Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

Your Edge comes from your Inconvenience

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The short post which follows, originally appeared on my Say “Alaka‘i” column for the Honolulu Advertiser in October of 2009. The context then was slightly different; as I recall, we were in battle with mediocrity at the time. However having an edge applies to our recent discussions as well. I thought about it when writing up The G in Goals stands for Greatness, which I ended this way:

If you think Goal Setting is boring,
do what you must to light your fire with it again.

But first… by way of intro, and in keeping another recent reminder within sharp focus…

Getting “all fired up” is a Clearing

One way to light your fire, and challenge your most brilliant self, is to “Burn Your Boats” ~

“I’ve never forgotten the story of the famed explorer Hernando Cortés. He landed on the shores of Veracruz, Mexico, in 1519. Wanted his army to conquer the land for Spain. Faced an uphill battle: an aggressive enemy, brutal disease and scarce resources. As they marched inland to do battle, Cortés ordered one of his lieutenants back to the beach with a single instruction: ‘Burn our boats.’ My kind of guy.”

“Challenge serves beautifully to introduce you to your best — and most brilliant — self. How fully would you show up each day — at work and in life — if retreat just wasn’t an option?”

—Robin Sharma, The Greatness Guide
(which I highly recommend: One of the most dog-eared books I own)

Too extreme?

Well then, what does it take for you to choose action? Goals are actions of the Hernando Cortés variety: They explore, but they also seek to conquer something.

You may have noticed that fire is a highly visible, hot emotion metaphor for me. Burning, not destructively, but as in having a “burning Yes!” as opposed to a wimpy, unemotional decision.

Another morning for the Keawe

Where I live, on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, brush fires are more common than we would like them to be, but the wonderful thing is that they don’t leave lasting scars behind. In fact, they clear: After a fire, the green shoots emerging from the ground are so life affirming. Fresh. New. Exuberant. Growth happens where it would never have began without that fire, and it happens quicker, for the fire didn’t take everything: It left behind both space and nutrition.

Fire Remnants Green after the fire

So how do we bring those lessons back to us, and understand what motivates us, freshens and renews us, particularly in setting challenging goals, and then, as managers, helping others do so?

January Wildflowers

Well, another way to light your fire is to make things inconvenient for you, just like our Big Island wildfires temporarily do, blocking the main highway. Consider with me, how…

Your Edge comes from your Inconvenience

I have noticed something about the workplaces I have visited recently. Managers are playing it safe, and that’s bad news for all of us. The inventive, edgy work borne from fresh ideas doesn’t happen where managers play it safe.

How often do you seek out those who aren’t on your radar, engaging them in conversation?

How often are you deliberately working on what is completely inconvenient and out of the norm for you?

How often do you push yourself to do the things you don’t like to do, arriving at those places which fall out of your comfort zone —and then staying there long enough to learn a new m.o.?

Make no mistake about it: Any edge you gain in today’s highly competitive world will come from your inconvenience.

I realize that this goes counter to what so much of management is all about. We managers work to make everything comfortable and predictable. We smooth ruffled feathers. We eliminate variance. We knock down barriers and obstacles. We spend considerable time and effort paving over the bumps in the road, and tending to the peace and order of the workplace landscape so that everyday work gets done with some kind of productive regularity our stakeholders can count on.

Well guess what. That’s what everybody else does too.

And remember, even A Copy of the Best is Still a Copy.

Hard as it may be to maintain peace and order, you can’t pat yourself on the back once it’s done and stop there. If you do, you’re the same as everyone else, and you won’t be anything special because you didn’t go the distance.

At first this sounds like a leadership concept (and it is), but it’s about Alaka‘i management too, for when we manage we channel available energies. If you are only working within your own comfort zone, you are missing the catalytic disruption which you can harness, and there is a LOT of energy available in disruption, waiting for you to channel it more productively.

