communication

Financial Literacy has never been more timely: Talk about it

October 10, 2011 by Rosa Say

Preface: Stumbled across this posting in the archives: It was originally published in September of 2008 as a commentary on then-current affairs, and we still have a ways to go with what’s discussed here. I have not edited it in this republishing for the fun of the 2008-2011 comparison; I just checked on the viability of the links.

Click on this illustration by Tom Bachtell for A Walk in the Park by Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker

Financial literacy is, and has always been a hot topic in the ‘Ohana in Business discussions we have, and it’s one of those hot times to ramp up our on-the-job conversations about it.

If you are new to Talking Story, this post is a good October 2011 stage-setter: Working in today’s ‘Knowledge Economy’.
As Managing with Aloha self-coaching, how would you connect financial literacy with merit and the ladder of learning, and with the hierarchy of needs?
Scroll the financial literacy tag for other current connections. More on today’s current affairs can be found in the Ho‘ohana Aloha archives too (economics is the tag to use there).

Financial Literacy Has Never Been More Timely

Have a meeting coming up and need to fill a hole in the agenda?

Bored with the normal fluff around the water cooler or when escaping to the coffee place down the street?

Thinking about turning the television off tonight in favor of some meaty discussions around the dinner table?

Bring up financial literacy in all its timely, hitting-your-pocket relevance. From Wall Street to fuel prices, from tax relief plans by presidential candidates to your 401k risk assessment, and in thinking about how many readily available greenbacks to have in your mattress over the coming winter, broaching the subject is easy.

I’m hoping you’re talking about it and not just watching from the sidelines, because if there is one bright side to the mess of our U.S. economy right now it is this: There is a ton of learning to be had. To not take advantage of this grand classroom now called Life in the U.S.A. wherever you may live and be in business is a lost opportunity.

Just read this, following an Anderson Cooper tweet-feed in Twitter:

Commentary: Blame boards of directors for financial mess

‘Blame’ is one of those words which grates on me, and in fact, I responded on Twitter,

@andersoncooper “blame” such a futile word. Perhaps “learn from” or even, “seek to be better than” those who have erred so dangerously.

However I largely agree with these assertions by author Nell Minnow:

“Failure this broad and deep takes a village, and regulators, lawyers, compensation consultants, auditors, executives, shareholders, and the press all played a part. But the people who are most responsible for the massive meltdowns of these institutions are the boards of directors.”

“Their sole responsibility is to act as fiduciaries for the shareholders in managing risk. They not only failed to perform this task but indeed, in their approval of outrageous pay plans with perverse incentives, they all but guaranteed the current disaster.”

“I am a capitalist. I love it when executives earn boatloads of money. But it infuriates me when they get it without earning it.”

Tiananmen on Flickr by ciro@tokyo

Let’s take it further:

Why shouldn’t scores more people be taking some small degree of responsibility with this?

It is my belief that a business model of any kind is healthiest when every single person who is a stakeholder in that business understands how that model works, and thus, when it doesn’t work. A business is healthier when red flags are at the ready in everyone’s pocket, and by the time they make it half-mast there is collaborative responsiveness as people work together to get those green flags up instead. Alternatives and solutions begin to take root everywhere as the seeds of new ideas and evolutionary innovation get sown. Business models —even ones that are working just fine, should not be fixed or stagnant; that’s called mediocrity, and resting on your laurels. Both are unacceptable.

In my career, I had learned the hard way that assuming the “guys in the office” or “people who get paid the big bucks” know what they are doing is a very dangerous assumption (Read more at Blind Faith is not part of Unconditional Aloha in an ‘Ohana in Business). They might, but why shouldn’t you know too, whatever your role in an organization?

Why shouldn’t you be more inquisitive, know how all the work that you and others do is connected, and how ultimately it keeps a business thriving in the most profitably healthy way?

There are far too many organizations where people don’t speak up often enough because they feel they cannot intelligently carry their part of the conversation. I HATE seeing that in play in workplace cultures, and it is my stance that managers are the ones responsible for introducing these conversations, and facilitating them. Great managers introduce the meaty topics of financial literacy consistently as practice, and they hand out those red flags they want at-the-ready in everyone’s pocket.

