contribution

Hawai‘i’s Primary Recession-Proof Strategy is Ho‘okipa

December 11, 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 9, 2008, so we will be able to reference it in the future when the original url it had been published on is no more…

Hawai‘i’s Primary Recession-Proof Strategy is Ho‘okipa

This past Tuesday I read Robbie Dingman’s business section article with interest, eager to hear about more of what incoming chairman of the board of the Hawai’i Visitors and Convention Bureau Mark Dunkerley had to say: HVCB chairman asks industry to improve tourism product.

Her headline had caught my attention, for long before this recession sharpened our focus on different financial variables, another variable (also undeniably financial) had been a dramatic and much too prevalent stand-out for me for quite some time now: A lack of Mea Ho‘okipa-inspired service.

We need to get Ho‘okipa [the Hawaiian value of hospitality] back into every single nook and cranny of our tourism “product,” for our Aloha-branded service delivery IS our product. Hawai‘i is a place where service and product are NOT two separate things requiring separate strategies. Not in tourism, and not in any other business that claims Hawai‘i as part of its community.

I did not attend the event, nor have I seen the full text of the speech given: Solely on the merits of Ms. Dingman’s article, I applaud Mr. Dunkerley in using his leadership pulpit as the new HVCB chairman as he did, for not many of us have such a forum and can make similarly financial requests of our peers in the market as weighted as his experience as president and chief executive officer of Hawaiian Airlines.

“And he said that community commitment will be sought at a time when other priorities are competing in areas that range from education and healthcare to other businesses.

“Helping businesses improve the quality of the tourism infrastructure of our state is an investment that will be paid back to this community many times over,” he said.”

I agree with him. My post today is more in the vein of “AND as we speak of the supporting cast right now, let’s please not forget THE most critical component of all.”

“Dunkerley said private investment in the tourism industry already has helped.

“Hotels of all sizes, as well as many companies throughout the state, have renovated, expanded, added new products and otherwise invested in Hawai’i,” he said.

Better places to stay, bigger variety, new activities “all contribute to keeping the visitors who are looking for a vacation out of the maw of the destinations against which we compete,” he said. And that includes Central and South America, Asia and even other Mainland resorts.”

Wonderful as that is, our good work is not done folks. Without our Ho‘okipa presentation of our Aloha Spirit, those “better places to stay, bigger variety, new activities” are fancy shells devoid of warmth and the rejuvenation our visitors look for in Hawai‘i —and that we look for in each other.

We all can learn more of what the Mea Ho‘okipa can teach

I hold Mea Ho‘okipa [the people who live Ho‘okipa daily] in very high esteem, for I greatly admire their capacity palena ‘ole [without limits or boundaries] in giving ”“ in LIVING ”“ the art of hospitality in everything they say and do. They draw from the unconditional acceptance of Aloha constantly. The practice Lokomaika‘i [the generosity of good heart] for the pure joy of it.

I believe that Mea Ho‘okipa are born that way; I wish I could be more like them. However that is not going to stop me from trying, and if you are a manager and leader in business, you better not let it stop you either!

This is the advice I still give: Market conditions do not really matter.

Personally, I do not believe that you can teach someone to be Mea Ho‘okipa: Either they are or they aren’t. You can’t fake a genuine sincerity for giving that you simply don’t have in you. The good news is that many people have it.

Learn to interview in a way that reveals those naturally born Mea Ho‘okipa. Hire them on the spot. You can then better devote your time toward creating the best possible environment for them to deliver their art of Ho‘okipa without shackles, boundaries, or inhibitions. You discard any rules that get in the way of them doing what they feel the guest needs—not always what that customer may think they want, but what they really need to be satisfied. When it comes to their guest—your customer—Mea Ho‘okipa are extremely intuitive: They inherently possess the instinct to know the difference and they proceed accordingly, giving them perfect delivery of service. Mea Ho‘okipa are dripping with caring, that marvelous ability to instinctively know what their guest needs to be happy; they can feel it.

