Say Leadership Coaching

Revamping your Business Model? Enjoy the Study

April 13, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Are you studying other business models? If you’re a business owner or manager, you should be.

Quick aside: If your answer to my title question is “no” uh-oh.

If you’re working for someone resting on their laurels, I strongly encourage you to start looking around at your options. Your boss should be a mentor for you, and they probably won’t challenge you if they aren’t challenging themselves.

“invention saturday” by western dave on Flickr

To not study other business models is to deny the learning (‘Ike loa) which can better shape your own model, helping you continually improve it. You will also enjoy the innovation triggers. If you feel you’re not coming up with enough new ideas on your own, this is the sure-fire way to get them in buckets.

Study Within, and Study Outside

A good approach is to devote your ongoing study in two different arenas, one within your industry, and one outside it. Then, take a look at two specific things: The constants they hang on to, and the change they embrace. From there, jump to a third: The change they lead with what they create.

For instance, as a workplace culture coach and the founder of Say Leadership Coaching, I’ll study other education and coaching models which impress me with their success (business formula/strategic initiative), their customer service (how they serve the market), and their value-alignment (how they go about achieving the first two, and where I will learn about their workplace culture.)

In recent years, I’ve studied the medical field as my choice outside my industry. When my book, Managing with Aloha was released, I noticed that in addition to managers in the hospitality industry I came from, my biggest audience were managers in education and in medicine. So it was a twofer for me: I could study their business model while simultaneously learning more about a customer I was seeking to better serve.

These days, I am very fascinated by the publishing industry, so much so that I think we’ll save that for another post; what a feast of learning, with opportunities accelerating daily. Even if you are not a writer and have no interest in ever publishing something, this is an industry to watch for those filters I mentioned earlier: In light of the ways the Indie Author movement, the Kindle, and now the iPad are promoting digital reading, what will happen to ‘old-school’ publishing? (There are many others involved, but in my view those 3 are the biggest movers and shakers.)

What will be the constants they hang on to successfully – and why?
What will be the change they embrace – and why?
Will they ever lead again, and if so, what have they created?

In publishing, the answers are getting very intriguing because they differ so much between business owner (publishers), two different customers (authors and readers), and the ultimate end-user served: the betterment of reading in a changing world.

What ‘business modeling’ approach are you using as a leader?

Will my ‘focus framework’ be useful to you, or can you suggest another framing for me and others reading?

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

With this particular post I used a different title there, and added some Sense of Place questions [MWA Key 8]:
Hawai‘i Business Models: Which ones intrigue you?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

6. The ‘Ohana in Business:

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

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

Here are the results of another Talking Story archive search which may interest you: Constants and Change.

Creating Jobs? Let’s start with the Job Maker

April 7, 2010 by Rosa Say

This past Monday I promised you a sneak peak at the free ebook I will soon be releasing, called Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks: Live, Work, and Manage to Lead with Aloha:

About Managing with Aloha:
Has it intrigued but overwhelmed you?

Two of my former coaching clients graciously read through a proofreading the last few days, suggesting final edits to me. Both are true Alaka‘i Managers who’ve survived the Managing with Aloha crucible magnificently, and they were a huge help, picking up on a couple of tweaks that have greatly improved our offering — Lōkahi collaboration in action! They both agree we’re ready for the Smashwords process to begin. Yay!!!

Isn’t it wonderful how Ho‘ohana intentions can come together? Back on March 15th, we leapt into our current theme, The Alaka‘i Manager as Job Maker, determined to tackle job creation in some way without any real plan, just strong, STRONG Ho‘ohana intentions. Remember this?

“We’ve got to go farther than “stimulating” jobs: We’ve got to create new ones, and better ones. We’ve got to reshape many others which now barely escape the chopping block with furlough day trimming. We know of jobs which may have all their days numbered soon, for they’re next in the downsizing queue if revenue streams don’t somehow start raining from heaven.

Jobs in 2010 must be Ho‘ohana jobs. Ho‘ohana jobs must be gainful employment.”

Mix in a Kindle publishing project, and voila! The ‘job’ we end up tackling is that of the Alaka‘i Manager him/herself!

But then again, it makes perfect sense:

“To Ho‘ohana is to work with intent, and with purpose. Managers do this for themselves, and they do this for those they manage: When managers pair employees with meaningful and worthwhile work that is satisfying for them, they will find these employees work with true intentions in sync with the goals of the business. Be one of those managers.”
—Managing with Aloha, page 30

Our intention moves us in certain directions; even here on Talking Story. Intention propels us toward action in a very empowering way, because it originates within our wants, needs, values and burning desires, and not just our learning curiosity. Our intention, whether we are aware of it or not, drives our self-motivation, and self-motivation is the only kind of motivation there is.

Enough of the preamble: I promised you an overview of the ebook, and here it is.

