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Trump those Old Rules with Your Values

August 22, 2011 by Rosa Say

Preface: If you are an Alaka‘i Manager learning the 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha, this posting deals with several of them:

  • MWA Key 3: Value Alignment
  • MWA Key 4: Role of the Manager
  • MWA Key 6: ‘Ohana in Business
  • MWA Key 7: Strengths Management
  • MWA Key 8: Sense of Place
  • MWA Key 9: Unlimited Capacity

Old Rules, your days are numbered!

I’ve been doing quite a bit of one-on-one coaching lately. People are reaching out for help as they encounter the new world of work, and I’m happy to help as I can.

We always start with them describing their ‘new world’ for me, and I’m consistently amazed by how many old rules remain in play, erecting these obstacles that people struggle to understand. Thus, most of the coaching I offer has to do with managing up, and building better relationships with the people they feel are in charge, and in control at their workplace.

Our goal is always positive movement forward: We want to forge a better workplace partnership for them, and more often than not, the boss-employee relationship is the one we address.

Old rules are dispensed by old-thinking managers. By worn out, tired managers. By lazy and careless managers, and managers who are stick-in-the-mud stuck.

Surely those managers are not you!

If you are a manager, please stop for a moment’s self-reflection: Are there any old rules you’ve allowed into your workplace culture just because they’re convenient, historical, or worse, because you haven’t updated, replacing them with one of your own value-based rules?

A healthy workplace culture isn’t created by rules. It’s fostered by the managers who map out that culture’s movement with relevant values (e-book link), and then allow common sense to rule.

An old rule is a sacred cow which keeps fattening itself up in your pasture, lazily eating your resources and tromping through your meadowland, even though it won’t reciprocate in any way, and won’t contribute to the worthy cause of your business. It’s not a dairy cow, it’s not a beef cow, it’s not the father or mother of a hopeful generation. It’s a costly, expensive drain on the character and health of a place — a scar on your sense of place.

Used Cows for Sale

Alaka‘i Managers know they simply can’t afford sacred cows. Not now, not ever.

Sometimes, old rules are self-inflicted. People assume they have to follow them, when in fact, they don’t. No one else notices (no manager cares enough), and people continue down the wrong path. It’s a path paved with frustration, and one road block after another.

Issues define problems. People define potential.

Here’s an example.

In most organizations large enough to have different divisions, there’s been a long-standing old rule that “we don’t transfer problems.” It started with good intentions (most rules do) connected to keeping buck-passing out of the workplace with the culture-driven, value-aligned encouragement to own your problems, confront them head on, and solve them in a way that completely ferreted out any deeply rooted causes. If a problem or issue started with your division, chances are you remain closest to it; your team is likely the best team to address it.

Here’s where that old rule went wrong: We didn’t keep it focused on issues. We applied it to people who didn’t fit in the team or boss-subordinate equation for some reason, and it became an unspoken HR rule everyone towed the line with: ‘Problem people’ weren’t ever transferred either — and more often than not, they can be, and should be as a strategy of optimal workforce development; abundant choice is one of the advantages of larger organizations!

Misjudged people have become our good people souring in poor places, feeling hopelessly stuck or stereotyped. They never had a chance with finding their right fit and new lease on life elsewhere in the company — they were ignored or put out to pasture with progressive discipline, and their true strengths were never revealed. Their managers were tacitly allowed to dismiss them.

It’s been tragic, and still is, the number of times someone representing a wealth of experience and future potential is named a “problem child” because their manager fails to create a powerful partnership with them, and no one else will give them a chance. We are seeing how this old rule turned assumption keeps fresh talent out of hiring as well, because of the chronic dysfunction in the referral process: We still see scarlet letters on applicant chests, and fail to question the other people who put them there.

Coaches like me do a lot of Ho‘ohanohano work with giving people their dignity back: We have to convince them they aren’t broken, that they are strong and worthy, and they do have the talent, skills, and knowledge someone in their world is just chomping at the bit for. We get them to own it and bring it as a golden partnership ready to happen, and happen quickly: We help them define these things with useful and relevant clarity, so they can apply them with a positive outlook and renewed sense of optimism.

And not just coaches like me. That’s what ALL Alaka‘i Managers do.

