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Why I blog, circa 2011 (and about ‘real books’)

April 18, 2011 by Rosa Say

Fellow blogger Becky Robinson writes, “Clicking the publish button on a new post always requires me to muster both faith and courage.” She also shares, “Here’s another confession: apart from the fun of blogging, I am not clear about why I am doing it.”

I’m with Becky; writing a blog is fun. And I can relate to doing something because you sense it’s good for you, without being completely clear on how or why, and having trust in the process — even when it takes faith and courage.

However Becky got to me wonder if it’s time that I share more of my present day reasons with you as well, especially since I never hesitate to encourage others to blog too. Case in point: Write your story of leadership. I haven’t done a meta-blogging article like this for quite a while (a post about blogging), feeling I’ve adequately covered it in the past — there’s a bunch of them in the archives, from the earlier years of Talking Story. But I suppose that’s a little naive. Things change. The world changes, and with it the ecosystem on the internet changes, as does my purpose, and yours.

This isn’t what all the “how to blog” coaches out there are likely to agree with, for their common teaching is that a blog should be written for the reader, and not for the writer. But that’s them, this is me, I’m not looking to monetize my blog, and though I took a lot of their advice early on, this is my truth about blogging today — it’s the pono background you deserve as my generous readers, gifting me with your attention as you do.

My blog is for me, my books are for you

Though it hasn’t always been like this, and you may get a different feeling when you dig into the archives, my blogging now is for me, even in welcoming conversation with you as it does, so that my books can be for you. I went through a number of years blogging, here at Talking Story and elsewhere as guest and columnist, with Managing with Aloha all the book I felt I needed, because I worked with it so actively in my coaching business (and still do). But I’ve continued to learn more as the years go by, as we all do, and now that Managing with Aloha is seven years published for me personally, I feel it’s time for me to get back to book writing.

Book publishing has changed dramatically, and in the past year I’ve stuck with ebook publishing as my learning process about what that entails, however I plan to do both with the manuscript I’m working on now, releasing it in both ebook and printed book form. For me, as a publisher of managerial business writing, there is a good, better, best continuum that goes like this:
Blog posts ~ good. Ebooks ~ better. Books ~ best.

And not just for me as a publisher, but as a reader too. That’s why you’ve seen me get back to sharing more book reviews here with you lately, with as-they-happen updates shared on Goodreads. I’m working at improving the inputs I take in with reading, feeling that:

Blog posts (and most ‘online journalism’ today) ~ good reading, good sharing.
Ebooks ~ better reading, better exploring.
Print Books ~ best of all for true learning.

Tab it and mark it up!

A ‘real book’ is more substantial. It’s something we want printed, because it represents this very tangible filing cabinet of learning which started out as the author’s learning, but became ours too. Both author and reader will invest substantially more energy in a book, and that investment pays off with far greater rewards.

Managing with Aloha represents over three decades of work experience for me, back to the first job I ever had. The book I am working on now, will cover some specific workplace experiences I have had between 1989 and today.

Work should be relevant and useful for you

Even the ‘work’ it takes for you to read, or write. Mine certainly is. It’s all part of Ho‘ohana (chapter 2 in Managing with Aloha: here’s the free book excerpt).

As my blog, Talking Story circa 2011 is a combination of current commentary on our world of work, what I read and learn about, and a drafting of the way I write to make sense of it all. Said another way, it’s a book germinating laboratory for me today. I blog to draft publicly because I enjoy inviting you into the early part of the process, so your feedback, our conversations, can be incorporated into my thoughts too; it’s a kind of rudimentary collaboration. But I know that my blogging will not give most blog-reading managers the complete “how-to” they might be looking for help with, and that’s why I want to write more books.

I feel there is a void out there for managers today, especially in an economic climate where good professional training has been cut from business budgets, and unfortunately, is still considered a luxury, as short-sighted and naive as that is. Books can help as an affordable option; they certainly help me learn! Substantial books as I’ve described them, books that are more relevant, practical and useful, aren’t easy to find for the Alaka‘i manager, and I want to help in the best way I’m able to.

