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What do you know to be sure? Hō‘imi ola.

January 1, 2012 by Rosa Say

Aloha dear friends, Hau‘oli Makahiki Hou — Happy New Year.

Good endings help us create good beginnings

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.

We were able to get our entire family together for a week-long Christmas celebration — quite the feat as we now live in three different cities with an ocean and quintet of job scheduling between us. The best gift I received wasn’t wrapped in bright paper and tied up with ribbon (though those were quite fabulous too); it was that strong surge of confident optimism one gets from spending giving time in the arms of ‘Ohana — family, and those you care most about in your world. We didn’t talk about it with each other explicitly, but I know we all ended the week feeling that the coming year will be good to us, and good for us, and that we’ll be good for it too. It will be our Ho‘ohana intention no matter the path of our lives.

This weekend has been blissful in another way, with a welcome abundance of quiet spells filled well, mostly with reading. Having both Christmas and New Year’s Day and their eves on consecutive weekends is the very best blessing of a calendar’s turning, don’t you think?

One of my husband’s gifts this year was an iPad2, and guess who has been using it most? It wasn’t something I had coveted, for I’ve been quite happy with my digital arsenal as is (MacBook, iPhone and Kindle if you’re wondering), but once I had the iPad in my hands I just had to play with it, and experiment!

Sidebar” it used to be that we’d “take a digital holiday” and mean that we were taking a break from our email, our blogs, and the nascent dabbling we did in social media. Now however, our app-crazed advancements have given us ‘digital degrees’ in a whole rainbow of possibilities (and quirks). Observing how a single choice can so dramatically affect our lifestyle habits is quite the fascination for me. What will morph from toy to new learning, and maybe to obsession? What value is at play, and thus, can be better revealed?

Did you ever think of apps that way, that they can awaken those assorted, still untested bits of your sleeping spirit?

One personal example for me is the app Fooducate: I now scan every barcode on a new purchase before I decide to buy packaged foods. The value at play for me is surely Mālama, and taking care of my own health with each food choice, something vitally important to me. No one wants to die of course, and neither do I, but I am someone who wants the direct route when my time arrives: I’ll eagerly bypass any physical care-getting in my waning years which just prolongs the inevitable.

A New Year brings so many new choices! Does it bring you focus? Intention?

So far, the apps rule with my iPhone, and I’m finding that the iPad is fantastic for reading web-based publishing (I’m sticking with book reading on my Kindle), and I yearn for some of the bloggers who have called it quits and have moved on. However there are so many new writers to be discovered, and where I use the iPad most is within my Google Reader.

Thus my ‘blissful weekend.’ Despite the never-ceasing yay-nay debates on setting resolutions, I absolutely love reading those blog entries where writers of all persuasion reflect on their old year, and then pen their Ho‘ohana (best work) and ‘Imi ola (best life) intentions for the coming year. They inspire the Aloha yearnings in me too: I can’t help but do the same thing — think about what I valued most in the past year, and what I intend to value most in the year to come.

Are you doing something similar, and reflecting too? I hope so.

Rally your gratitude and let Mahalo fortify you too.

Nānā i ke kumu, and look to your source. Grab your quiet time, then refresh and rejuvenate.

Be deliberate, and make your choices as you know are best for you and your life.

Ho‘omau: Persist and persevere — be downright stubborn about making your life the best it can possibly be.

That possibility is your birthright as a human being. Quite wonderful.

My value for 2012 will be ‘Imi ola

I am still reading, still journaling as I do, and still sorting out my listing of intentions, editing them for best focus. This is a process I relish as the yearly gift it is, and I am taking my dear sweet time, savoring it.

What I have already decided, and can share with you on this early day in a shiny new year that is Ka lā hiki ola (the dawning of a new day, and the value of hope and promise) is this, an eagerness for me: My value-driver that will crown any and all lists I may make will be ‘Imi ola, “best possible life” in Managing with Aloha, the value that drives proactive mission, clear vision, and creative change.

What I know to be sure, is that 2012 is a year I want change — big change, and best-life change — and I’ll engineer it so it does happen.