“People catch their own weaknesses.
Your job, is to catch and encourage their strengths,
and those strengths aren’t usually clear.”
— Failure isn’t cool. Neither is weakness

What other old rules are still roaming your workplace meadowland?

Beware of Invisible Cows

Question and freshen your rules constantly.

Rules can be good. For instance, I use them to clarify our managing and leading verbs, but if you use them, honor them in a Language of Intention. Be sure they’re YOUR rules and not assumptions you’ve allowed into the culture which were actually inherited from someone else’s intentions and values.

Book Review: The Starfish and the Spider

March 31, 2011 by Rosa Say

From the publisher:

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless OrganizationsThe Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish’s leg, it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.

What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? How could winning a Supreme Court case be the biggest mistake MGM could have made?

After five years of ground-breaking research, Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom share some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships. It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the U.S. government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success.

My review:

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m a bit late to this, for The Starfish and the Spider was quite the darling of business book readers when it was published in 2006, and reading it now I can understand why. In the new Epilogue written for this edition, author Ori Brafman talks about “speaking starfish” saying, “it’s been exciting to see Starfish provide a language for people to describe their organizations,” something I can definitely understand and echo, for clear vocabulary and a strong language of intention is key in effectively communicating any business model. Besides the starfish (decentralized organizations) and spider (centralized, more tradition ones with heavy top level power players), Brafman and Beckstrom make the roles of catalyst and champion sound very appealing (in comparison to the CEO) in both types of organizations.

The authors strive to be objective, but I felt they gave short shrift to the downsides of decentralization, other than quick statements such as “decentralization brings out creativity, but it also creates variance.” Another: “Where did this revenue go? The revenues disappeared.” (Admittedly, there is too much champion and too little catalyst in me” so much for my own objectivity!) And perhaps they were doing so purposely, taking their cue from the catalysts they so obviously admire, who they say, have a “tolerance for ambiguity.”

I was relieved that they spoke of ideology as much as they did however, (i.e. and the importance of values), knowing how much this book has resonated in the business community. Their pitch is clear: The more successful organizations today are likely to be those who find their “sweet spot” between starfish and spider behaviors as “hybrid organizations” willing to change as the market demands.

The authors offer several case studies, making Starfish a very quick and interesting read; this book is terrific for a corporate book club when there’s a genuine desire to be open-minded, creative, and more innovative — the book is clearly a great conversation starter, and can inspire change. I can also see how it would foster more reading of related works, such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds, and Seth Godin’s Tribes. Much as I love playing in the world of business, the story which appealed to me most however, was about the Apache, and I found myself wanting to hear about more societal starfish movements; I’ll bet this book has a strong following in the Tea Party and newly emerging People’s Party movements.

View all my reviews on Goodreads.

Why Goodreads? They have become an App Smart choice for me in 2011 for I want to return to more book reading, and have set a goal to read at least 36 books this year (this was book 10 for me). Read more about the Goodreads mission here, and let’s connect there if you decide to try it too! You can also follow them on Twitter.

Above: An exposed fossil slab from the Sahara: Starfish have been around for a very long time. There are a lot of photos taken of starfish, but this one appealed to me as a reminder of how the authors speak of “Circles” as small, non-hierarchical groups which are independent and autonomous.

Archive Aloha: Books Come to You at Least Twice

Additional Book Notes:

The major principles of decentralization, as discussed by the authors: Italics is theirs, verbatim, commentary is mine.