Business takes a whole village, and a highly conversational one. If you are not now having the conversations conducive to continually ramping up the level of financial literacy in your workplace, for goodness sake, start today.

Talk story with the Ho‘ohana Community
(from 2008, as are the 1st 4 comments below):

Reflections on a Sinking Economy by Brad Shorr
How to Survive When Your Company’s Ship Sinks by Anita Bruzzese
Faith And The Bankrupt Leader by Chris Bailey

How ‘bout I call you?

September 22, 2011 by Rosa Say

For the last three weeks I’ve been working on a project with someone who uses the telephone for nearly all our communication. Occasionally his call is to ask if he can drop by, because he’s in the neighborhood working on another project.

He breaks most stereotypes, for he’s young, has an iPhone and Gmail address, designed and maintains his own website, but he prefers to call, and to talk. He considers texting to be unprofessional, and he won’t ever email unless it’s off-hours and he’s pretty sure I’m waiting for an answer of some kind. If I email him, I know the phone will ring as soon as he reads whatever I had sent, so he can answer me that way instead. I asked him if he engages with social media, and his response was, “You’re kidding, right?” To be completely honest, I’m still not sure if that meant yes or no.

The punchline to this short story? Though way, way out of my comfort zone, and likely to be a one-shot deal (we’re working on a construction project together) this has been one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve worked on in a long, long time.

I’ve come to notice just how much person-to-person or voice-to-voice communication with this person has added to the entire experience, because neither of us opts for making it techno-efficient. Most of the work we accomplish happens as we converse.

We take the time to talk, and it’s not that much more in terms of the time we add, but it’s exponentially more in what we achieve. Those little adds share more with each other, often simply in being that ‘more’ you cushion information with when speaking with each other in real time — we used to call it ‘civility.’ Our social graces in conversation have become a huge factor in the overall project experience, so much so, that I keep asking myself — why oh why have I been so quick to give up on the telephone in favor of email?

Let me say again, that this is a construction project. I’m not coaching him, and we’re not having tea and crumpets — we’re solving problems, stressing through building codes, permits, supply irregularities and labor issues.

As odd as it may sound, I’m rediscovering the wonder of the telephone.

In the archives: On the Art of Civilized Conversation

Can you fail with The Daily Five Minutes?

February 11, 2011 by Rosa Say

The D5M is coming up a lot lately, which is great! Unfortunately, that means the “yeah, but” responses can follow suit too.

After all these years I’m still trying to solve my teaching challenge with it (and I’m totally open to your suggestions): The Daily Five Minutes stirs up objections when managers hear about it for the first time, even when they immediately get how investing 5 minutes today can save them hours of heartache and extra work later.

They needn’t say so outright; I easily see it in their eyes, or in their changing demeanor, as they sit back and cross their arms defensively. In fact not just upon first hearing; managers even object when they read about it in Managing with Aloha, already having 144 pages to warm up with!

SIDEBAR:
The Daily 5 Minutes appears in MWA within the chapter about ‘Ike loa, the Hawaiian value of learning. That was a purposeful decision for me, for first and foremost, I do consider the practice a learning tool. In adopting it, you are tapping into what you can learn from the people who surround you.

Learning (‘Ike loa) is the why. Conversation (Kākou) is the how.

So what’s the problem? I’ll tell you what I think it is, and if I’m wrong, and you have another reason, please email me, and help me understand your point of view better than I do.

(Photo courtesy of Eddi van W.)

A warning label borne of past experience

Embracing my natural resistance with doing so, if I were challenged to present The Daily Five Minutes to you with a warning label, this would be my draft with it:

In my experience with bringing the D5M to different work teams, regardless of industry, there are two main challenges to the practice becoming part of a work culture:

1. You add first, replace later.
By necessity when done correctly, the D5M does start as a brand new practice both givers and receivers must learn. Thus it starts as a daily addition to task loads managers may already feel burdened with, and they don’t give it their best shot — the best shot required so it begins to work its magic of replacing those other tasks. You have to trust in the process, go all in, and then go the distance, having faith that what starts as an addition becomes a killer of a replacement.