Breakthrough-your-business Word for the Day: Disrupt (link to Ho‘ohana Aloha)

Let’s go back to the questions we started with:

How often do you seek out those who aren’t on your radar, engaging them in conversation?

How often are you deliberately working on what is completely inconvenient and out of the norm for you?

How often do you push yourself to do the things you don’t like to do, arriving at those places which fall out of your comfort zone —and then staying there long enough to learn a new m.o.?

Go spend some time on the wild side: Any edge you gain in today’s highly competitive world will come from your inconvenience.

There’s a fringe benefit too: You’ll never be bored.

Find your Blue Flame Inspirations: There’s no refrigerator space for inspiration.

Dangerous? Risky? Perhaps, but as the saying goes, you go out on a limb because that’s where the sweetest fruit is!

Peach Profusion

Annual Appraisals: What should I say?

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This was a reader email in response to my last posting about performance reviews. Please read that first for best context if you have not yet done so: Annual Appraisals & Performance Reviews: There’s a much better way.

“Rosa, assuming we’ve done our homework as you described, can you give us more suggestions on the conversation we can have within the appraisal meeting itself? I really stumble with that expectation that it’s a good time for goal setting, and handling it without feeling like I’m forcing the issue.”

Great question, for you bring up an excellent point: What’s the objective of the appraisal meeting, and are you accomplishing it?

The answer may vary in different companies (this goes to the point within that last post about understanding your mandates). While I was employed by the Hualalai Resort, annual reviews were tied to compensation, but with an added layer of complexity: Profit sharing via an incentive program structured via departmental bell curve (promoting ‘healthy’ competition), which was also tied to annual goal-setting. That alone was a big job to tackle!

Learning to deal with that expectation, and accomplish that objective well, was a big factor in my subsequently developing a different model for the MWA OIB (‘Ohana in Business ® model) where performance review coaching (which many managers assume is ‘officially done’ in an annual appraisal) isn’t actually done then, for it’s considered everyday management: Your People are Your Daily, and deserve way more than an “annual review.”

Objectives versus Goals

Let me share a bit of clarity in our vocabulary here, for it’s an important distinction:

  • We use the word ‘objective’ to refer to company-wide objectives,
    i.e. All annual appraisals in this company are done for this specific reason (whatever it may be for you), as a shared objective across company divisions: It aligns with our values, and is conducive to achieving our mission and vision.
  • In comparison, ‘goal’ varies individually, and is set personally,
    i.e. Warren’s goal is increase his skill level with matching typography to the graphic designs he works on — on our behalf, as the job he performs while working here.

All employees differ, and so in addition to understanding your company objective (and fulfilling it) you have to personalize annual appraisals for them: Never lose sight of the fact that an appraisal is documentation connected to their good name!

Company objectives largely seek strategic consistency in an organizational culture, whereas goal-setting should focus on individual talents, strengths, skills, and Ho‘ohana dreaming — and how their most fervent goals can be a shared win, in that they benefit the company employing them as well.

That, to me, is the overall objective of performance coaching: Managers mentor their people in the delivery of performance which grows them (i.e. helps them achieve their personal goals) while they simultaneously make an important, and meaningful contribution to the mission and vision of the company employing them. Besides earning compensation for their efforts, that contribution is what employees have agreed to deliver when they hired on. Hopefully, they chose their job well in the first place, having anticipated that it would be a Ho‘ohana connection for them: They make a valuable contribution and enjoy doing so.

So in my view, and returning to answer your question, that’s the conversation you are having when you help employees with goal-setting. This is what I’ve suggested in Managing with Aloha (page 49 in the hardcover):

Great managers make it their practice to schedule periodic reviews with employees to talk through these five sets of questions:

1. Now that a few months have gone by, how do you feel about the goals that you have set for yourself? Do we need to work on any revisions or shall we continue to work on course? Are your goals still a match for your mission? (Has Ho‘ohana and ‘Imi ola connected?)