I don’t want to imply any dissatisfaction with 2011, for I had a magnificent year, one that pleased me immensely. It served as a tasty bite of the bigger change that is possible for me, and so in 2012 I’m stepping it up and going for more with gusto!

I’ll share my progress with you as time goes by and things shift and take better shape, but for now, let’s focus on you.

What do you know to be sure? Hō‘imi ola.

Is there anything you know to be sure for you at the moment you read this? Seize that thought, and ask yourself what value is driving you being so sure. (Remember that the Managing with Aloha values are listed on the blog sidebar if you want to skim over them as reminders or triggers.)

Some gentle coaching: Only do this with your positive thoughts. Replace any negativity with ‘on the bright side’ thinking, and steer every shred of your being toward optimism: Hō‘imi ola. (Use the 3 Secrets of Being Positive.)

Please know I do wish you blessings this year, and that they’ll magically rain down upon you with a delightful wonder. However the person who manages their life with Aloha knows those wishes are an added bonus, don’t you. You know that you can make life happen in the way you want it to, and that your values will always help you, guiding you toward your own Aloha vitality.

I am so happy to know we have found each other to share that slice of sureness. Thank you for reading, and giving me part of this, your own day for Ka lā hiki ola.

We ho‘ohana kākou. Much aloha to you,
Rosa

From last year: Ignore the Resolution Bashers
Also in the archives: Be Proactive; Values by Choice as Your Habit

As shared on Work is not a job:


“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” – T.S. Eliot

What’s the meant in Management?

December 9, 2011 by Rosa Say

When I look around me I notice: Management is everywhere.

It’s in a President deciding if he should go on vacation as scheduled, or keep working.
It’s in a European country deciding if it can handle bailing out another country.
It’s in a father and mother thinking about becoming car-less and walking more, moving their family where jobs may pay more (or be found at all).
It’s in a shopper wanting to celebrate the holidays with gift-giving, yet hesitating with the realization that ever-deepening debt is the real price paid… She’ll try to make something instead, using her own two hands.
And it’s in a high-school graduate who wonders how society can declare he is now an ‘adult’ when he should know better than anyone else if that’s true or not.

Management is something we all do, for we all need to.
We get drawn to it in spite of ourselves.
Sometimes we’ll plunge into it, sometimes we’ll fall into it, but we always find ourselves there, a place where we ask ourselves, “Now what?”

We manage by thinking, by weighing our options, and by making a myriad of daily decisions, big and small.
We manage by looking outside, by feeling inside, and then mixing the two, whether they mix like oil and water, like red blood cells and white ones, or in layers — like paint and primer.

Curbside Paint

The whole process can get fairly messy, but the time will come where we decide, and we do something (or we don’t, a “nope” word which isn’t really a “stop” word, for it has its own results as well).

Funny word, ‘management’ in the starchy formality of it.
You’d think we’d personalize it more than we do, as steeped into it as we are, and as pervasive as it is.
We talk about a whole plethora of what we manage: Work, budgets, resources, causes, values, ideas, and yes, others, when fact is, all those things are grouped under one umbrella — the one we know as our own life. All that other stuff make up a life and its moving parts.
It’s a case where the smaller moving parts constantly seem bigger than the whole because they are seen as more tangible. Weird.

Which is why we have to find (or figure out) those last four letters of management, the ‘ment’ part, somehow getting them to stop dangling there as an after thought, and get in front for a change.

I think, the ‘ment’ part has to do with intention — with our why, and the journey we each take to discover it, or to magnify it.
Our why is the part which ultimately, will make everything else (what, where, how and who) make sense, make worth, make good, make right.

Our why is what makes us feel everything else matters. When we feel our why is good and right for us, plugged into our spirit, we feel like decent human beings.
Our humanity is something we need.

Far as everyone else is concerned, they believe our why makes us more trustworthy: They want our why to get trumpeted louder, for they like when it’s clear — shiny and more transparent.

So I have a small fix to help: It can help in a big way.

Forget management in the old starchy formality of it, and begin to think of it as managemeant; managing meant that something connected to your why.