  1. When attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become even more open and decentralized. Example given: Story of the Apache, and what happened when a centralized body and coercive system (the Spanish) tried to take on an open system (the Apache.) In short, the Spanish lost.
  2. It’s easy to mistake starfish for spiders. Example given: Story of the French needing a President of the Internet (though to me it was more a story about wanting to have, and see a spider despite all the evidence of having a starfish. With this one, the authors suggest we “ask the right questions:”
    1~ Is there a person in charge? (spider)
    2~ Are there headquarters? (spider)
    3~ If you thump it on the head, will it die? (spider)
    4~ Is there a clear division of roles? (spider)
    5~ If you take out a unit, is the organization harmed? (spider)
    6~ Are knowledge and power concentrated (spider) or distributed? (starfish)
    7~ Is the organization flexible (starfish) or rigid? (spider)
    8~ Can you count the employees or participants? (spider)
    9~ Are working groups funded by the organization (spider), or are they self-funding? (starfish)
    10~ Do working groups communicate directly (starfish) or through intermediaries? (spider)
  3. An open system doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system. Culling this intelligence, and giving it the respect it’s due, is to me one of the greatest promises of more decentralization.
  4. Open systems can easily mutate. Example given: The open system of Alcoholics Anonymous, bound only by the ideology of the twelve-step model.
  5. The decentralized organization sneaks up on you. Because starfish mutate so quickly, their colonies can also grow with incredible speed; they can take over an entire industry in the blink of an eye.
  6. As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease. Introduce starfish into the equation and wave goodbye to high profits. Revenue is not a bad thing, and this quandary is what a hybrid organization must reconcile with.
  7. Put people into an open system and they’ll automatically want to contribute. I found this to be a big assumption, but I like it if the data truly backs it up! Example given here (and it’s a good one) was Wikipedia.
  8. When attacked, centralized organizations tend to become even more centralized. They hunker down. Example given: Research labs have gone underground to curb attacks by ALF activists (Animal Liberation Front).

“A decentralized organization stands on five legs. As with the starfish, it can lose a leg or two and still survive. But when you have all the legs working together, a decentralized organization can really take off.”

  1. Circles. Today we are seeing how circles of people gain freedom and flexibility when they go virtual, but physical presence is still most powerful.
  2. The Catalyst. A catalyst gets a decentralized organization going, and then cedes control to the members. There is a full chapter dedicated to the catalyst, to outline the tools of their trade:
    1~ Genuine interest in others
    2~ Loose connections, and a lot of them
    3~ Intuition with mapping how others fit into social networks
    4~ Desire to help
    5~ Passion; the catalyst provides the drumbeat for a decentralized organization
    6~ They meet people where they are
    7~ Emotional intelligence
    8~ Trust in people, and the flattened hierarchy which results, knowing you can’t control all outcomes
    9~ Inspiration, inspiring others to work toward a goal which often doesn’t involve personal gain
    10~ Tolerance for ambiguity; they often don’t know the details, leaving them to their champions
    11~ The hands-off approach
    12~ Receding. After catalysts map a network, make connections, build trust, and inspire people to act, they leave.
  3. Ideology. It’s not just about community (lots of organizations offer community), not just about getting stuff for free, not just about freedom and trust. Ideology is the glue that holds decentralized organizations together.
  4. The Preexisting Network. The Quakers would help Granville Sharp combat slavery in Great Britain.
  5. The Champion. A champion is relentless in promoting a new idea. Granville Sharp needed the dedication and tenacity of his champion, Thomas Clarkson. Catalysts are charismatic, but champions take it to the next level; there’s nothing subtle about the champion.

The authors conclude with a set of Rules for the New World:

“Just as the telephone changed communications and technology changed warfare, the forces of decentralization have created a new set of rules… as we looked at these cases [of rapid change] we began seeing new patterns. Some have been surprising, and many have at first seemed counterintuitive.”

  • Rule 1: Diseconomies of Scale: “It can be better to be small.”
  • Rule 2: The Network Effect: “Often without spending a dime, starfish organizations create communities where each new member adds value to the larger network.
  • Rule 3: The Power of Chaos: “Starfish systems are wonderful incubators for creative, destructive, innovative, or crazy ideas. Anything goes. Good ideas will attract more people, and in a circle they’ll execute the plan.”
  • Rule 4: Knowledge at the Edge: “The best knowledge is often at the fringe of an organization.”
  • Rule 5: Everyone Wants to Contribute: “Not only do people have knowledge, they also have a fundamental desire to share it and to contribute.”
  • Rule 6: Beware the Hydra Response: “Take on a starfish and you’ll be in for a surprise… cut off the arm of a starfish, and it will grow a whole new body.”
  • Rule 7: Catalysts Rule: “Not because they run the show. Catalysts are important because they inspire people to action.”
  • Rule 8: The Values ARE the Organization: “Ideology is the fuel that drives the decentralized organization.”
  • Rule 9: Measure, Monitor, and Manage: “We can still measure the ambiguous and chaotic; but when measuring a decentralized network, it’s better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.”
  • Rule 10: Flatten or Be Flattened: “Often, the best hope for survival if we can’t beat them is to join them… increasingly, companies must take the hybrid approach.”

