follow-up

Value Your Month to Value Your Life

January 12, 2011 by Rosa Say

Now shipping!

This is what you, and blogging here within our Talking Story community can Ho‘o — make happen…

Now published on Smashwords: Synopsis ~
This ebook will teach you about Value Mapping, a learning/doing process within the Managing with Aloha philosophy of worthwhile work. In building values-based habits you develop a way of belief-aligned living wherein good begets good, beginning with the inherent truths which already reside within you.

YOU know how this happened…

Started by declaring 2011 the Year of Better Habits.
Then you sent me a question about the Value Your Month to Value Your Life program I’d done before.
Answering that question spun off into a collection of 5 more posts.

Then I started thinking.

I’m always encouraging all of you to finish well.
I should lead by setting a good example.

So I dumped those 5 value alignment posts into a new document, cleaned them up with healthy doses of additional information, and wrote a brand new 7,505 ebook (about 18 pages as a PDF). Here’s what it includes:

Table of Contents:
Prologue: Our Values Vocabulary
Introduction: The Managing with Aloha Story
Chapter 1 – At the Heart of the Matter: Our Values
Chapter 2 – Where did our values come from?
Chapter 3 – Value Immersion and Value Steering
Chapter 4 – The Logistics of Value Immersion
Chapter 5 – Your Projects with Value Steering
Chapter 6 – The Logistics of Value Steering
Chapter 7 – Take a Stand and Learn More
Addendum: 19 Values for Value Mapping

It’s selling on Smashwords for $4.99. If you have a Kindle I’m especially loving how it turned out in that format, however you’ll have to get it from Smashwords for now (very easy… how-to here. Be sure you open the documents folder in your Kindle).

January 14 Update: For those who prefer grabbing it from Amazon.com, Value Your Month to Value Your Life has is now available on Kindle, and listed with the rest of my kindling :)

One more thing: Thank you so much for pushing me to be better as you do.
I think you’ll especially like what I’ve added in that 19-value addendum: Each MWA value has application suggestions for either value immersion, value steering, or both.

Yeah… my Year of Better Habits? Already is.

What shall we do next?

Drive well: Pay People Enough

June 5, 2010 by Rosa Say

Yes, I just jumped to a new theme this past week, so think of this post as a weekend breather, because I happened to find this video (below) via science fiction author Tobias Buckell, who posted a few thoughts on The nature of motivation.

I want to share it with you because I think it’s a good follow-up to this: The Energy of Gainful Employment. While we happily move ahead with a new theme, we are nowhere finished with our efforts in Job Creation or our Sense of Workplace call to action, are we. You go through this with your Weekly Review all the time:

You look back, taking stock of what just happened.
Then you look forward, having both directional views shape a more complete perspective,
…so you can do a good job proactively planning your week progressively, and with the pacing which feels best to you.
It’s the best way to reality-check your goals, while not losing sight of them,
…and to think about how you will team up with others in the week to come (A-Upcoming calendar appointments give you fortuitous opportunity. B-You schedule to fill open slots).

Number 3. and Number 5. MUST always include very healthy helpings of follow-up.

SIDEBAR:
Two fantastic Follow-up Tools if you are new round these parts, and missed them:

Be the Best Communicator

Improve your Reputation with 1 List

So here is what I propose: Grab the next 15 minutes or so to go back to those keepers in our recent studies here, and refresh them with what this video might trigger for you.

My take is up in the post title: This post-recessionary economy is driving compensation levels down, down, down, and business owners, we must pay people well, fully understanding how it will affect their motivation, and thus the job/work they do for you, and with you. You could also connect this to Wealth is a Value (January 2010).

I have read Dan Pink’s book, Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us, and I think this is the biggest keeper from it for most of the work world, (though I really should read the entire book again, and slowly).

“Pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.”

Then, and only then (paraphrasing now) can we talk about everything else (like autonomy and mastery, or other incentives). For then, and only then, will people stop thinking about money and begin to think about the work.