Give all those decisions you’ll be making your white magic.
Make managing meaning-full, and get self-managing to be self-managing meant something personally wonderful.
You can even plug managemeant into the auto-correct of your word processing, and have today’s digital wizardry help you, keeping you on track.

Turning management into managemeant will help you keep your managing intentional.

We’ll always just do the manage part, whether deliberately or instinctively.
We kinda have to, in the way we keep going with life.
However, it’s the meant part which will keep us human, and make us happier.

Plumbago skyward

If you feel you’re ready to do even more, tackle this with me.

When Managers Say the Right Things

November 8, 2011 by Rosa Say

Choosing the right thing to say isn’t that difficult, when it flows from the right intent. And what great results we can achieve!

When managers say the right things in a workplace, release happens — self-imposed floodgates open wide in the people who surround those managers, and their greatest possibility comes out to play. Work of different stripe, pattern, color and intensity happens, because now, people feel it can. They feel their work is wholly welcomed. Their work. People can add a personal signature to what they do — they can weave in their Ho‘ohana, and go for ‘Imi ola. They can experiment, take creative liberty, stretch, dabble and explore — these are all the good things which happen when “Nalu it” is part of the work culture.

“Nalu it” surges ahead. It jumps from meaning “go with the flow” to becoming, “go for it!”
“Nalu it” was important: It relaxes people, and gets them to drop their guard a bit more so they can go with the flow to start with. But so much more is usually possible, and when their managers say the right things in encouragement and support, people can really “go” in a big way.

Canoe Surfing at KÅ«ki‘o PointReference points: If you’re just joining us, learn about “Nalu it” here. The Hawaiian values which guide us are listed and defined for you on the right sidebar of the blog.
Besides being a pretty cool metaphor, the Language of Intention and water flow imagery of “nalu it” (to go with the flow) helps us see the work we do, and the momentum we achieve with that work, through the lens of natural physics. The strength and perpetual power of wave action is pretty obvious, yet consider this: People are a force of nature too!

Nalu from what’s expected, to what’s possible

People know they are in a workplace to work. What managers must often do for them however, is strip away anything that holds them back. What makes a difference in a workplace culture, and in the quality of what that workplace produces or delivers, is the freedom of self expression that defines that work and channels its best energies, as opposed to the structural impositions of job description and process expectations — yes, you read that correctly: Job descriptions and and process expectations are structural impositions which function very much like shackles do, keeping more liberating work in check. The best work happens without them.

Just ask your customers, and listen closely. They’ll tell you that they don’t really want your staff to follow your rules per se, they want them to own the work (‘service’ or a ‘great product’ to a customer) with a personal touch, and with that owner’s intensity that conveys “this work is part of me, it’s important to me that it’s good, and I’m so happy I can share it with you as my customer and guest.” When your staff has “owner’s intensity” they never say, “let me get my manager” because they don’t need to; they make stuff happen (they Ho‘o), and customers thrill to their sense of urgency. Customers admire what they perceive as initiative and passion, skillful ability and uncompromising competence.

As a manager, you want your customer and guest to see those things in your people, and experience them in the service they receive. All of it is a reflection of you and what you do — what you support and enable — as a great manager.

So what are those ‘right things’ that all managers can be saying?

The different phrases are abundant, and you can make them personal, saying them in your own words, but they will all be rooted in two kinds of intention: Giving permission and sharing appreciation (the value of Mahalo).

Sharing appreciation has to do with that excellent and timeless supervisory advice: Catch people doing something right. Great managers aren’t cagey or subtle about it either: They speak up (saying the right thing, at precisely the right time) to let people know they’ve caught them, for the glorious affirmation of the aha! moment which just happened, and so they have a chance to say thank you in a genuinely sincere way. In a workplace, the best “thank you” of all is said when a manager catches their people wallowing in their strengths and talents; they’ve lost all sense of time, and their work is truly in flow. Because of the investments already done in basic competency and in value alignment, people are confident, and their work seems to sing. Managers are able to say, “thank you for doing what you do, and for doing it so well” because KÅ«lia i ka nu‘u — the value of excellence has been in play.