2. Where do you feel you have made the most progress? Why do you suppose this has happened? How can we duplicate your success? (Look for the pleasure that Ho‘ohana, working with intent and purpose delivers.)

3. Were there any unexpected results? What kind of challenges have you encountered? How can I help you? (Time for more Aloha?)

4. Are you comfortable with the measurements we’ve set up to monitor your progress and quantify your achievements? (Have numbers count success, not failure.)

5. What is your next step? What kind of timeline are you setting for yourself? (Keep ‘Imi ola at the forefront, seek the best possible form, the best possible life.)

After each question, be quiet and listen: Give them enough time to respond to you. All of these questions are designed to get them talking, and you listening. The reason this is so important, besides the obvious things about good listening, will become clearer in the next section.

When are new Goals set?

I think this is an important question to answer, for as alluded to in this reader’s question, an annual appraisal meeting may or may not be the best time (remember point no. 4 about Acing Your Timing?) It could be a progress meeting, versus the celebration of having accomplished one goal, and now moving toward working on another one.

So let’s wrap up with this:

What is the manager’s role in goal-setting?

Here is where we run into another assumption, that managers are supposed to help others set goals. Yes, I buy that much, but how exactly, are you helping? My experience has been that managers stumble into two different kinds of sticky points:

1. What a goal should be
You can guide people through different choices, but motivation is an inside job, and an individual needs to set his or her own goals. If you try to set goals for them, and they let you, it’s highly likely you’ve sabotaged the whole deal, for their heart will never be in it completely. You want them to do it for themselves, and not to please you. So guide, but get them to decide. Call them on it if you sense they’re settling for less than they should be: Go for that burning “Yes!” where they sit up a bit straighter and their eyes light up, and not a “Okay, sounds good” as they glance at their watch.

As for your guiding them, my suggestion is that you focus smaller versus bigger: Forget the 1-year, 3-year, 5-year goal stuff, and talk about goals connected to specific talents, skills and knowledge. Be a manager who helps others learn in a focused way, and help them build on their strengths while correcting course on any weaknesses. That’s the way you support them in setting their own ‘bigger dream’ goals. Remember what we talked about earlier, and make the connection to the contribution they deliver — reaffirm how important it is.

2. Why bother?
Our goals can best be thought of as the tools which tweak us: They enable us to stretch and grow while we are making a contribution of some kind in earning our keep (whether we do so for a paycheck or for profit). Goals elevate performance and keep energies ramped up. They introduce creativity and new invention to work so we aren’t resting on our laurels, becoming complacent, and getting bored.

Sometimes managers lose sight of all these benefits, and they go through the motions with employees just because it’s expected of them — please don’t! Everything you give your attention to should be on-purpose and Ho‘ohana intentional.

Do yourself and your employees a favor, and get excited about goal-setting again by focusing on the benefits: Add more excitement and energy to the entire process, and get them to say:

“I feel strong when I talk to you.”

Be a Noble Consumer, and Pay

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No more frugality.

‘Free’ has been completely devalued: “Free” never is, so don’t ask

Join me instead, in my movement toward Noble Consumerism.

Value your community of preferred providers, if you want them in your ‘Imi ola (best possible life, a life you create by your chosen design). You need them to survive and flourish.

Pay for what you want more of. Think of it as the support you give.

Let’s change the language surrounding ‘profit’

“Wow, you’re very passionate about this, aren’t you.”

“I think of it as the optimistic resourcefulness of Ho‘ohana, and yeah, it feels terrific to get that passion back. Now tell me, how do we move this discussion into the arena of social entrepreneurship? Why can’t it be profitable too?”

We (me and a small group of managers) were talking about financial literacy within for-profit business models, specifically the OIB (Managing with Aloha ‘Ohana in Business model) and I made a statement which surprised them at first. I’d said that I don’t consider non-profits to be admirable business models, and would never create one — not without radically reinventing them first.