To Best Learn Managing with Aloha, Take 5

5 has evolved to be one of our favorite numbers in Managing with Aloha (the other, as you’ll learn toward the end of this ebook, is 9). It started with our discovering the power of 5 minutes in the Daily 5 Minutes ® which you will learn about in the book on page 145 — we’ll talk about the D5M later in this ebook as well.

What we discovered was that “taking 5” made a significant difference in workplace cultures, and it delivered a bounty of gifts. We’ve therefore attached our positive expectancy to the number 5 as well, and when given the chance, we’ll use it for all our list making; we’ll write a list of 5 in our strategic initiatives each year… we’ll give new managers 5 weeks to become an Alaka‘i Manager… you just learned 5 useful self-management approaches in the last section! You get the idea: 5 has become one of our replacements for our previous automatic pilot with brainstorming older, longer lists we never seemed to finish well before. 5 has been proven to work better.

So we will be Taking 5 in our learning approach within this ebook’s self-coaching as well. To best learn Managing with Aloha AND Become an Alaka‘i Manager, you will take these 5 progressions with me in the pages to follow:

Read the book once through, and annotate it
Draft your Ho‘ohana Statement and invite your team to do so too
Reconstruct and rejuvenate the Role of the Manager (yours)
Cultivate the “Language of We” through ‘talking story’ and the Daily 5 Minutes ®
Learn to use the 9 Key Concepts on Talking Story as your ‘Ike loa Construct

I’ll give you a brief overview of these first, as a means of defining our best possible outcome for each, and then we’ll proceed in more detail in the pages which follow.

Take 5: Your 5-Week Overview

Very briefly, this is how you’ll read and use Managing with Aloha using this ebook as an additional guide, and in the process, become an Alaka‘i Manager:

TAKE 1:
You will first read the book cover to cover, taking notes in a learning method and self-coaching framework I will describe to you. Everything begins with Aloha, and we’ll get comfortable with this value in an actionable way, allowing its goodness to inspire us! Know that you have everything it takes, for in short, Aloha is you living from the inside out, and “Living with Aloha” is dwelling in the self-awareness of your own ability and capacity.

TAKE 2:
MWA will employ workplace values, turning them into a business of business and business of life strategy which is mutually rewarding for you and your workplace. We’ll learn more about how this informs and equips Alaka‘i Managers as our second progression. You will write a first draft of your Ho‘ohana, and invite your immediate work team to do so as well.

TAKE 3:
Your Ho‘ohana is your intention with worthwhile work, including your purpose and passion for working. What is frustrating for so many of us, is that our Ho‘ohana intention doesn’t necessarily match up to the role we are given or assigned to in the workplace, and thus you have to do that ‘matching up’ for yourself. In this progression you’ll learn how the Role of the Manager unfolds for Alaka‘i Managers with the MWA calling, and you’ll get started.

TAKE 4:
We human beings are not meant to live alone. Like life itself, Alaka‘i management is not meant to be a solo proposition, and you will achieve your best success with MWA when you share your Aloha, and involve your team as soon as possible, receiving Aloha from others. You will actually have started with these efforts in Takes 1, 2 and 3: In Take 4 we add ‘talking story’ and the Daily 5 Minutes ® as our means of cultivating the “Language of We” in your work culture.

TAKE 5:
Much of what I have done since MWA was initially published in 2004 has been to Ho‘omau with it (cause the good we’ve created to be long lasting — chapter 4 in the book) so that Alaka‘i Managers everywhere can tap into an ongoing Ho‘ohana Community movement as they continue their practice. Our final step in this guide will cover my invitation to you to Ho‘omau with us too. The 9 Key Concepts are not presently specified in the MWA text, and you will get them here in this ebook as a framework for continuous learning.

As you can tell, this is not just any reading guide: It’s a free coaching program. I’m a workplace culture coach: This is what I do, and Managing with Aloha was written — and designed — to help me coach Alaka‘i Managers.

How long will all of this REALLY take?
That’s up to you, and how you’ve been able to “make room for MWA in both your head and your day” as I’ve asked you to. It differs for everyone, and this ebook will not specify precise 7-day weeks of time for you: It’s paced for self-coaching, and requires your self-discipline. It is entirely possible to have this be a 5-week program for you, with a week (or dedicated weekend) devoted to each progression of the Take 5. We do this in 6 weeks when managers hire me for one-on-one coaching through the program; the 6th week adds a 2nd writing of their Ho‘ohana as ‘Imi ola coaching, within the framework of the Healthy Workplace Compass (web page link).

What will be your commitment to your goal, and how strong is your Alaka‘i calling? What else might you need to say “no” to to make room for this learning? Therein lies your answer.

About Managing with Aloha: Has it intrigued but overwhelmed you?