Before we get to that sweet spot however, the right things said by a manager will largely be about giving permission, in whatever the form and frequency that permission is needed.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” The people who say it (and usually quite proudly) are those who hate being held back in any red tape or within the more plodding, cautious work of others. They want to go for it; they’re the “nalu it” surfers and waterwomen who paddle out where there aren’t any lifeguard towers. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission” sounds cocky and arrogant, but often it’s simply confident. They feel their odds are more in favor of success than failure — odds are that asking forgiveness isn’t going to happen, so why waste time on the permission? Just get it done, and prove the point. Everything will be fine — how bad could it be?

“The cool thing about reckless abandon is that there is always time to be sensible later.”
~ Seth Godin in Insubordinate

Again, more confidence than arrogance is in play here, for they also have a much bigger viewpoint of what success is: They’re quite sure there will be a discovery of some kind that isn’t necessarily a bona fide accomplishment yet. Heck, that discovery might even be a brand new mistake they never made before, because it’s the first time they were able to paddle out that far. That’s a good thing! Mistakes are cool. Whoever would expect they need to be forgiven for that?

The very best workplace wave people can ride? When they get permission as a gift without having to ask for it first. They get, “Nalu it!”

Let’s get back to those “right things” that a manager will say. I’m a fan of the “Nalu it” Language of Intention because it’s such a good reminder of these statements as a “give good permission” intention category. Examples are;

“Just go for it — you know what to do, and you’re the best at it.”
“Sounds to me like you have a handle on this, so just call if you feel you need something; I’ll be happy to help.”
“I’m sensing you have another idea about this; tell me about it.”
“The energy you’ve been devoting to this is fantastic; thanks so much.”
“We’ll have the luxury of more time with this project; would you like to try a different approach?”

Or simply, “What say we try something new, you game?”
And as often as possible, “What do you think?”

To be an Alaka‘i Manager, work on this deliberately: Speak with those two critical intentions of giving permission and sharing your appreciation. Add it to your list of dailies, with The Daily 5 Minutes and as a Best Communicator. The magnificent day will come, when one of your people looks at you and says, “I feel strong when I talk to you.”

A suggestion for Managing with Aloha readers: Review Chapter 4 on Ho‘omau, the value of perseverance and persistence. The connections to this discussion abound, and those Ho‘omau connections are often why we managers want to release others within their good work in the first place; they’ll have several “Nalu it” waves to ride over time.

Noticing. Person to person, face to face

September 12, 2011 by Rosa Say

Liz Danzico and Frank Chimero have me thinking about noticing, and about my own observations (and what I do with them) when I do:

From Liz: The Beagle and the F Train

From Frank: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

Please take the clicks to read both Tumblrs (they aren’t too long) and come back.

I do think about the giving of our attention quite a bit, for that act of intentional attentiveness is like the starter button to the managing-or-leading energy sequence. Thus, adding observation and noticing to the mix in the remarkable way that Liz and Frank encourage, is another kind of skills-mastery and life appreciation — it is very tantalizing.

I was fortunate enough to deliver a D5M Workshop this past weekend, and so the association is unmistakable for me with that very precious conversation in mind: Noticing is a biggie in our giving someone The Daily Five Minutes too. It’s part of lokomaika‘i — the generosity of our listening attention. It continues to be big in all of our conversing, and how we will respond.

When you think about it, our full capacity for noticing well is something we give up when we opt for digital communication over face-to-face time (like texting or emailing someone in the next room, or same building), for we cannot notice what we cannot see. We cannot notice so much of the emotion that may lurk behind those digital bytes; they simply do not give us enough to observe, and to respond to. We often will miss knowing about things we need to finish well.

I don’t know about you, but that thought, of willingly giving up on so many clues in my digital habits, doesn’t sit well with me. It makes me recommit to my own D5Ms, and to all my other opportunities for in-person communication. There’s a lot of good to notice when we talk story with each other in the person-to-person way! There’s a lot of ease to be gained in affirming others because now, we do notice.

Yes, noticing is definitely a word I need to keep front and center in my vocabulary, and thus, within my intentions. It’s good language of intention (see key 5) in the way I personally manage with Aloha.

not quite clear on the concept
Photo Credit: Not quite clear on the concept by woodleywonderworks on Flickr

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