And the final word:

“Yes, decentralized organizations appear at first glance to be messy and chaotic. But when we begin to appreciate their full potential, what initially looked like entropy turns out to be one of the most powerful forces the world has seen.”

The 30-70 Rule in Leading and Managing

July 30, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

July is quickly coming to an end. When I looked at my calendar earlier this week, the 07.30 numbering for today triggered a thought: I have not yet told you about the 70-30 Rule in managing and leading, have I.

‘Rule’ is a short, compact, easy word to remember and so that’s what we call it, but it is more of a guideline, and a goal Alaka‘i managers will commit to achieving. It goes like this:

A manager will both manage and lead. They will be most effective at achieving results which matter when 30% of their time is dedicated to leading, and 70% of their time is devoted to managing.

We manage and lead every single day. What constantly shifts is the amount we will be working at each one, devoting X amount of time to managing, and Y amount of time to leading.

When we feel we are compelled to curtail our management actions a bit and start leading more, we are beginning to get impatient ”“ the good kind of impatience (in contrast to the not-as-good impatience of micromanagement.) We have an idea about something, and it is about how we want the future to be different in some way than how things are right now.

Something else has happened as the idea grew in intensity: We can no longer come up with any good reason to wait.

— Leadership is Why and When

We have spoken of the differences between management and leadership at length (as we define them in our Managing with Aloha ‘Language of Intention’). As we think about the 30-70 Rule, let’s keep within the context of what we have most recently discussed here:

Leadership is Why and When: Leading is about acting on your good impatience for a new idea, one you fully realize will lead to change. Dedicate 30% of your time and effort to this leading.

Management is What and How: Managing then, will be about the execution of what it takes, and how it must be done for your visionary idea to become our new reality.
Dedicate 70% of your time and effort to this managing.

Learn to measure effort

I’m guessing your first question might be, “Why 30-70? How did you come up with that?”

Very early in my management career it became crystal clear that I had to learn to measure using a variety of expected business metrics. Many of us will learn to measure results (sales reports, profit and loss, ROI) and we will learn to measure work performance (annual performance reviews, incentive and commissioning programs). However there was always a lot of frustration woven in all these systems and processes of fairly standard business measurements for me. It is a frustration I see play out over and over again across industries and at all managerial levels within organizational hierarchies. We measure what we are expected to, not fully understanding why we bother, and how it can really help us.

We learn these metrics connected to financial results and work performance as industry or corporate rules and conventions: They are given to us as expectations. However we will rarely learn enough (if anything) about the cause and effect chain reactions which lead up to the results we get: The frustration stems from feeling that so much ends up happening by trial and error.

Worst of all, that trial and error is often packaged up and dismissed as learning we must attend to as part of “paying your dues.”

Well, it took me a while (I paid those dues), but I eventually figured out that to be effective with achieving GREAT results and work performance, what I had to learn to measure was the effort put toward making them happen correctly. I also had to qualify that effort. So I qualified it as the “great business calling of Managing with Aloha” and I categorized that calling as both managing and leading by specific, values-based definitions.

I then learned that those categories would best complement each other in a certain proportion over years and years of tracking them within my work performance teams. 30-70 evolved as our golden rule for the best reason: It consistently delivered the best results when it came to our vision of what Ho‘ohana (worthwhile work) should be.

WorkTools

Start by knowing where you stand

Greatly improve your effectiveness by doing more leadership (creating energy) and less management (channeling energy). Management matters and will always be necessary to a certain degree, but the constant goal of the Alaka‘i manager is to lead more and not less.

—How to Stop Micromanaging, Part One

Most of us will manage way more than we lead, regardless of our position on that conventional role progression from supervision to middle management, to upper management and owner/director leadership. Even the guys and gals at the very top of the org chart lead too little and manage too much, regardless of the industry or sector they are in.

President Obama is a highly visible example to watch right now: He led a lot during his campaign, talking about his ideas for the future constantly so he could share his vision and get us to buy in, and say so with our votes, but most of what he does now is manage. His day-to-day managing includes repeated statements of his leadership intentions, but now into the 7th month of his presidency, he is not yet back to the consistent new idea generation we spoke of in “Leadership is Why and When” for he has found that more management is being required of him. He must delegate it, or do it himself.