I wasn’t picking on any non-profit in particular, and the causes they champion, however noble, weren’t relevant to our discussion. I take issue with their basic premise: By definition, a non-profit is ‘not for profit.’ The businesses that I prefer to champion, don’t consider ‘profit’ to be a dirty word: We strive for profit, for the financial currency it can be.

Without earnings, there is no energy of gainful employment, is there. There’s no further financing of mission and vision.

Money isn’t evil: It’s a means to an end. What you do with it, after you have earned it, is another way you assign worth and priority to whatever you personally value. Same goes for a business for profit. MWA, for example, values Ho‘ohana earnings, and Sense of Place investments instead of ‘charities.’

An example of the ‘financial literacy’ and economic sensibility in our MWA OIB for-profit business model, is that everyone is paid for their Ho‘ohana (as it translates into their deliverable into our business), and no volunteers are needed. We feel it’s duplicitous to pay non-profit executives, and compensate a board of directors in kind, while expecting others to work for free. We compensate everyone fairly, and expect to pay full price. We don’t ask others for donations, or for their “pro bono” services: “without charge for the public good” makes no sense to me. The way I see it, equitable payment for any goods and services provided is what actually defines ‘the public good.’

There’s this coaching we’ve always used in Managing with Aloha workplaces connected to the One Minute Manager concept of catching people doing something right:

Reward the behavior you want repeated.
Correct everything else, with Aloha.

Business models are yet another example of the wisdom in that coaching. Good business models are aligned with good values, and they add value to our communities.

It feels great to be back on track

I admit to you that I stumbled with this over the past few years too, dodging all the rubble of our Great Recession. Just ask my family: They had no choice but to newly adopt frugality with me. Yuck.

I allowed my clients to renegotiate my pricing, and as a result, I devalued my services. In my speaking, I granted honorariums, lulled by the guise of honor in that word, despite the sinking feeling it actually gave me, a chisel to my self worth, and to the credibility of the MWA movement. Double, triple Yuck.

At the time, it felt like something we were supposed to do, until the day my husband said something which hit me like a ton of bricks: “How do you figure, that if the whole world suffers, we have to suffer along with them?”

My daughter chipped in, “Yeah mom, what happened to showing everyone the better way?” It was the winter of 2009 and we were Christmas shopping. My son added his 2 cents, saying, “Yeah! Down with Ebenezer Scrooge!”

Such a smart family.

It got me thinking again, about why I’ve always loved working within the art and science of business. Business enterprise, and smart business models, have always represented freedom and creative possibility to me. We are able to corral our resources, whatever they may be, and Ho‘o — make things happen.

So no more back-sliding, even if we fall into another recession tomorrow. The talk-story I had the other day with those managers reminded me to write this up so I could print it out, and paste it on this inspiration wall I have, never to be forgotten again.

A Noble Consumer’s Manifesto

No more frugality. Downsizing is cool, but frugality represents a scarcity mentality.
Palena ‘ole reminds us of our abundance instead: We humans are creative, inventive and resourceful.
Life is meant to be enjoyed to our fullest Aloha capacity.

‘Free’ has been completely devalued, and I won’t be party to that trend of disrespect.
I will gladly pay all fair and equitable pricing, compensate people well, and thereby encourage them to create more of what adds greatest value to our world.

I refuse to devalue anyone’s creation (their product innovation).
I refuse to devalue anyone’s time and intellectual property (their service to me).
The financial support I give others, will be Ho‘ohana support for their exceptional work, and future learning.

I will proudly continue my Managing with Aloha ‘Ohana in Business movement.
I will champion Noble Consumerism, understanding it as support of our working communities.
I won’t be an irresponsible or wasteful consumer, and my money will go toward the better motivations of others, rewarding what has a good and positive effect on our world.
I will live modestly, within my means, and valuing the right things (what is Pono for me and my family).

Join me?