Offering book reviews, of books I have read and can recommend, is one way. Writing books myself is another.

You know how I feel: In my view, there is no good leadership without great management, at least not in today’s prevalent organizational business models (though that can change in our future, a change I’d welcome). Management is a profound responsibility, and it’s not for everyone. It’s a calling when done in the with Aloha way, not a place-holder on an org chart designed for business efficiency over and above talent development. I’m honest and vocal about telling people who manage for reasons of career climbing to get out of management as their temporary occupation as soon as they can, because they’re probably creating too many casualties along the way, instead of developing other people like managers are supposed to.

It all gets back to Kuleana, the personal responsibility we accept

I feel pretty blessed in knowing where my stronger activities lie as a writer, with ‘managing with aloha’ now more than book, and the threading theme coursing through the various business topics I’ll write about. It’s the heart of everything. I know how writing connects to my thinking, and my accomplishments, with the values-based philosophy of MWA grounding me as my Nānā i ke kumu (spirit source, wellspring, and sense of place).

I never get writer’s block, and more than anything else, my literary life is a constant search for more time to simply sit and write, versus coaching and speaking for hire, and the rest of day-to-day living. I’m rarely looking for blog topics to share with you, in fact, what usually happens is that I hold myself back or add finds to my Tumblr, fearing that I’m flooding your sensibilities with way too much early thinking on my part. I often feel I need to be more selective about when I hit that publish button here on the blog. Along the way, there is stuff that drops out of the queue, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I stop thinking about it, and it may come back in a book when its time has arrived.

Talking Story is now 7 years old, amazing really, and I’ve gotten past the newbie blogger’s anxiousness to hit publish too quickly. I do sleep on posts, queue them up in better order, revising and editing several times along the way, however I eventually let it go as a blog post, knowing full well it’s a draft of thought in process. Hopefully, you accept my invitation, and step into the laboratory because it’s enough to get you thinking about a comment you can share at times too, allowing me to be Mea Ho‘okipa in hosting this conversation platform for you.

I resist publishing blog posts until they feel ‘good’ to me in that continuum I mentioned. I want my book manuscripts to move through better and onto best. I have a much higher expectation with them, and I’m sure you do too.

The more you read, the greater the context

Read back over the last few paragraphs in the previous section, and it’s fairly obvious — I this, I that. I, I, I, and my Ho‘ohana responsibility in a blog post written about me in this blogging purpose. However please know I am very sincere about writing my books for you.

I had some hesitation in writing this post at all, for I hope you’ll stick around, and stay with me through this part of the collaborative process too. But I know that my books are better written, and better for you when reading time is at a premium, as it is for us all. This expectation has actually been a change for me over the course of my blog years too; I love when you read Talking Story and participate here, but I no longer expect it as unreasonably as I once did.

I shared a draft of this post with someone who I know reads Talking Story faithfully, and she disagreed with me completely as to the absence of more how-to’s here. However, I suspect she disagreed with me because she has already read my ebooks, and actively uses MWA with her workplace team in the value mapping process. For that’s when your blog reading changes here: You have the context of more backstory, more learning curation you’ve already journeyed through. You’ve connected reading to personally experimenting, and to gaining your experience through chosen action. As one of my haumana (students), you can easily get more of the how-to that actually is here, how-to that other people will miss.

Reading choices, with more help in the choosing

So I’ll end this post with an honest pitch for the 1 book and 3 ebooks I have written so far. 3 need to be purchased, and 1 is free, but free is subjective, isn’t it… the how-to within it is extensive, and you have to do the work it proposes to get the most out of it.

My intention with ebooks going forward, is that they fall into the $4.99 or less price point, to package one concept at a time — just as Value Your Month to Value Your Life did for the MWA m.o. of value alignment, with value-mapping the how-to. I’m quite proud of Business Thinking with Aloha, and had released it as a more robust ebook to get the distribution started in expanding the collaborative laboratory possible in exploring it more fully, suspecting it could be ‘real book’ one day in the league of MWA. It’s somewhat of an ebook experiment unto itself for now, for the big advantage to ebooks as essays, are that they can be so easily revised and updated as their ideas are further developed.