The D5M is a proactive conversation. Once you have proactive communication practices, all your reactive conversations begin to go away. There are less fires to put out because cooler heads always prevail, and no fires were ever started. Big maintenance and/or stopgap projects, such as those dreaded employee surveys, go away completely and forever — people only feel they need to be heard in employee surveys when face-to-face workplace communication is dysfunctional, broken, or depends on unintentional neglect.

However this won’t happen overnight, and some patience is required. New for you, is new for everybody, which leads to the second challenge:

2. You can’t ignore any history.
Everyone will have history to deal with unless the business is brand-spanking-new. The D5M creates disruption where people have gotten pretty good at hiding or ignoring stuff, and that disruption is something managers must be able to handle. Initially, these are even more additions: Will you be able to handle them? If you’ve voiced a “yeah, but” of some kind, have you anticipated this, and is your objection hinting to some self-preservation instinct kicking in?

Think about it: Most people will not readily accept new change until they deal with old irritations. I bet you feel that way too: It seems to be a universal truth no matter where you sit in any organization. Things will come up which you’d thought you’d already dealt with, but no, a conversation still needs to be had: So have it!

Thus the short version of my warning label is this: There will very likely be a price to pay for the good the D5M eventually will deliver. As I see it, that price is a bargain in the grand scheme of things.

All failure is a temporary state of affairs

To address the question of my post title, managers must be able to ‘fail forward’ and do so with Ho‘ohanohano (feeling they both give and receive Aloha, dignity and respect in their workplace) so they can grow in the ways they’ve managed and led in the past. They’ve got to be strong on their own, or have the strong support and mentorship of their boss, with everyone understanding that the workplace transition created by the D5M can be unsettling.

Simply said, the Daily Five Minutes stirs things up. In the end though, the result of a healthier workplace culture is always worth the stirring. Always.

Relationships change in The Daily Five Minutes — they’re supposed to, changing for the better. And the manager is the one who has to take the high road as everyone involved learns, ‘gets taught,’ and gets a taste of those proactive conversations they may have been avoiding before. There’s good, there’s bad, and there’s ugly: You clear your decks in the beginning so you can start fresh without anything having been swept under the rug to fester, and trip you up later on. And everyone gets their shot at you: The worse thing you can do in the D5M is avoid people. (Tacit approval is another yucky thing which is replaced, and goes away forever :)

Do you want easy, or do you want effective?

Do you want more commiseration from me, or a ticket to a brighter future?

I’ve never claimed that The Daily Five Minutes was easy to do. I think it’s very easy to learn the logistics of it, but I’m no Pollyanna: I know you’re rocking your world as a manager when you completely buy in, and give it that ‘best shot’ I ask you to. You’re having conversations you’ve never had before, with people you thought you knew completely, but now discover are more complex than you ever imagined they were. And yes, more needy.

And that is precisely the beauty of it. If you do The Daily Five Minutes, you will become a better manager. If you still question your own calling — Should I be a manager, or should I be doing something else? — the Daily Five Minutes will give you a very clear answer, once and for all.

You’ll stumble at times. You’ll be embarrassed. You’ll eat crow. You’ll admit, “I don’t know, and I have to find out for you.” more than you ever thought you would. It will be a rocky road as you clear your decks to deal with past history, and possibly ask forgiveness for past sins, but you will grow immensely.

And your people will admire you for making the effort: The D5M is essentially a private, one-on-one conversation, but it is a highly visible “I care” habit in the workplace.

No matter the journey, every employee who goes through adopting the Daily Five Minutes with you will eventually become your ‘Ohana in Business partner. That’s the experience which makes me so stubbornly insistent about this:
So you want a MWA jumpstart. Do the Daily Five Minutes.

Managers: Have you ended all Workplace Censorship?

February 7, 2011 by Rosa Say

My post, encouraging managers to Promote a Culture of Asking in the workplace, brought this back to mind too, another posting I’d originally written for Lifehack.org back in 2007 about six ways we managers end censorship.

