Talking Story

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Model Me This

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We took a look at business models last week:

” and I got an email asking,

“Mission, vision, or goals Rosa, which is more important? I think I’ve got too much in my model, and I want to make it simpler. I know all three can be important, but which one will be my trump card?”

Which one sets your heart on fire? That’ll likely be your trump card.

There’s little use having a model you’d get an “A” for in some business course — including one of mine, because those are get-your-training-wheels places that at best, will steady you in your seat. The models you study get your thoughts somewhat less random when you’re wondering where to start, or what to kick-start next. The truly good stuff will be in the detail peculiar to you that you never edit out because you want it so badly.

I’m a fan of models because they keep me organized once I’ve already identified what the one thing is I want to build: They’re directional. They point me in the right direction, but in my heart of hearts, I know what I want to find once I arrive there: I want to arrive at a supremely productive, deliriously happy and healthy workplace culture.

So you can use one of my models if you want the same thing, but ultimately, the true goodness of using it will be in the details that you are most passionate about. You will work on what you want to work on because it lights up your business life. You will ignore the rest, and that’s actually a good thing.

Great business stories don’t happen because of models, they happen because of the part of the model you worked on the most, devoting all your dreaming and doing energies to.

When we were kids, those Revell plastic replica kits were the rage of the toy stores. When my kids were young, Lego took over those same toy store shelves, but the sales technique was the same: A glossy box cover with a tantalizing photo of what the result would be once we put the model together.

It was that box cover that got us to choose the one we wanted.

My dad was the one who cared about the number of pieces in the box, and about how much glue he’d have to buy to go with it, and if we could handle the level of difficulty it would present to us, but us kids? We didn’t care, we wanted that box cover to come alive in our hands. We wanted that feeling knowing that we made it, and that all those things my dad cared about didn’t really matter — we’d get through them.

So model me this:

Model me your box cover.

But if you’re an Alaka‘i Manager, don’t stop there.

Model me “that feeling knowing that we made it, and that all those things [organizational obsessives and business gurus cared about] didn’t really matter.”

You’ll have the best model you can possibly have.

And you know what? Those other things you asked about? Mission, vision, goals… they’ll come with your box. Your team of model-makers may not identify them with those words exactly, but they’ll be there.

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sayalakai_rosasayMy mana‘o [The Backstory of this posting]
Each Tuesday I write a leadership posting for Say “Alaka‘i” at Hawai‘i’s newspaper The Honolulu Advertiser. If this is the first you have caught sight of my Say “Alaka‘i” tagline, you can learn more on this Talking Story page: About Say “Alaka‘i”.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Talking Story connections [Learning the 9 Keys of MWA]
If you have now Become an Alaka‘i Manager, how would you connect this post to your ongoing learning of MWA Key 6?

6. The ‘Ohana in Business:

The best form for your life can be the best form for your ‘Ohana in Business ® as well, where the goals of each will support the other. A business can be more than self-sustainable and profitable: It can thrive. We learn a value-based business model and organizational structure simultaneous to learning productivity practices which drive ROI (return on investment) and ROA (return on your attentions).

Talking Story Category Page: Key 6—The ‘Ohana in Business

Management is What and How

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Aloha,

This article is a follow-up to this one: Leadership is Why and When. I recommend you start your reading there if you have not seen it yet.

White Floral Tops

Last time we had started with a Quick Say “Alaka‘i” contextual review, and I would like to do that again today, but this one is specifically in regard to the skill set and discipline of management:

Today, let’s start with that last bullet point.

The Secret Sauce to Getting Work Done

I say “the secret sauce of our work together will be our shared values” because at the most basic level, our values are in the driver’s seat with any work being done at all.

Values are a big deal, because our values drive our behavior. They give us this emotional grounding, and they put us on automatic pilot in a way. We will naturally behave in ways we believe to be right, and our values stem from those beliefs. We will then forge our best habits by building them on the foundation of our values.

Our values have also served us well before: They are our good history. They have played out just fine in our past experiences, when we were behaving in the way which our values had impelled us to do. Therefore, they will continually reinforce themselves in our psyche. Simply said, our values have proven to us that they work, and we have no good reason to abandon them.

Values and Predictability

When managers feel they understand the people they work with, they will say, “I can read them. I kinda know how they think by now.”

Managers are not mind readers: What they mean is that they can pretty accurately predict how a person will think, and then how that person will act (if they follow through on their real thoughts) when they have identified and “read” that person’s values.

For example, a manager who knows his or her people well, would say things like this about them:

 

Malia believes in honesty being the best policy, and so she will always find the best way to reveal the truth, and all of the truth, even when it might get uncomfortable for the rest of us at first, for she knows we will eventually arrive at the best place with it.

Ikaika believes in holding people accountable, and so he will always take personal responsibility with his part of the work before he shifts any blame to someone else, but he will hold them to their responsibility as well.

Our values will cause our behavior to be very consistent. All managers need to do is pay attention.

This attentive “reading” of people’s values is an extremely useful skill for a manager to have. For ultimately, managers get the work of mission and vision done through other people, in the place they share while engaged in that work.

Sound familiar? We mentioned those same words above, when we said managers are stewards of what must be a healthy organizational culture. We said they focus on 1) people 2) place 3) mission and 4) vision.

Management is What and How

So let’s assume we’ve taken care of this part already: Leadership is Why and When

Leadership skill and discipline has come into play with the clarity of an idea turned into vision, and aligned with company values (WHY). Leadership has also dealt with any fear of change, and infected everyone else with the same sense of urgency (WHEN). Now it’s management’s turn to take over.