So on to the suggested reading… Those were my intentions, and what follows is what I published them as for YOU. (see all the dust jackets on my book page. I keep the link up in the blog banner.)

  • Please start with MWA ~ Managing with Aloha. You can get it in hardcover, or on Kindle.
  • Then, if MWA resonates, and you share these beliefs, deciding to answer your calling for managing others well, download Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks from Smashwords. It’s the free one, and I wrote it for people who opt for self-coaching; hiring me for personal coaching and attending my workshops are not options for them. Thus reading annotation to learn and retain is a key part of that self-coaching process (as you are starting to see me do more visibly here on the blog with my own book reviews for others).
  • If you’re looking for a more immediate start with your MWA practice, buy Value Your Month to Value Your Life. The how-to within it is value-mapping within the workplace, and it will help you see more how-to relevance in the rest of the OIB business model as it is discussed both within MWA and here on the blog. If blog posts are all you have read from me so far, this is also your shortest ebook choice. I think it’s a very good companion to the 5-week program too, helping you create an atmosphere conducive to your Ho‘ohana. Choose from Smashwords or Kindle.
  • The Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks program is an in depth study. If you decide it’s a bit much for you, consider warming up with Business Thinking with Aloha, for I wrote that ebook visualizing college graduates and other early job seekers as my audience, as a ‘business of life Thought Kit’ they can consider framing their job experience with, as they learn on the job. The framing how-to within it is based on the 9 Key Concepts (linked below). Choose from Smashwords or Kindle.

BTWA features the 9 Key Learning Concepts of MWA.
Blog page: Learning Managing with Aloha: 9 Key Concepts

The next book

So that book I mentioned writing right now” I hope to have it out soon, very soon. My first draft of the full manuscript is complete, and I’m in edit process, hoping to make it shorter and not longer. I’ve been writing it since January, having started it the day after I published Value Your Month to Value Your Life, and in my Ha‘aha‘a humble yet Aloha biased view, it will be the ultimate how-to for managing people in an extremely generous way — even if the manager who reads it decides that the full workplace bench press of the Managing with Aloha OIB (‘Ohana in Business model) isn’t for them.

The book will also launch a new coaching program I hope to have in place this summer with Ruzuku.

Stay tuned, and know that as a Talking Story reader, you’ve already been an important part of it, a very important part. Thank you.

Value Alignment for 2011

January 1, 2011 by Rosa Say

A question came up in one of your email responses to my wayfinding post yesterday;

“No monthly values for 2011 Rosa? Now that you’re blogging again, will your ‘Value Your Month to Value Your Life’ program return too?”

I’ll share my answer here on Talking Story too just in case others are wondering.

Yes and no”
Yes, I’ll be blogging here again. I’ve missed it a lot — and I’ve missed all of you! Writing is one of those ‘better habits’ in my wayfinding intentions, and blogging figures prominently in the writing I eagerly am choosing to do.

No, my ‘Value Your Month to Value Your Life’ program will not be resurrected in 2011, at least not in the same way as before — but don’t let that stop any of you! Adopt and adapt the program for your own work team: Getting started is easy. Here’s the Take 5:

  1. There are 19 values covered in Managing with Aloha, including Ka lā hiki ola in the Epilogue. Choose the 12 you feel would benefit your work team most in the coming year, and assign them to the months you think they will align with best seasonally, or per the demands of your business. For narrower, but more extensive focus, choose just 4 — 1 per quarter.
  2. Then very important, make your intentions known to your team. Get everyone involved in some way. Tell them why you want to “value the month” and ask them how they’d like to participate. Say yes to every idea which comes up and ask people to be that idea’s leader: As the Alaka‘i Manager you’re facilitating this, and you can’t do it all (nor should you” grow your team.) Teams I have coached in the past have found great success in assigning values as the steering for specific projects. (More on that tomorrow: now posted ~ Value Alignment for Projects)
  3. Stick with it, and go the distance. Use that value to theme everything you can think of within that alignment period of time you’ve chosen. EVERYTHING. You’re going for value immersion. You’ll be surprised how much you can do. Here is a good article Joanna Young wrote for Joyful Jubilant Learning on Why I Write to a Theme.
  4. Be sure to incorporate the value you choose into your language, for it’s powerful (Review Key Concept 5; Language of Intention). You’ll start to hear where you’re effective, and you’ll miss hearing where you aren’t, and need to engage more.
  5. Reach out to me, or to others in our Ho‘ohana Community (link to our LinkedIn Group) anytime you have questions or need help, especially when you feel energies waning, for remember: Leading is about generating energy as your greatest resource, and Managing is about channeling it. (Review: 3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces.)

Value alignment is the best ‘channeler’ I know of! Which, continuing on, brings me to another Yes”

Yes, I’ll be working on value alignment too! Try and stop me” As our 3rd Key Concept for Managing with Aloha I’m on automatic pilot with it in my life, and that’s a habit which has been a really, really great thing. Each year I challenge myself to evolve with it though, and so in 2011 my value alignment will set sail in the spirit of the wayfinding I wrote of yesterday. We’ll see where the journey takes us!

Two of my “best clues” (a reference to yesterday’s post, if you missed it) are Abundance and Context.

  • Abundance is connected to (aligned with!) Palena ‘ole — our MWA 9th Key Concept of Unlimited Capacity. One of the reasons I no longer choose only 12 values for my blog-writing is that they can be too limiting in my contexts here — opposite of how they will give a specific work team laser-like focus in the Take 5 above. Yesterday for example, we aligned wayfinding with three different values; Ka lā hiki ola, Ho‘ohanohano, and Alaka‘i. When I dig deeper, I can surely align wayfinding with every value in some way, and so can you; sometimes minimally, sometimes significantly, and then
  • Context moves me toward choice and action. Thinking about all of this can be mind-blowing, but you don’t want it drive you crazy either! So take aim and pull the trigger… Within all the Palena ‘ole/9th Key thinking you did, what will you take action on quickest and best? Why, and with who? You will become more decisive, and your value alignment will be directed toward the specific relationships or projects you have in mind. Practical and useful.

So consider the possibilities with value alignment, then choose your best habit this year, and take action.

How will value alignment work for you in 2011?

Go back to yesterday’s post if it helps: Do you already have clarity on specific goals, or is the wayfinding more attractive to you too? Your answer is the right answer.

A Hula Honeys Makeover

More value alignment; I Aloha-tweaked my cigar box of index cards I use as a perpetual calendar as my New Years Eve day project yesterday :)
Visuals alone can add so much, and index cards rock.

Postscript: If you are reading this via RSS or email, take a moment to click in and review the right-side column of the blog. I have a bit of updating I still need to do there, but I’ll be sure to leave the links parked there for you to find the 9 Key Concepts easily each time you return. You’ll see the value index links there too.

Postscript 2: I had the link for my free ebook on becoming an Alaka‘i Manager in the Take 5 above, but then I decided to drop it down here, for I don’t want you to feel you have to go through that whole 5-week program first and not start NOW with your value alignment. Go for it!

10 Publishing Lessons for Summertime 2009

August 9, 2009 by Rosa Say

Preface: I am sharing a learning out loud kind of posting with you today as another iteration of The Talking Story (occasional) Sunday Paper. This is a much longer post than usual, but if the subject matter interests you it won’t seem that long at all – perfect for a Sunday with your coffee :)

I am learning several publishing lessons in the administrative type work I am embroiled in right now, and so I thought I would share them for those of you who also blog or want to do other web-related publishing (RosaSay.com has a good overview of all of mine). Some journaling introspection will likely creep into this too.