~ from Managing with Aloha

Are you Mea Ho‘okipa? Do you have that instinct that I believe to be “extremely intuitive?” Interestingly enough, most Mea Ho‘okipa do not feel that the customer is always right. Instead, they feel very confident that they know what will ultimately make a customer happiest and most contented and satisfied, even when that customer might not know for themselves. Big difference.

Are Mea Ho‘okipa better people than you and me?

Not necessarily. They just find certain things easier, that empathetic service intuition chief among those things which come so naturally to them. However I also believe that we can all learn to be more like them, practicing to deliberately and purposely do what is akin to breathing for them. We can work harder at it, and for the sake of our Hawai‘i right now, we need to.

We serve each other too. While we all may never BE Mea Ho‘okipa completely, the improvements we will achieve in the striving to learn and practice our learning are bountiful and undeniable. They directly impact the bottom line of every single workplace which exists, for every business has ‘internal customers’ who want to receive the Aloha-branded service of the Mea Ho‘okipa too: Ho‘okipa feels that good, and Ho‘okipa feels so right.

Where to start?

A Management Strategy for Better Service: Expect and Practice

We’ll talk about Aloha-inspired Ho‘okipa-service much more here on Say “Alaka‘i.” To start, I would suggest that leaders and managers adopt a two-word mantra: Expect and Practice. Turn it into a promise: We will expect and practice Ho‘okipa. Say it out loud and do it: Make it happen.

I call it a management strategy in alignment with our vocabulary here:

Great leadership creates positive energy.
Great management channels that energy into the best possible results, delivering healthy, meaningful and fulfilling work to people in the process.

Leaders champion ideas.
Managers champion people.
Their partnership can be profound.

EXPECT exceptional service delivery from every single person who works for you and with you (yes, vendors and partners too.) No ifs, ands, or buts; no exceptions. Expect it to happen all the time, and do not accept compromise, justifications or excuses. Exceptional service delivery must be non-negotiable; it must be Job One.

PRACTICE on each other, and talk story constantly about when it’s good for you, and when it needs to be improved. Give your YOU-branded personal service to the customer, give it to each other, give it to everyone. Then, celebrate wildly when it happens; reward those service behaviors you want to see more of.

Enjoy the giving and the receiving. We can have the same thing we give to our visitors, and we can share in the goodness of it; there is a lot to go around, and more than enough for everybody. As said so succinctly in one of my all-time favorite quotes, “One of life’s greatest laws is that you cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening your own as well.”

Ho‘okipa is like Aloha: To get it into your own life, you have to be obsessed with giving it. Start with you.

Here are my main points as they appear via a Wordle:

Business and Busyness: A world of difference

December 9, 2008 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Business and Busyness: A world of difference

We all fall into auto-pilot at times. We defer to our comfort zones of routine and regularity because it is easier, because both the inputs required and the outcomes of doing so are predictable, because we prefer to stay under the radar for now, and because we are so utterly human: At times we just need to stop trying harder and cruise a bit, going through the motions of making “normal” happen.

Understandable. Okay even, as long as we are aware that we have those lapses of uninspired energy exertion (for auto-pilot still requires some energy spending) and we intentionally choose to have that kind of moment, or hour, or entire day. Beyond a day is sleep-walking and you need help waking up.

It may be battery recharge time with our engines running, but on idle. But it’s definitely NOT okay in any business where idling and auto-pilot becomes the rule versus the rare exception. Not good for the business, and not good for the spirit of the people behind the wheel. Our engines are made for high performance.

Great managers play interference

One of the ways that great managers contribute best to their organizations is through the art of interception and interference: They step in when people robotically fall into auto-pilot for prolonged periods of time, and they introduce sequence breaks which get differences to happen. They are like cold buckets of water thrown on sagging shoulders on a hot summer’s day, getting the most briskly refreshing results you can imagine. They get our engines to race, and we become grateful that they do.

Here is how you can check if your supervisors and managers are those great ones capable of knowing when they need to intercept and play interference in the context of your own business enterprise or industry discipline: Ask them to brainstorm a two-column list with you.

In Column 1: Good Business
List people-generated workplace activities which happen daily, weekly, or monthly that they consider the worthwhile work connected to your strategic objectives: These are activities which are mission-critical and essential, and which result in meaningful accomplishments.