April 4, 2010 by Rosa Say

Help is on the way!

I am beside myself with excitement. So much so that I’m going out on a limb here, and am about to tell you what I’ve been doing even though I’m not finished yet. I just cannot stop with this, and putting my Ho‘ohana intentions out there will force me to make good on them, and keep my word. (Some of you have noticed I’ve been quiet in our online places as I’ve worked on this project” thanks for checking in with me :)

I’ve written a brand new ebook.

I have thought about doing this for a very long time (embarrassingly long), and I never had the space in my life for it until we archived Joyful Jubilant Learning this past January. The “this” I refer to is actually two-fold:

I wanted to reread Managing with Aloha for myself cover to cover now that the book is almost six years in residence on bookstore shelves (and a blessing that it is!) as a means of finishing up some long-standing projects.
I wanted to transition my coaching programs at SLC (my business, Say Leadership Coaching).

On 1: I’ve had a few reasons for this. For instance,it’s time to produce a 2nd edition of Managing with Aloha in paperback form, and I want it to be a little different than the original to serve a slightly different audience in our Workplace Aloha School.

Second, I feel ready to tackle a second book and become a sophomore author versus a one-book wonder. I suspected that rereading MWA would clarify some things for me with how Book 2 will be remarkably different, yet continue to serve you who have already worked with it too. I needed to write out and answer any questions I now find in MWA when I read it from my unique perspective coaching Alaka‘i Managers — that’s not vain, for we all have unique perspective — you’re the expert in your Ho‘ohana and what you do too.

Briefly on 2:
Up to now, SLC has been about presenting our Workplace Aloha School and MWA University (my MWA train-the-trainer certification). Where the development of my future products will go, SLC will go too, and I’ve got some definite ideas about that. We presently have a coaching program which has been very successful for SLC and our customers, but I have ideas for Ka lā hiki ola, “the dawning of a new day.”

I figured that breaking my two-fold project down and making it actionable required starting with my rereading, but I knew I had to do something else at the same time to slow myself down, for otherwise, I’d reread my own book in two days, three tops, and not go “short and deep” as I needed to.

Kindle provided me with my slow-down answer, for I discovered that Amazon’s DigitalTextPlatform would not accept my original manuscript, and I had to rekey the entire book in a brand new word processing document. This proved to be one of those episodes of invoking your own work ethic to best benefit, for in the process of essentially keyboarding MWA for the second time — no copy/paste, no scanning, and no delegation to someone else — I came up with what I believe is my best answer for that transitioning of my coaching programs.

And it includes you. You and our tribe. I think about our global Ho‘ohana Community with everything I do these days, whether you are one of the silent ones I have never heard from, or one who has already actively participated in our online forums. Many of you have shared your MWA stories with me. We’ve learned together, and we’ve grown together.

Here’s what happened:
As I keyboarded my book, sentence by sentence, a light turned on over something tucked into the back recesses of my brain. Keeping my own SLC work team in mind, I annotated a clean copy of my book in a somewhat different way, imagining that I wore the shoes of a manager wanting to be an Alaka‘i Manager (invoking the empathy of Mālama). In the process, I reconstructed the one-on-one coaching program I have personally delivered to managers who want to develop their management and leadership Ho‘ohana: Up to now, we’ve called it A‘o Alaka‘ina as a product offering exclusive to SLC.

I’ve written a brand new ebook, one I am going to publish with Smashwords so you can read it in several digital formats, and I’m going to release it for FREE.

It’s called Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks: Live, Work, and Manage to Lead with Aloha. In essence, it takes the top-dollar version of A‘o Alaka‘ina coaching I have personally done with managers (priced at $3,000 for a 6-week program) and reformats it as a self-coaching program entirely possible within 5 weeks time. The ebook will present clear expectations on what it takes from you, and the difference between 5 weeks’ self-coaching on your own, and 6 weeks hiring SLC. I explain it to clarify it, and NOT to be a sales pitch. On the contrary, I’m doing this for the person who will never hire me.

I see this free release as a freeing for all of us:
When I reread Managing with Aloha for myself — and I think I did need this space of six-years time to do so this way — I could see where connections may have gotten missed by the reader who feels, “I DO have a calling for Aloha management, and I want to do this!” I’ve known about the challenges: They’re connections I had hoped my blogging would make for you, but I write so much here (and in other community places we share) that it can be hard to pick up on them.

There’s a very obvious path to becoming an Alaka‘i Manager in my head, and it’s a proven path, proven by the success of our SLC customers. I needed to do a much better job in decluttering that pathway for the manager who will never be able to hire me, but who does have the calling to Manage with Aloha, for I truly want to support you too, or I wouldn’t have published the book in the first place!

I believe I have been successful with that in this ebook, where you CAN Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks.