If you are not interested in the insiders’ view of web publishing, and mostly read Talking Story for my values, management and leadership writing, feel free to skip this one. You can also hop over to Ho‘ohana Aloha (my Tumblr) and do the Sunday reading skim-over of finds I’ve taken note of there this past week.

Still wanted in print

If you are a blogger or web publisher and are thinking “Oh good, I may like this one —I kinda know what she has been going through…” I will warn you: Reading this may drive you crazy. Continue at your own risk, and only if you believe that ignorance is not bliss. This is also NOT a detail log of what happens when you switch from TypePad to WordPress, sorry. (Hey Jesse, maybe you should write that one!) I have to move forward and have other priorities, as will soon become clear.

Task at hand (that is, at keyboard)

I have an awful lot of work to do with updating links now that I have made this platform switch to WordPress for Talking Story. So, 1. BIG lesson learned folks: Having a dedicated domain (like SayLeadershipCoaching.com for example) versus a /extension to a domain (like TS used to be, at www.SayLeadershipCoaching.com/talking story) makes a world of difference with when you can use broken link apps to help you electronically, and when you can’t.

Thus I am starting with this note to also say I am sorry — I know that you will encounter broken links until all is sorted out. I do have an alert which lets me know when that happens, and so that is how I am lining up my To Fix List; by priority of frequency.

So from here on, let’s forget about the amount of work to be done for the moment, and focus on all the good stuff I am discovering in the process!

Prospecting for gold

As any experienced prospector will tell you, “There’s gold in them there hills” —and 2. blog “hills” are the archives.

I have wanted to purge my publishing archives for a very long time now: Five years of blogging has given me well over 5,000 posts scattered throughout the web, with 1,155 of them here on Talking Story. Thing is, you procrastinate with it a lot: Readers expect new writing and so you do that instead, and archives fall in that category called “out of sight is out of mind.” However knowing there are broken links happening with greater frequency suddenly shifts your sights again.

I didn’t think about this as much when we just converted Joyful Jubilant Learning to WordPress, for there we were able to use technical broken link fixes to do all the work for us. In contrast, Talking Story is teaching me the great value that can be gained when you do work manually. Is it “the hard way?” Yes. Is it “the long way?” Yes, and unfortunately frustrating for others too, however the value is truly exponential. Broken links are becoming blessings in disguise.

There is the obvious: You find a lot you had forgotten about, just sitting in your archives.

3. You get both post and product re-purposing ideas like crazy! I am not going into this one very much — not in this post, and not in practice for my project-at-hand would get too crazy big and I would lose focus. However you can bet I AM capturing all ideas as they come up, parking them and tracing them for later or first/best opportunity.

Let’s move on to this: On the web, older articles are not “just sitting.” You forget that there are other people still reading it, and for the very first time, but in what you consider to be ancient history framing. You also forget that there is no stats-reporting program in existence which will log every page view seen for you: Whatever stats you do see is maybe two-thirds of what is really happening (and that’s a generous maybe).

4. Old links give first impressions. Are they the first impressions you want people to have of you? My priorities are shifting much more dramatically than I expected them to: All of a sudden, I am not that concerned with publishing fresh content. What I really want is to bring all content to best integrity.

Matter of fact: Whatever is not written has become the true “out of sight, out of mind.”

“Link Love.” Maybe not.

This was my dawning realization as the manual link-fixer I now am, as briefly as I can explain it:

When a blogger links a reader to an article in their own archives (or anywhere else for that matter), we do so for added context. The link is saying, “here is more about what I just said” or “here is the back-story you missed before, and I think it is well worth reading.”

Or at least that’s what those links are supposed to do.

Before this comprehensive work, I was far too careless about time-sensitivity. We rely on the titles of our postings to trigger our memories, and we tend to romanticize them as time goes by. We fondly remember the old comments or the rush of traffic back then, and we assume a new reader will like it because an old reader did, but that isn’t always the case. Context does shift over time, and the future being as uncertain as it will always be, that shifting context is hard to predict.

If we take the time to read the article again —as new readers ourselves, new in that we have updated personal context too— we may never link back there at all. Maybe not ever again!

