after all, is there?

The truth is that neither rules nor incentives are enough to do the job. … Rules and incentives may make things better in the short run, but they create a downward spiral that makes them worse in the long run. Moral skill is chipped away by an over-reliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and learn from our improvisations. And moral will is undermined by an incessant appeal to incentives that destroy our desire to do the right thing. And without intending it, by appealing to rules and incentives, we are engaging in a war on wisdom.

The truth is that there are no incentives that you can devise that are ever going to be smart enough. Any incentive system can be subverted by bad will. We need incentives. People have to make a living. But excessive reliance on incentives demoralizes professional activity in two senses of that word. It causes people who engage in that activity to lose morale and it causes the activity itself to lose morality.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Barack Obama said, before he was inaugurated, “We must ask not just ‘Is it profitable?’ but ‘Is it right?'” And when professions are demoralized everyone in them becomes dependent on — addicted to — incentives and they stop asking “Is it right?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So what can we do? We ought to try to re-moralize work.

Celebrate moral exemplars. Acknowledge, when you go to law school, that a little voice is whispering in your ear about Atticus Finch. No ten-year-old goes to law school to do mergers and acquisitions. People are inspired by moral heroes. Acknowledge them. Be proud that you have them. Celebrate them. And demand that the people who teach you acknowledge them and celebrate them too. That’s one thing we can do.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And you don’t have to be a mega-hero. There are ordinary heroes. Ordinary heroes like the janitors who are worth celebrating too. As practitioners each and everyone of us should strive to be ordinary, if not extraordinary heroes. As heads of organizations, we should strive to create environments that encourage and nurture both moral skill and moral will. Even the wisest and most well-meaning people will give up if they have to swim against the current in the organizations in which they work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you run an organization you should be sure that none of the jobs have job descriptions like the job descriptions of the janitors. Because the truth is that any work that you do that involves interaction with other people is moral work. And any moral work depends upon practical wisdom.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And, perhaps most important, as teachers, we should strive to be the ordinary heroes, the moral exemplars, to the people we mentor. There are a few things that we have to remember as teachers. One is that we are always teaching. Someone is always watching. The camera is always on.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

[KIPP the Knowledge is Power Program has] come to the realization that the single most important thing kids need to learn is character. They need to learn to respect themselves. They need to learn to respect their schoolmates. They need to learn to respect their teachers. And, most important, they need to learn to respect learning. That’s the principle objective. If you do that, the rest is just pretty much a coast downhill. The way you teach these things to the kids is by having the teachers and all the other staff embody it every minute of every day.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Obama appealed to virtue. And I think he was right. And the virtue I think we need above all others is practical wisdom, because it’s what allows other virtues — honesty, kindness, courage and so on — to be displayed at the right time and in the right way. He also appealed to hope. Right again. I think there is reason for hope. I think people want to be allowed to be virtuous.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wanting to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. This kind of wisdom is within the grasp of each and every one of us if only we start paying attention. Paying attention to what we do, to how we do it, and, perhaps most importantly, to the structure of the organizations in which we work, so as to make sure that it enables us and other people to develop wisdom rather than having it suppressed.

Required of all Managers: ‘Common Sense’ only it isn’t

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Ugh. This is the kind of management horror story that keeps me up at night.

Tracy had enough.

She decided to turn in her resignation after nearly three months of frustrating conversations with her new boss, for despite her best efforts to adjust, compromise and empathize, she knew they’d never see eye to eye on how the company business objectives were best served.

Everything had become such a struggle. There was no more joy in the job for her, and it was time to move on. She’d once loved it there: Tracy was coming up on her 3rd anniversary with the company, and she’d easily passed the million dollar mark in her sales for them just past her 2nd year. Her boss was new to management, a transfer from another division, and it wasn’t that the rules were changing; they seemed to have disappeared altogether.

This wouldn’t be a surprise to him, for they’d already had the verbal conversation about her decision, yet when Tracy prepared her written notice she asked for a private meeting so she could deliver it personally. She was appalled when her boss responded, “You were serious? I’m not sure we’ll be in a position to accept this.” and then off-handedly picked up his Blackberry to begin texting someone on it.

Hadn’t he listened to her at all, in any of their previous conversations? Well, he obviously wasn’t going to start now.

Tracy waited for another moment, then turned and walked out the door, incensed, yet oddly reassured that she’d made the right decision. Her only regret was that she’d decided to give him three weeks notice instead of two, for these next three weeks would be hell. No job was worth working for a manager you had no respect for, or for a company you felt didn’t appreciate you.

Same old story

Tracy told me her story when we ran into each other in the market. “Rosa,” she asked, “of all the managers in the world, why does it seem that I end up with the newbie jerks?”

I’d love to tell Tracy that it seems that way, like some great mystery choosing her lap to fall into, but the truth is that her story is all too common. Research data (and the sampling of my own coaching practice) repeatedly illustrates that job requirements aren’t the problem in dysfunctional workplaces: Most of the people tendering resignations do so because they’re leaving bad bosses and/or companies they’ll describe with words like ‘faceless’ ‘unappreciative’ ‘clueless’ and ‘inhuman.’