It pops up on this very cool 10-minute video at about the 5-minute mark half-way through:
RSA Animate Drive by Daniel Pink

It makes so much sense, and always great to have it backed up by smart research (we’ll take his word for it, short of reading more in his book). In his post (referenced earlier) Buckell is absorbing the book’s message as a solo artist/creative:

I’ve been talking about [the book, Drive] to creative types a great deal, as we’ve all faced the very real dilemma around the fact that when creative works becomes directly linked to pay, a very real crisis happens. Learning to navigate that is crucial to making the switch to a full time creative type. I wish I’d read Drive years ago, it would have made the transition much smoother.

To sum up:

If you’re the Job Creator for others, factor good pay into your business model — you have to in order to get them to be a good partner for you on the work itself. It’s a simple matter of being realistic about what our basic attentions must be devoted to.
Same goes for when the only job you’re currently focused on is your own: Deal with the issue of your baseline compensation realistically, and get it off your own table!

Here is some good Archive Aloha which relates to this thinking about your own business model: What if your business got sick? My own follow-up to that journey was the writing of Business Thinking with Aloha, just published last month.

~ ~ ~ Want more for your weekend? ~ ~ ~

After I saw this video and had programmed this post for you, it seemed these RSA Animations were beginning to go viral — I kept seeing a few different ones. They are done by Andrew Park of Cognitive Media if you are interested in visiting his site (Mahalo to Mike Rohde for his help in tracking down the info.) You can check out RSA here: 21st century enlightenment.
If you would like to see another, I would recommend the one summed up at kottke.org which is “A fascinating 10-minute animated talk by Philip Zimbardo about the different ‘time zones’ or ‘time perspectives’ that people can have, and how they will affect people’s world views.” — It may give you added oomph to the process and/or context of doing your Weekly Review, as mentioned above. If you like those self-assessment type online questionnaires, find out which time zone you’re in by taking this survey.
Back to the subject of job creation, here is a recent article by Robert Reich: Why the President’s Next Big Thing Should Be Jobs. Of note: He wrote this about a month before the BP oil rig explosion, and his current suggestion is that the President put BP into temporary receivership: Part 1, Podcast, and Part 2.

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

Have you caught the curve ball?

June 3, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

I threw it to you this past Tuesday: The State of our Learning and the Demand for Curation

In throwing that curve ball, I did it to you just as your boss does. I did it to you just as many who lead will do, to many who manage with them: I threw a new initiative at you, launching into a new theme whether or not you’re ready for it, and now, you just have to deal with it.

Dealing with Decisions

Such is life, isn’t it. Some of us catch well, and some of us don’t. There are some who will just walk off the field, hoping that the coach or a teammate will notice and call them back: They haven’t the resilience, tenacity and fortitude to keep trying on their own.

So am I back-pedaling to give you a breather, and let you catch up in your own way? Not a chance. (Does your boss?) You may recall that I recently wrote of a new tough-love resolve I have (it was called “Helping Without Hurting”).

Let’s just talk about catching curve balls today, on this, our “managing Thursday.” A new initiative has come down from the top: What do you do now?

First, you Catch Well

Catching well (‘well’ meaning that the next play you make is the best possible one) is a hard thing to learn for all managers. You think —you hope —that it will get easier the higher up the ranks you move, but take it from me (been there) it doesn’t. It gets harder, because you have fewer places to hide: The higher up you go, the more visibility you have, and the more people throw their ‘should-ing’ expectations at you. Others assume you have more information at your fingertips and you’re in-the-know of some inner circle.

What you know to be the raw truth of the matter, is that unless you reach that pinnacle of being Numero Uno, you answer to someone — ask any CEO how it goes with his shareholders or Board of Directors. In fact even then, up there in godlike status you’ll answer to someone: You’ve begun to understand that everyone in your organization is a volunteer no matter what you pay them. Org charts are, and always have been, irrelevant.