Censorship? Is there really such a thing in our brave new world of blogging, tablogs, podcasting, smartphone apps and fearless social media? How about at work, and in your workplace?

While ‘censorship’ may not be the word we specifically hear, if there are feelings that our freedom of speech and expression are in any way suppressed or squelched it pretty amounts to the same thing. So might this be time to revisit this?

Your people will roll their eyes and snicker, if you ask them to speak up more without assuring the health of these basics. Worse, they’ll keep quiet. If you want optimal communication within your workplace, conditions for it must be optimal too. So, back for a repeat performance, with a few new links connected to our recent discussions…

Great Managers End Censorship

In this, the alive and well revolution of blogging and print-on-demand publishing, censorship is something we think of as very dark ages; surely it doesn’t happen anymore!

That may be true in the freedoms of your personal, unshackled life, but how about at work?

The freedom of self-expression is one we say we cherish most of all, for we are sensitive, intelligent, and thoughtful human beings. We know stuff. We represent. We define. We influence. We stand up to be heard, and we should, for we have important opinions which should count. People need to hear us, and we need to hear them, so that the blending of our voices can clarify intentions, and thus smooth out all the rough edges of our challenging world.

Alaka‘i managers are fully aware that each of the people they manage embody a voice which needs to be heard in the world’s neighborhood we call At Work. Full, open expression enables the ‘everything else’ of essential communication, and it’s no different on the job if the work which is done is to count for something great too.

Having this awareness, Alaka‘i managers ensure that they end any hint of censorship, and that when people have something to say they feel they have every freedom to say it. Censorship at work takes the form of self-censorship. For some reason, people feel inhibited and they don’t speak up.

This is a picture of what you, as a great manager, must create in your purposeful ban of perceived censorship:

1. Your ‘Open Door’ policy is alive and well. Your workplace is abuzz with all-engaging conversations about everything and anything, and people feel confident that as their manager, you can handle it. There are no limits. Some conversations may be challenging, but they are always entered into with optimism and not with fear or dread.

2. ‘Channels of communication’ simply do not exist in terms of organizational hierarchies; instead, they are defined by working relationships, decision-reaching partnerships, and fluid project team dynamics. People talk to who they need to talk to so their work is best achieved, and they don’t look for an interpreter to accompany them. Everyone values messages where the messenger is the source.

3. Fear of repercussion has been banished, replaced by coaching. The Head Coach in healthy communication practices is you, the Alaka‘i manager, with the understanding that mistakes will be made, screw-ups will happen and unfortunate things will be said, but they all can be corrected with practice in a safe environment. Everyone at every level needs practice. No practice, no mastery.

4. ‘A good time to tell you’ is every time and any time. You’re approachable. Great managers communicate with everyone in the workplace with remarkable consistency, even when they’re in a bad mood. The temperament of your responsiveness is predictable for people, and ‘predictable’ means pleasantly handled in a level-headed way, no matter when.

5. Constant conversation is part of the culture. People exercise their voice by means of a workplace expectation like The Daily 5 Minutes. Innovative engagement happens because people converse constantly, and not just when something comes up which needs to be fixed. Conversation is to create synergy, not merely to solve problems in a civilized way.

6. “Put it in writing” isn’t said anymore, except for within the context of a multi-detailed, still-complex project. The spoken word is good enough, for one’s word is one’s honor, and follow-up happens. Email confirmation clutter decreases, idea mind-maps systematically replace progress reports, and your HR department stops asking you for your documentation.

Alaka‘i managers understand that having a workplace like this is something they must purposefully and diligently create: It doesn’t just happen by itself, no matter how good the atmosphere seems. They manage catalytic workplace practices that are valued as company best practices; the ideas may not be original, but they have teeth to them, and they aren’t academic or business-speak, they are real. This is the work of great management; it’s your work.

To start, I give my Daily 5 Minutes Resources to you freely: Adopt the D5M and reap the benefits. Release the voices of those you manage from their self-censored silence, then listen well for the contributions they are sure to start offering you.