The practical application of “learn to measure effort” is that you must also come up with how you “qualify that effort” and then “categorize it” too: As I asked in my last post, “Who is in charge of you?” That’s not to say that you can’t get help, but be deliberate in making your choices. You can use what I suggest by way of the Managing with Aloha sensibility for work, and the leadership/30 ”“ management/70 categories/metrics, or you can come up with something on your own, but you must make it tangible and measurable, and meaningful to you, so that at any given moment you know where you stand.

Once you know where you stand, you know where you need to go.

Because I have clear definitions for management and leadership (as my Language of Intention), I can measure the specific activities I associate with each one. Who cares if the dictionary, or a new business book by a famous management or leadership guru says something different? What is important is my own definition if I execute and act that way, because I then have a consistency of actions I can measure, knowing which one goes in my leadership/30 bucket, and which one goes in my management/70 bucket.

At the end of each week I look at my calendar (as it actually happened), and I assess in a very simple way: I use a green highlighter for my leadership activities, and a pink one for my management activities, then I look at the ratio of hashmarks now color-coding where I stood in my week’s effort: Was it the 3-7 I need, or did I come in at 2-8 or 1-9 instead?

Next, plan ahead for better

Now that I know where I stand, I need to adjust, and move toward where I should be going. So I look at next week’s calendar and measure the ratio I have already penciled in: Will each appointment be about a leadership initiative, or about a management one?

I look at the available blocks of time I have left and can proactively plan better with: How do I fill them in to get the most out of my efforts?

  • If they are at 20-80, I need to lead more to achieve my 30-70.
  • If they are at 40-60, I need to manage more to achieve my 30-70.

Management and leadership get so much guru-speak tied up in them, and they begin to seem unreachable. They aren’t.

The 30-70 Rule in Managing and Leading gets them to be activities that you have qualified in the way that matters most to you (as your Leadership Why and When) and that achieves the best results (as your Management What and How.)

I like practical and useful, and I’ll bet you do too.

Let’s talk story.
Any thoughts to share?

Photo credit: Work Tools by stryder10464 on Flickr.

For those who prefer them, here are the Talking Story copies of the links embedded in this posting:

  • Leadership is Why and When
  • Management is What and How
  • Two Gifts: Values and Conversation
  • What’s your Calling? Has it become your Ho‘ohana?
  • How to Stop Micromanaging, Part One
  • “What’s in it for me?” is a Self-Leadership Question
  • What the heck do you mean by ‘Achievable?’
  • Your Alaka‘i Language of Leadership

Article originally published on Say “Alaka‘i” July 2009
The 30-70 Rule in Managing and Leading

Great Mantra: Make it Easy, Make it Hard

June 30, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Quick review:

We’ve been talking about banishing mediocrity (because it is THE biggest sin committed in business) and about creating energy instead (because energy generates to Ho‘ohana power). Energy is the greatest resource managers (who both manage AND lead) have at their disposal.

No energy, no action. No action, no business life to speak of.

And in my view, business, whether the business of work, or the business sensibility of life, is a great playground to Ho‘ohana within.

Let’s dig into this a bit more. I’ll share one of my favorite mantras with you from an Alaka‘i leadership perspective today: Make it easy, and make it hard.

Bonzai Wannabe

Make it easy for your Customers

Here’s a quote for the day:

“I’m so tired of watching us lose our customers. Just because we work for the government doesn’t mean we shouldn’t run the operation like a business.”
— Joan Capinia

You’ll never guess where Joan works. Reinvention can happen where you least expect it. Came from this older article about the US Postal Service, but it’s still relevant today (and hope the mindset stuck with the USPS).

The reputation that government and much of the public sector is saddled with has to with something that is an even bigger sin than mediocrity, for it equates to chronic mediocrity which is now regulated and institutionalized: It’s Bureaucracy.

Rules. Antiquated, or just plain stupid rules.

Red tape. Loop holes. Both are negatives: Loop holes are normally thought of as idiotic, as cheating, or as the tacit approval of stupid rules. Both red tape and loop holes have to do with jumping through hoops versus acting like a dignified professional (or an honored customer.)