Archive Aloha of Related Posts:

  1. Prepping for Ho‘ohana with Financial Literacy: Have you heard this before? “Do what you love, and the money will follow.”
  2. Money isn’t evil: Being ‘broke’ is a mistake, not a failure
  3. Values are the Bedrock of Hard Reality: “Soft and fuzzy” has taken a severe hit with our recent economic tumbles. You know what I mean; those workplace humanity concepts which fall beyond the bottom line.
  4. Wealth is a Value: If asked, “What’s the value of more money to you?” would you and your staff answer in the same way, even if I asked you to keep your answers in the context of the business?
  5. Drive well: Pay People Enough: The 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.

Value Immersion, Value Steering… Why?

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Have you been thinking about these concepts since I shared them earlier in the week? I hope so, for if you forge ahead with either one of them — and yes, you can do both at the same time — you’re choosing to employ values for the tremendous help and support they are.

Let’s back up a bit and review why value alignment may be tugging at you in the first place. Why can’t you stop thinking about this?

At the heart of the matter:

Values drive behavior. We do stuff because we believe in it, and we resist or refuse when we don’t. You can’t, and won’t pass Go if you don’t buy in.

Your personally held values put you on automatic pilot; they’re already strong, steady and sure. They make you sprint past Go because those particular beliefs have miles of proven experience behind them already, and you don’t need any pit stops to refuel.

In a business, value immersion and value steering will serve as refueling for what you signed up to do, and as a leader you’re making that pit stop much more interesting. You’re also pulling in those people in your organization you need to be on board: Their Go has been on a different game board even though they’re supposed to be on your team.

Lexus Adventure 0938

There are 2 primary reasons you opt for value immersion (valuing the how-to of everything) and/or value steering (valuing the what-and-why of specific projects):

  1. You want to make a stand with a particular value.
  2. You want your team to learn more about a particular value, so they can grow.

So if you’re still thinking about these two concepts, you want to do these things (managing better), and you know you need to (leading better.) — you’re the one ready to grow!

Make a Stand

There are certain things that shouldn’t be up for negotiation in any business. If you don’t choose what you stand for, your business won’t have much an identity. It won’t make anything very meaningful: Vision and mission are all about taking a stand, and doing so very passionately.

This all starts with the values the founders of a company believe in, and wear on their sleeve constantly because they take a stand for them. They do so knowing that they are driving effective, and unifying behaviors for their people. When people “left behind a legacy” they’ve left behind value-mapping; what we’ll more commonly call “a culture that lives on without them.”

Learn More

There must be growth in a business, even within one possessing a strong and clear legacy and culture. Alaka‘i Managers don’t want a workplace filled with robots or lab rats, they gain their personal reward from growing their people and watching them succeed and thrive.

So what does that mean, “growing their people?”

The definition I like in our workplace context, is that it means making space for more people to share in our business’s entrepreneurial spirit. To really share a business with founders, people must feel they do more than cooperate for a paycheck. More even, than collaborating for profit sharing. The ‘more’ is making space for true authorship. Think of it as sequels to the legacy. For that to happen, there must be room to grow (and sincere permission).

In the Go box, fueling this entire process, is learning. People can adopt a value they didn’t even realize was important to them before; they can begin to believe in it. When you introduce value immersion and value steering to your workplace, you’re being the Mea Ho‘okipa leading the way.

Red poles. Red door. Right arrow.

Related Managing with Aloha reading:

To review Value Immersion and Value Steering first, read: Value Alignment for Projects

  1. The beliefs held when you have a Calling for Management: Reprise: The 10 Beliefs of Alaka‘i Managers
  2. A preview of the book: The Core 21 Beliefs of Managing with Aloha
  3. Book has been read, and you want another framework of study: Learning Managing with Aloha: 9 Key Concepts
  4. Where do you fit in? Are you a manager or leader? (Link goes to Say Leadership Coaching)
  5. Mission, Vision, and Values… how do they mesh in great businesses? The Healthy Workplace Compass (Also at Say Leadership Coaching)