I don’t write this to depress you, but to save you from an unrealistic expectation. In the same way we speak of Alaka‘i, the value of managing and leading well, “catching well” has nothing to do with title or position of perceived influence. Catching well has everything to do with you, and how you decide you’ll react. And as with much in life, practice helps make perfect — or at least easier, and progressive, in that mistakes don’t get repeated. Your objective is not rank, it’s effectiveness. Or better, mastery.

Within organizational politics, you’re advised to react with ownership, and with the “buck stops with me” attitude, and it’s good advice. The more of something you own, the more you can control or better influence all the variables associated with it. The trick to ownership is not to be a victim about it, and truly catch the ball and run with it.

That last one is a loaded sentence, I know, and some will look for coaching, to get the help they need in navigating the political landscape peculiar to their own organizational variables. Indeed, it is one of the things I get hired for. Here on Talking Story, let’s bring the focus back to our work here as a “for example” we can apply to the balls thrown your way, for the strategies are very similiar to what you need to do in your own workplace as well.

So first you catch well…

Then, you make your Next Play

Your ownership starts the moment that ball is in your hands.

One sec, I take that back: Your reaction starts the moment that ball is in your hands. Every coach will tell you that your best ownership prospects happen before that: You’re one of those players who is watching the earlier plays thinking, “I’m ready: Bat that ball this way.” or “Come on! Throw it to me!” or you’re one of those players feeling you’re not ready, and hoping that the coming play doesn’t happen on your patch of grass in the field.

One is leaping ahead to the future, creating their best destiny in true ‘Imi ola fashion (they are visionary). The other is content right where they are, and a bit too comfortable, maybe even scared (they are complacent).

(Big clue there Alaka‘i Managers-who-coach, about your players: Which are thinking, for they already feel strong, and which are still feeling out the different emotions of their play/no play options?)

So which are you? It’s something you need to understand before you make your next play, because the next play causes the next outcome. In those two scenarios there are different outcomes, aren’t there.

There’s a third and fourth scenario too. They are happening with the players who are currently bench-warming. In the third scenario they are watching the game intently, imagining they are on the field in a certain position, and the ball is definitely coming their way. They’re ready to catch well and they aren’t even on the field yet!

Fourth scenario they’ve been on that bench a while, and they became the ones who bring all those sunflower seeds to the dugout. All that spit… yuck.

At this point, you may be thinking, “I thought we were talking about how I catch well here at Talking Story?”

We are.

An added word about our Value Themes

I touched on this when introducing our “learning curation” theme this past Tuesday, but it’s worth tying into this discussion again, for I packed a lot into that posting.

Let’s use our metaphor. Think of themes this way: Are you playing the game in full sun or in rain? Is it a home game, or are you on the road?

We managers, and managers-who-coach love themes because they help us focus on a certain set of options instead of all of them. You don’t apply most rainy day playbooks to anything but a rainy day. When you’re on the road, you know that your team will require more from you than they do when you play at home, and that they’ll also have to rely on each other more (or differently).

So Managing with Aloha, the game I ask you to play with me, is like a collection of playbooks for our Ho‘ohana Community. I like to think of the current theme we work with as our sunny day. Talking Story is when we play at home. Definitely.

Let’s Ho‘ohana, and play ball.

Postscript: I had this post in mind as a necessary follow-up back when I was drafting The State of our Learning and the Demand for Curation as the theme which would take us into this mid-year period. This “curve ball” metaphor was then inspired by what Sports Columnist Ferd Lewis called a “Sparkling day on diamonds for UH.” In part, he wrote:

For the University of Hawai’i, [May 30, 2010] will be remembered as the day that Cinderella danced twice. Some 1,500 remarkable miles apart.

First, in dramatic fashion before a stunned-to-silence overflow crowd in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where the Rainbow Wahine softball team punched its historic ticket to the Women’s College World Series with Jenna Rodriguez’s two-run, seventh-inning, walk-off home run that beat Alabama, 5-4.