Work culture, or the absence of it, has soured the quality of the work itself. While Tracy did take issue with the new direction the company was pushing in regard to aggressive, hard-push selling, she knew she’d easily continue making her quotas without having to change her customer service approach: She loved sales. Management wasn’t wearing her down as much as the absence of it: She missed their old working-together culture under a previous boss, and could not see that a new one would be created, none at all.

It seems no industry and no generation is immune: This is a very, very old problem which isn’t going away.

So what’s the problem?

Well, another word that comes up a lot is ‘untrained.’ Many employees feel their managers aren’t ready for the job at hand and are winging it, with no planned training, coaching, or mentorship in their future. Hence their ‘on the job training’ means that employees become guinea pigs, sometimes over and over again. Management is a revolving door, and people feel like they’re starting all over every time someone new walks in. It’s that deflating “Here we go again”” sigh of returning to square one, and not the growing, evolutionary start-ups of a strong culture that continually flexes its muscle inventively with new projects.

I believe the problem stems from management being underestimated, not as any specific person or higher echelon, but as a critically important job within the culture.

The biggest requirement we seem to make of new managers is that they have ‘common sense,’ when in fact, the sensibility for worthwhile and meaningful work isn’t common at all: It requires comprehensive training and development (remember that phrase?)

We’re still stuck in that subconscious belief that management is little more than babysitting, supervisory and mid-level managers in particular. Yet even if there consciously — let’s call a spade a spade: scores of organizations are constructed with babysitting — we’re nonchalant, unconcerned and clueless about at least getting a good sitter. Our ‘babies’ are fussy and grumpy, for they aren’t doing well in the sitter’s care.

They’re all adults, right? Can’t they do better in fending for themselves?

The sitter isn’t doing so well either

Okay, so we’ll admit that management matters…

Expected to learn on the job, and pay some dues while there, disillusionment is high among new managers. Basic mistakes occur often because scrambling runs rampant, and failure is virtually guaranteed. It hurts like it does because people are failing, and we take our failure very, very personally.

We hide things. Tracy discovered that her boss didn’t turn her resignation letter into HR until her last week on the job, when he realized he had to do so before he could replace her.

The recent recession made our vicious cycles clear, and made things worse in that we lost ground in quarters which had seemed to be advancing. Training and development at all levels was an early casualty as budget belts were tightened. When executives were forced to reckon with labor dollars, management positions were easier lay-off targets than messing with unionized jobs initially, and as manager’s tasks were reassigned to the remaining survivors their importance was disparaged even more.

Unions were not good business partners: They remained silent, muttering “Well, at least our members still have jobs.” and went into a self-protective survival mode of their own, even as those members cried foul, readily admitting that, “Hey, we still need our managers! Things are falling apart here on the battle lines!”

And now?

We’re learning that recovery is difficult too

Returning business isn’t served well by burned out workplace survivors. There’s no one possessing that assumed “common sense” to pick up any slack, for there are no mid-level, go-to managers to turn to. Warm body placements begin, just as they did where Tracy works. New managers good at texting, but with workplace conversations? Not so much.

And who is expected to handle the training and development so sorely needed? In most cases, those same burned our workplace survivors — like Tracy was.

Only it isn’t necessarily a survival of the fittest: Tracy was a high performer, and one of their top sales people. That was her job; handling customers with her exquisite care, not training the “newbie jerk managers” who were supposed to be taking care of her. So she walked away.

Cycle, or root cause?

I know I paint a terrible picture here, but honestly, am I telling you anything you don’t already know?

Like the cruel stupidity of expecting young managers to “pay their dues” as a way to learn, we assume that what I’ve described is a business cycle that’s the nature of the beast. Wrong, wrong, WRONG! Root causes can be corrected. It’s the only way to fix the cycle.

We are all part of the problem in some way, and can’t say we aren’t.

The bigger question for me, is exactly what it will take for us to finally fix it once and for all. Our ‘common sense’ just ain’t cutting it. We need to do more. Common sense must come with commitment, character, and culture if it is ever to become common in our workplaces.

Numerology for Managers

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Quick Preface:
A good number of connective coaching links in this posting today for the TS reader who is a manager and MWA student: I add the Talking Story links at the ending if you prefer to keep your clicks within Ho‘ohana Publishing.

Early in the publishing process, my favorite one-line description for my book, Managing with Aloha, would come from my agent Roger while we were still in copy-editing mode. He called the MWA philosophy “a sensibility for worthwhile work.”

Loved it. It was very reaffirming for what I hoped MWA would be.

Sensibility makes me think of common sense, something that always seems to be in short supply —especially when you realize you need it most. It also makes me think of being practical, of “keeping it real,” and of usefulness.

The words “worthwhile work” are all about Ho‘ohana, which you know to be my favorite one of the Hawaiian values (Don’t get nervous: Aloha is core assumption and unwavering belief; it graciously allows others to be ‘favorites.’) For me, Ho‘ohana is mission-critical.

MY MANA‘O
(what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~

ALOHA is about you living with authenticity in a world populated with other people. We human beings were not meant to live alone, we thrive in each other’s company. Aloha celebrates everything that makes you YOU.