Inconvenience no one seems to care about, saying/thinking “Just put up and shut up and deal with it; that’s the way it is.” can be a sneaky part of bureaucracy too.

Perception, reality and your reputation

Yeah, I’m starting to squirm uncomfortably and get irritated thinking about this too. Every business needs to figure out how to make it easier for their customers, and how to make processes streamlined and just plain common sense (and in business it’s all a buying process when you think about it).

Though the private sector can be just as bad, the public sector is a very easy target with this; think about the last time you might have visited a City & County office of any kind on any island. Personally we all feel for those affected by the current furlough discussions; we empathize with them as human beings in similar tough spots. However we all have heard (or said) the whispers between friends along the theme of “Could be a real good thing” maybe now they’ll be forced to improve and strip away all the red tape. I’ve never been happy paying taxes to support such thick-as-thieves bureaucracy.”

Perception is reality, and reputation is about that combination of what your customer experiences, and what they think they experience, especially if they feel they have been greatly inconvenienced, taken for granted, or abused or wronged in some way.

Great Alaka‘i leadership creates visionary pictures of how the future will be easier for the customer, an easy which delivers great experiences (and for both internal and external customers.)

Make it hard for your Business Partners

By ‘business partners’ I mean your employees, staff, co-working peers and your vendor partners; anyone and everyone who is responsible for delighting the customers who create cash flow. Hard ups the game, and fires up the energy.

Hopefully there isn’t anything which is unreasonably hard for anyone, but if push comes to shove, the hard stuff should get taken care of by those associated with the business, not the customer.

Remember this? Fulfill the biggest need:

There are two things business owners are focused on right now, and they go together:

a) Boosting cash flow quickly

b) Making customers deliriously happy

Said another way, cash is King and a paying customer’s loyalty is Queen.

We talked about it before in terms of creating job worth (Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch) as the advice given to job-seekers: Position yourself to fulfill the biggest need of the employer.

Same goes for this discussion: Those associated with the workings of a business ”“ any business, no exceptions —must position themselves to fulfill the biggest need of the customer.

And customers want you to dazzle them, and exceed their expectations. Today, they expect you to Lead the Slow Charge, and they are happier when they do not have to share your limited attentions with other customers!

What that means, is that of course it will always be harder for you! Hard is a good thing in this context, for it is not normal —and we had said that excellence is not normal. (Review the section called “2. Avoid the Middle and Work on the Edges” within our last talk story here: 3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces).

Bring ‘hard’ into your Language of Intention

What Alaka‘i leaders will do, is reinvent the internal vocabulary of what ‘hard’ for your business partners means. In this mantra, “Make it easy, make it hard,” hard is pure excellence.

However we use the word ‘hard’ instead of excellent because we want that association with energetic effort too: Hard means with vigor, with strength, and with force to be reckoned with. Hard resists cracking under pressure because it is sure, it is intently confident. It is virtually flawless and exceptional.

In work cultures managed and led with Aloha by Alaka‘i managers, hard is about constantly learning to improve so everyone can live better, work better, be better. Hard has good kaona: Small word, big meaning.

Get hard to be about an exciting challenge, one which requires —what? That’s right: Increased energies. Mediocrity-banishing energies.

Get hard to mean rock-solid goodness —no stupid rules, no red tape, no loop holes, no basic standards, just extraordinary ones (we talked about that last time too; it was the 3rd way that managers create energetic workplaces.)

On Thursday we’ll get into the management side of the “Make it easy, make it hard” leadership initiative. Hope to see you back for, What the heck do you mean by ‘Achievable?’

Let’s talk story.
Any thoughts to share?

Photo credit: Bonzai Wannabe by Rosa Say.

For those who prefer them, here are the Talking Story copies of the links embedded in this posting:

  • The Biggest Sin in Business Today
  • 3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces
  • What’s your Calling? Has it become your Ho‘ohana?
  • hope the mindset stuck
  • If you want to know, ask!
  • Can you define your Leadership Greatness?
  • Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch
  • Lead the Slow Charge
  • When is ‘Good’ good enough?

~ Originally published on Say “Alaka‘i”
June 2009 ~
Make it Easy, Make it Hard


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