In Column 2: Auto-pilot Busyness
List people-generated workplace activities which happen daily, weekly, or monthly that they consider to be the busyness of hustle and bustle habitual routine: These are activities which consume time and attention, may seem valid, but do not directly contribute to the mission at hand. They are activities which produce busyness, but not relevant accomplishment.

Great managers know the differences between when people are engaged with work productively, or simply keeping themselves busy with it as their engines essentially remain idle.

The difficulty that many managers face however, particularly new supervisors, is in separating their people’s personalities from the detail and banality of the workplace activities themselves. People get accused of being lazy, uninspired, or without initiative when they are actually stuck in auto-pilot and need some help shifting out of it; there is a deceptive lull to busyness that we can all fall prey to at times.

Great managers help their people succeed better, and help them enjoy the work it takes for that to happen. How so?

Name the next play

Part two of the exercise is the part which is exceptionally useful. Talk about how you shift Column 2 work into Column 1 work.

First, connect specific actions to those skills, tasks, and activities that will cause the shift to happen from auto-pilot busyness to good business within your workplace. Name them so they can specifically be referred to going forward, and because the naming process will require more clarity from you. Then, talk about HOW the supervisor and manager will make the sequence interruptions happen in the course of the day, week, or month.

Next, talk about WHEN it is best to do so in the activity sequence connected to a person’s handling of it, so that the best possible engagement with meaningful work can begin to happen. This is where people specifics will come back into the conversation, AFTER you have dealt with the workplace activities and performance expectations objectively and as universally as possible. People bring their own unique talents to the skills required, and this matching up of workplace-qualified skills with innate talent is where great managers understand their work becomes a situational art, one person at a time.

This is where mentorship versus uncomfortable task correction begins to happen, and partnerships result.

Is this your first time reading?
You may find it helpful to visit this posting in our Say “Alaka‘i” archives, combining the definitions there with our discussion in this one:
Management versus Leadership: Power up your vocabulary!

Leaders don’t do all the work

December 7, 2008 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Therefore, the post appearing below is a copy of the one which had originally appeared there on December 7, 2008, so we will be able to reference it in the future when the original url it had been published on is no more…

Leaders don’t do all the work

And it’s a good thing they don’t.

The best leaders are exceptional at making room for other people: They give great managers exciting opportunity for optimizing the pool of talent available to them.

When we say we employ other people in business, what we actually are employing are their talents, their skills, and their knowledge with making some kind of production happen. We are creating opportunities for them to make contributions they will feel are important to the cause, worthwhile in the effort, and important to their sense of personal satisfaction. They will feel useful and appreciated.

In this week’s email;

A business owner asked for my thoughts with how he was planning on describing one of his ideas to the rest of his staff; he wanted some suggestions on an approach which would make them excited about what he planned to do. We scheduled a call because I had a few questions for him, needing some clarity on how to help him better, and in the course of our conversation he realized that he was making a decision which was very straightforward and quite final; he’d be explaining it to everyone and asking for their understanding and support, but it wasn’t an idea which included them very much. The actions to be taken were all his.

And that’s fine; at times that will be all that’s called for, and I admired his desire for complete transparency with his actions. However if leadership practice is what you are aiming for in particular, doing all the work involved with making a decision and executing it will be the exception versus the rule. What leaders do is create the possibility for actions taken by an entire team or larger group of people. They look for contributions, for participation, for partnership and for creative collaboration so that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

So you have your great idea. Now figure out exactly what you want others to do. Ask yourself, “How will others enroll in this and take actions of their own along with me?” and “Why will they want to?” Resist any impulse you might have to give out all the answers, because you’ll often get some much better ones!

Postscript:
Sunday Koa Kākou is where I will answer your questions or we will continue our comment conversations from the past week. If this is the first you have visited, you can read more here: Your Aloha has created Sunday Koa Kākou.

If you have a question on management and leadership you would like to see featured, I would love to hear from you! Write to me with “For Sunday Koa Kākou” in your subject line and we will share it with the rest of our Say “Alaka‘i” community of readers.