HO‘OHANA is about you making your living in our world in the way that gives you daily direction and intention and leaves you with a feeling of personal fulfillment every day —not just when you have accomplished large goals.

Can Numbers Become Common Sense?

This past Tuesday, I wrote “Leadership Needs a Numbers Breakthrough” as our September Aloha because we managers seem to have a “can’t live with them, can’t live without them” kind of relationship with numbers. We make conventional associations with them ”“ like budget, ROI, and other financial terms ”“ which are necessary measurements, but not liberating enough. Not captivating enough. Not sensible in the every-day scheme of things. Sure, they are sensible to all the people in Accounting, Banking and Finance (and we do respect and appreciate them; we do), but numbers only as measurements have not become common-sensible in how we approach our work every day ”“ in how we approach our Ho‘ohana.

What we managers are supposed to do, is get work to make sense. We are the people who bring sensibility to worthwhile work. MWA is a values-based philosophy seeking to help, by giving you tools to work with (like the Daily 5 Minutes), but the execution of it all depends on you.

So here is September’s challenge: How do we get numbers to make sense?

I don’t have all the answers. I have a few which work great for me, knowing what works well in my business, and with my goals, hopes and dreams. I’ve been able to turn them into better tools; shared a story about that yesterday with the Joyful Jubilant Learning Community: Learning My 9 Boxes.

You need to do the same thing for you.

If there were a better, kick-ass, highly common sense “Numerology for Managers” what might it possibly include? Any ideas?

Beyond Your Spreadsheets and my 9 Boxes

For instance, Paul Diamond had shared this video with us on Joyful Jubilant Learning yesterday, about the Magic of 9: Parlor trick, or common sense thinking?

[~YouTube link for those using RSS and not seeing the embed here~]

I asked JJLer Ruth Radney, who teaches a “Creative Math” class for high schoolers, “What do you consider the difference between a learning trick, and cheating the learning process?” and Ruth responded:

“There are some students for whom this is just a tool to help them remember facts, but to many students, it becomes a fascination. 9’s are particularly unique, and as students learn one “trick” they begin to explore to see if other numbers have similar attributes or surprise characteristics. To me, that turns a math “trick” into a tool for exploratory learning.”

The bold above is mine: I truly think “It becomes a fascination” is key. The other phrase we can key on (pun fully intended) is “tool for exploratory learning” for we managers can be all about tools — and they need not exclusively be spreadsheets!

Contextual Clarity: our Definition of ‘Managing’

We’ve said that management is about the ‘what’ and the ‘how.’

We managers channel available energies productively. We make the workplace vitality-charged by making it interesting and dynamic.

I do want you to think about sensibility and possibility as a winning combination. After writing “Leadership Needs a Numbers Breakthrough” I popped it into my Palena ‘ole category within the personal indexing I do ”“ the 9th Key within the MWA 9 Key Concepts. It felt most natural to me ”“ it made the most MWA sensibility ”“ because numbers can be both precise and infinite in the framing they offer.

9. Palena ‘ole (Unlimited Capacity):
This is your exponential growth stage, and about seeing your bigger and better leadership dreams come to fruition. Think “Legacy.” Create abundance by honoring capacity; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Seek inclusive, full engagement and optimal productivity, and scarcity will be banished.

For me, the number 9 is associated with abundance: It holds so much in that 4-fold capacity (physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual) and I can always drill down from there. I can drill down into my Alaka‘i Language of Leadership AND my Ho‘ohana — into my sensibility for worthwhile work as a manager.

It helps to always start with abundance because your choices seem so plentiful, and you can then pick the choice which fascinates you most. Fascination is your ticket to self-motivation. We cannot really motivate others, for motivation is an inside job. But if we help them become intrigued and fascinated, their motivation will naturally follow.

I would love to come to a new, cool and sexy definition for “Numerology for Managers” by the time the month is over: It is a thought which intrigues and fascinates me because I think it will be useful, especially if we make it sensible.

Will you help me think about this? Let’s talk story.

For those who prefer them, here are the Talking Story, JJL, MWA and MWAC copies of the links embedded in this posting:

  1. At Joyful Jubilant Learning: Learning to Be of Use
  2. At Managing with Aloha: Choose Values
  3. What’s your Calling? Has it become your Ho‘ohana?
  4. Leadership Needs a Numbers Breakthrough
  5. Two Gifts: Values and Conversation (About the Daily 5 Minutes)
  6. At Joyful Jubilant Learning: Learning My 9 Boxes
  7. Management is What and How
  8. 3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces
  9. Following is NOT a Passive Activity
  10. At Managing with Aloha: The MWA 9 Key Concepts (About Palena ‘ole as the 9th Key)
  11. Do you ask Good Questions? (About framing)
  12. Do you define your Leadership Greatness?
  13. On MWA Coaching: Palena ‘ole: Discover your 4-Fold Capacity
  14. Your Alaka‘i Language of Leadership
  15. How Managers Matter in a Healthy Culture
  16. Newly thinking about~ Motivation

Article originally published on Say “Alaka‘i” September 2009
Numerology for Managers