5. When you fix broken links, you also discover unbroken ones you wish had broken a long time ago.

Politiek Correct by GALERIEopWEG on Flickr
Politiek Correct by GALERIEopWEG on Flickr

I have had to be brutally honest with myself about something: I am not always linking back for you as my reader. I do it for my own convenience, and for different reasons. I, Rosa Say, had become a link litterer, guilty of throwing too many readers to the information-overload wolves. I have inserted far too many links in my postings, and I am now cutting back. I had good intentions, feeling I was doing a lot of the navigation work for readers, but I crossed over that line where too much of a good thing gets you in trouble. I was pretty proud of my high number of page views, but I now understand some ways in which I should not have been proud of them. I ignored the warning signal they can be.

6. Working with your archives gets you to link (and write) with better focus and deliberate intention. Sometimes links are reference points, sometimes they are for a definite C2A (call to action). As bloggers we need to craft them and plot them better: We do not read our own postings the way that readers do, and must constantly ask ourselves, who is my audience for this particular piece? Sometimes, writing for ourselves is perfectly okay, and readers enjoy coming along for the ride. Just be sure you choose deliberate awareness over blind, haphazard, or downright sloppy happenstance.

Since Talking Story.org was launched just ten days ago, I have newly published eight articles. I have edited and re-published dozens more, some looking nearly brand new. I have totally deleted others, happy to have them be broken links forevermore.

I have also learned to insert joy, journaling explorations and some fresh geeky-girl learning into the entire process. Otherwise it is too much work, and I wouldn’t even bother. If I am to do all of this, I am going for the gusto.

We’re not done.

It’s not just the links. Words and language change too

I warned you that this could drive you crazy. Links aren’t even the half of what you will want to work on. I also said we would focus on the good stuff though, and this brings me to the next point.

7. When you work with your archives, you start to think more proactively about the publishing you do. You think about the completeness of your processes. You realize that you have considered hitting that “publish” command to mean you are done, and it doesn’t mean that at all. It only means “publish so others can see this too.”

If you were to newly consider everything I have talked about up to now, and not take the easy way out, not thinking “I’m not as picky as you are Rosa, I’ll live with it,” (come on now, stick with me) how would you change your publishing process?

Remember: Ignorance is not bliss. Knowledge is the power of renewed energy.

Lead the way, my friend by Pulpolux !!! on Flickr
Lead the way, my friend by Pulpolux !!! on Flickr

You will probably do what I have done: Tweak your publishing process, or add to it. I realized that mine was not nearly complete enough. It could have added significant, self-sustaining life to my publishing foundations. I now have a brand new process for what I do after I publish a post for the first time, and before it begins to slip too far into the archives.

I have set up a very simple trace system which is nothing more than a new rule I live by as a publisher. Every single time I publish a new post, I go back to re-read and newly edit the post which has now slipped 5-back on my list. I find I can now edit it pretty ruthlessly, because it is already old and needs no “fresh post context” anymore: What it does need, is my “archive integrity context” and those are now two entirely different things.

GEEKY TECH TIP: If you have multiple sites like me, you know this is not a simple matter of looking 5-back down your posting dashboard. I am newly using my Tumblr for this purpose, being sure I aggregate everything I publish there. You may use another app instead: The trick is use one with a bookmarklet and/or auto-feed to do the aggregation work for you.

CONVERSATIONAL TIP: One thing I do adore about the new TalkingStory.org is the comment conversation subscription readers can select if they choose to be notified about post updates. Therefore, if I significantly edit an old posting, I can also add a brief new comment that mentions what I did, and only those who had subscribed to the conversation will get that alert.

My goodness, do we really need older archives at all?

At this point, I may have you thinking that you want to keep new readers out of your archives altogether, and focused on the new stuff instead. Not a blanket decision for me, though there are certain old posts I will shake my head at and sigh over. Fortunately, I also started to get back that sense of awe we now take for granted — and shouldn’t: When they have the amazing vastness of the internet to choose from, people all around the world are still arriving in MY archives. Wow.