And, then, hours later, when the Rainbow baseball team tenaciously held on in Mesa, Ariz., to beat nemesis Fresno State, 9-6, for the Western Athletic Conference Tournament title and an NCAA Regional berth.

In one pinch-me day of hope, persistence and triumph, the Rainbow Wahine earned the school’s inaugural trip to Oklahoma City, site of the World Series, and the Rainbows got their first WAC tourney title in 18 years and first regional spot since 2006.

As an Alaka‘i Manager, you can coach your own team to this kind of feeling: I know you have it in you, and that they have it in them. (Another suggested read from the archives, if you have the reading time: Feeling Good Isn’t the Same as Feeling Strong.)

Hawai‘i’s Jenna Rodriguez, right, is greeted at home plate after her second homer of the game beat Alabama.

Photo Credits, in the order in which they appear: Vintage Baseball by AdWriter and Softball by Dave Elmore, both on Flickr, and Jenna Rodriguez by Marion R. Walding, Special to The Honolulu Advertiser

Manager’s Skill: Separate Signal from Noise

April 22, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

One of the best skills you can cultivate as a manager is separating signal from noise, understanding what you pay attention to, and what you ignore as irrelevant.

However I’m not going to underestimate the effort it will take on your part: Separating signal from noise is very difficult to do in today’s world. It’s a skill you have to focus on grooming constantly.

The problem we managers face, is that the noisy stuff gets loud and rowdy, and very hard to ignore. Signals on the other hand, are just the opposite: They have a tendency to be soft or silent, requiring your diligence with seeking them out.

Often there are signals within the noise which grabs our attention, but if we don’t look for them we can miss those signals too. Here are some examples:

Signal: An aisle on your shop floor which hasn’t been restocked in weeks, maybe months
Noise: The traffic spike you get with endcap displays near the door during a week it happened to rain a lot

Signal: Slipping job performance, which has gradually happened over the past six months time for a long-term employee
Noise: A customer complaint stemming from one unfortunate employee incident during a new hire’s probationary period

Signal: The doodling that happens during most of your staff meetings
Noise: All those open laptops people claim to need for their note-taking, which has replaced the conversation you used to have in your meetings

I’ll bet you can think of a bunch more. Sit for a moment and reflect on your day yesterday: What was signal, and what was noise?

Now here’s the money question: Which ones did you spend the most time dealing with?

You see there’s an added complication we managers run into: Others expect us to be the ones who deal with the noise and dispense of it for them, and we generally agree with them, that yes, that’s part of our job (I don’t always agree with that assumption, but that can be another post for another day).

So okay, let’s say you do need to deal with both signal and noise. The danger you can fall into if you’re not careful, is that you give a disproportionate amount of your managing energy to the noise, and not enough to the signal. It’s similar to trying to lead all the time, when you need to devote the managing effort it takes to execute on the leadership ideas that are already strategically agreed on, yet have remained incomplete.

Here’s the good news:

A simple self-coaching trick can help you. All you need is a page in a notebook you’ll commit to sitting with for a few minutes at the end of your workweek for the next month. If you honor your commitment, that’s about the time it takes to solidify a new habit, one which will train you with pinpointing more of the signals you should be awarding your attentions to.

At the end of each workday, repeat the exercise I gave you as a for-example above, and just ask yourself:

“Looking back upon my day, what was signal, and what was noise?”

As you separate the two, your instincts as an Alaka‘i Manager will kick in, and you will know what you have to do in dealing with signals better, and with noise quicker. The hardest part is your awareness of the difference between them, so you CAN intentionally decide what to work on.

Be a signal chaser, and a noise squelcher. The result you will gain is two-fold:

A reputation for better follow-up. What people will appreciate getting from you is your work on signals, not on noise.
An eventual lessening of the noise. You’re now getting to the root cause of noise when you deal with it (the true signal within the noise), and there are less repeated offenders.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Archive Aloha ~ A few related posts:

More self-coaching exercises:
Coaching Caveat: Tackle just one habit at a time!