Again: We are referring to the manager’s self-discipline with choosing leadership actions (and using those skills) at certain times, and with choosing management actions at the other times those skills have become necessary.

Management skill and discipline has to do with getting the job done.

  • We know the WHY: We agree, we buy in.
    Now WHAT must we do? WHAT is our mission needed to achieve the vision?
  • We know the WHEN: We agree, we buy in.
    Now HOW do we connect all of these variables, and actually cause this change to happen, owning the vision ourselves as well, and being the ones to execute it?

A Healthy Organizational Culture Adapts Well

When the organizational culture is at its healthiest best, this is the attitude of everyone now involved:

“The baton has been passed. We don’t need those doing management OR those doing leadership to micromanage us. The baton is in our hands now, we can do what it takes, and we will.”

Remember those colorful ribbons of imagination and that dazzling big bow of innovation?

 

These kinds of ideas are called “visionary” because they are usually tied up with colorful ribbons of “what if?” imagination, and topped with a dazzling big bow of “we can do this!” innovation: The gift itself ”“ and it IS a gift, much more spectacular that its wrappings ”“ is what we will start to call the vision of the idea.
— Leadership is Why and When

Great managers will bring those things into reach, because they know their people well. They also know their people are much closer to understanding the actual work which must get done ”“ work associated with that change we now agree we must undertake, getting us from point A (now, today) to point B: The future where we open the vision box and make it present day reality.

What does it mean, to “adapt well?” I think of it as a kind of experimental weaving that occurs. For imagination and innovation to happen, great Alaka‘i managers make the work creative and collaborative, playful and fun, safe and relatively risk-free. The work being done is pilot-proposed to initiate change, and it is project-contained for measurement, while still exciting, edgy and energetic. As they engage others, Alaka‘i managers ask questions which will facilitate progress:

  • WHAT are the missing pieces we must now identify, and make part of our culture for our mission to happen?
  • HOW do we weave these new pieces into the design of the work we already do? Are we only adding, or are we replacing something else in our systems and processes, and retiring the old way?

They also ask, “”and what about us?”

And just as I’d summed up leadership’s WHY and WHEN this past Tuesday, you know the answers.

All that is left to do, is Ho‘ohana: Ho‘o and make them happen.

Ideas Got Very Practical

So let’s sum up the week on Say “Alaka‘i:” What we’ve actually been talking story about is what you do when you think you’ve come up with a good idea. You need never let any good idea die again!

  1. You get an idea, one with visionary possibility.
  2. You lead with the WHY of values and vision.
  3. You deal with any apprehension connected to change so everyone shares the WHEN of your sense of urgency.
  4. You manage with a clear understanding of all these things first, and then you turn your focus back to understanding your people, and the way they work.
  5. You identify WHAT mission is needed to achieve the vision.
  6. You allow the healthy and highly adaptable culture you have remained a steward of, to clue you in to HOW this will all come together.
  7. And together, you Ho‘ohana.

Yep, all about you, the Alaka‘i manager. I know you can do this, one great idea at a time.

Let’s talk story.
Any thoughts to share?

Photo credit: White Floral Tops by Rosa Say.

~ Originally published on Say “Alaka‘i”
July 2009 ~
Management is What and How 

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More on Making Meaning

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If you haven’t read it yet, skip down to my post Check Out Art of the Start. Then come back up here.

I read the manifesto again this morning for myself, for the 9th or 10th time, and want to share a bit more with you about No. 1 on Guy’s *GIST List: Make Meaning.

“Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.” —Guy Kawasaki.

One of the questions I’m asked most often these days, is why, or how I came to write my own book, Managing with Aloha. It’s a story that started in a very practical way, with my behaving in pragmatic fashion true to long-standing habit. However it’s a story that developed (and is still being lived, and written) because it became my way—after years of subconsciously looking for it—to make meaning.

Guy says it took him 20 years to figure it out for himself, and here, well, I’m admitting it took me way longer than that. The point is this: you can beat both our track records and start today.

In the very beginning of Art of the Start, Kawasaki explains that “making meaning is the most powerful motivator there is.” He then asks us to do a very simple exercise:

“Complete this Sentence: If your organization never existed, the world would be worse off because____________________________.”

Here’s how I now finish it “ ” because people need to know all the work they do can be worthwhile, and the business community in Hawaii can lead the way with our values of aloha.”

In the past, as much as I would admire people like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, and other humanitarians, I’d have this ache inside wondering if a day would ever come that I had a similar passion to serve that was so strong, so noble. Would I ever work for a reason other than making the money needed to survive? And Guy is absolutely right: once you do know what meaning you are destined to deliver, it is the most powerful motivator there is.

Spend some time with Guy’s manifesto. Do his exercises. Think of them as a gift you give yourself.

One last link to share if you enjoy the ChangeThis manifesto of Art of the Start as much as I did: ArtoftheStart.com

Enjoy the rest of your month; we’re days away from a new Ho‘ohana on November 1st.
(Halloween is my husband’s birthday, so we’ll be celebrating at the Say House as we always do!)

*GIST is Great Ideas for Starting Things.

P.S. Did you know that Guy Kawasaki was born and raised in Hawaii?

Post update: Have just learned that Art of the Start is in contention as Fast Company’s Book Club selection for January: Take this link and cast your vote!