That happy prospect of a fresh arrival got me to think I could do much better than impulsive, ruthless deletions. There came my next discovery: 8. You can have fun, and talk to people directly with simple, one-link landing pages. I have seized the opportunity I have with simply updating an old link landing page this way:

I am sorry, the article you are looking for has been retired.

It did a great job for me, and for others at one time, and now it has happily stepped aside.

It has been retired so that fresher writing can take its place with dazzling you, or collaborating with you, and sharing in that great feeling of being able to help someone.

I invite you to visit the new and better stuff on TalkingStory.org.

talkingstory_header_09

Talk to me in the comment boxes you find there,

and meet others in the Ho‘ohana Community.

If you still long for your original search, I will be happy to help you.

I was going to cancel my old TypePad account when I was completely done with my WordPress conversion, but now I think I will keep it. I am constantly thinking of the redirects I can do little by little over time instead of rushing this, and that annual TypePad fee is starting to seem like quite the advertising bargain for the search spider goodness it continues to give me — and our Ho‘ohana Community goodness I am so passionate about sharing.

Archive explorations can go forward too, not just backwards

As you can tell, I now have a complete paradigm shift with archives. I used to think of them purely as history and documentation of a past time line. Now I think of archives as connective anchor points which trigger more learning, and that learning can be found in several different directions.

Node by Uqbar is back on Flickr
Node by Uqbar is back on Flickr

9. There is no rule saying you can’t put a new link or new content in an old article, and in fact, that is probably the best edit you can do for it!

I have become a more practiced published writer over the last five years, and fact is my new stuff is way, way better than the old stuff. I am sure that yours is too. In the spirit of Talking Story, I just know in my heart mind and soul that we have a ton of interesting conversations we can still have. Whether we have them in an older posting or a new one shouldn’t matter: The posts are just catalysts, and we are the activators.

Gold you can prospect in the archives:

Add Conversation to your Strong Week Plan.

I have opened comments up on my older articles here so I can test this theory, and we shall see what other results of my 10 Publishing Lessons for Summertime 2009 will come to the forefront.

This has gotten much longer than I originally anticipated it would, so let’s wrap up with this:

If you don’t work on your archives, no one will.

Before you even begin to think, “That’s okay,” NO, it’s not okay. We bloggers need to stick together in continually raising the bar on how we write and with our reputation as noble publishers. We don’t publish our writing intending to create blog post graveyards.

Here is a link I want you to please take when you are done reading this posting:

“What’s in it for me?” is a Self-Leadership Question.

We who blog must be Alaka‘i [the Hawaiian value of leadership] and lead the way with publishing integrity on the web by merit of our great example.

More important than that, is how much you will be amazed by the brand new ideas which are triggered for you once you commit to this archive-cleaning project with me, so please do. Tackle your own archives. Start today. Here is number 10 with the biggest reason of all:

10. Publishing integrity will awaken your creative capacity. One of the first big issues my broken-link project spun off into creatively solving was how badly I needed to completely revamp my blog categories here on TalkingStory.org. It was something I could not say no to any longer, and I am handling it concurrently, slowly but surely. And then Providence interceded: In working with my blog categories, I suddenly saw some business model clarity that had stubbornly eluded me for quite some time. Thinking about the repercussions this clarity will have throughout Say Leadership Coaching and Ho‘ohana Publishing is incredibly exciting and energizing for me.

Trust me on this one: I set about writing only on the highlights for you. If you start to work on your archives — content, links, comments, all of it — you will never get writers’ block again.

I learn from you all the time, and it is something I want to keep doing.

Your turn to write now, and my turn to listen and learn.

Art/Photo Credit Postscript: “Prospector” by ToOliver2 on Flickr.

Longtime readers may be thinking, “Where have I seen this drawing before?” and I used it on this MWAC article: Are you a Conversation Killer without realizing you are? Three Tips to help.

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RSS Current Articles at Managing with Aloha:

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