The aha! moment for me, was realizing that this ebook would free up even more space in my own workweek with SLC similar to the way the JJL decision had freed up writing space for me. I’ve done that coaching for long enough, and it’s time for me to personally change things up, develop the products I’ve thought so much about and not acted on, and invest in more of my own Palena ‘ole capacities [Key 9].

I am immensely excited about the ebook I have written, and I fully expect I can submit it to Smashwords in the next few days, fresh on the heels of the MWA product release done April 1st on Kindle.

I’m posting this because I want you to get excited about it too:
If you’ve read Managing with Aloha and you’ve gotten stalled in some way, I think this is what you’ve been waiting for, and I’m sure it will help you immensely, just as my rereading helped me. I am also hoping it will help deepen the conversations we have right here on Talking Story, easing the way for many more people to join the conversation, and yes, better scale the MWA tribal movement — let’s dream KÅ«lia i ka nu‘u BIG!

Speaking of tribes, have you joined our MWA Group on LinkedIn yet?
Join us!

Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks is not a short ebook. If you judge ebooks by those internet marketing things disguised in fancy-graphic pdfs, mine may come as a bit of a shock: It’s a shorter BOOK, and it’s designed to go with Managing with Aloha as a coaching companion to the “How best to read this book” section which now appears in the book’s Introduction.

Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks is now at a bit over 15,000 words, which is about 35 standard pdf pages long, and it presents a step-by-step self-coaching program, 5 progressions in all. (In comparison, MWA is 78,600 words from Foreword through the Epilogue.) “Free” doesn’t mean a pretty and slick teaser to me. It comes with work that you have to do to actually get something out of it, and it’s SLC tested and proven. If you’ve been a Talking Story reader since my humblest beginnings with Ho‘ohana Publishing, you may remember the Managing with Aloha Jumpstart (MWAJ) program we’d once offered on the MWA blogging pages. Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks is leap years away from MWAJ; there’s really no comparison, for we’ve learned so much — and you, my Ho‘ohana Community have been a big reason why.

As has Say Leadership Coaching: We’ve been blessed with terrific customers. Coaching for hire works because coaches you pay will hold you accountable (if coaching doesn’t work it’s probably because they don’t). I’m excited because I’m sure I’ll be giving you a coaching program proven to work, however it’s free because the accountability part is all on you. However I also have a lot of faith in you — I know you can do it! If I didn’t have that faith and believe in you as I do, I wouldn’t have put all the work into it I have. As I said in the very beginning, I am incredibly excited, and bouncing off the walls here.

If I’ve struggled with this at all, it’s in keeping the ebook short yet complete. I’m opting for giving you everything my coaching experience has taught me you’ll need, short of you actually doing it and scheduling coaching conversations with me.

This has been long enough. On Wednesday I will give you a sneak peak.

2010 Mālama for Say Leadership Coaching

March 5, 2010 by Rosa Say

The Mālama of my post title, refers to stewardship.

I will often talk story with you about having a Strong Week Plan as the calendar-aligned construct of your work week. We’ve also reminded ourselves recently, of how having a “trusted system” can help you attain stress-free performance.

Over the past week, the project I had inserted into my own Strong Week Plan in between my business commitments, was doing a comprehensive rewrite of my primary business website, Say Leadership Coaching. SLC is now six years old, and I had fallen behind in keeping my website in sync with the growth and evolution of how my business actually happens day by day. I newly realized how much I had been taking the site for granted and had not properly cared for it, when this happened: What if your business got sick?

I am also planning a complete reinvention of www.ManagingWithAloha.com and I found that working on SLC first gave me some better clarity about those plans. It certainly got me much more excited about them, and impatient to start! (That one requires some professional help I’ll need to hire.)

If you have some time this weekend, I would greatly appreciate your help in looking it over, and proofreading what I have done for SLC. When you first click over it will look the same, for I did not work on a new design (I hope to have that done this summer). I concentrated on content, and on navigation, and the nine pages now there on the sitemap have been completely redone or newly created.

We writers have a tendency to be overly enamored of our own stuff, and that’s why I ask your help. SLC is not for me, it’s for you. More than ever before, I’ve written it with the same Ho‘ohana intention I have always had for Managing with Aloha: As a freely published resource the Alaka‘i Manager can turn to, whether or not that manager ever decides to hire me personally, or for his or her business.

I think of what I have on both SLC and MWA as “jumpstart writing” which can get an interested manager started, as opposed to business advertising, ‘brochureware’ and sales copy. It may not be the smartest way to sell myself, but it does work for me, and I feel both authentic and comfortable in the way I’ve published my sites.

People will frequently ask me why I give away so much information on both websites, and the answer is because I genuinely want the manager with an Alaka‘i calling to find what’s there, free for the taking, and use it. I do understand that the internet has become a free copy machine: My site stats illustrate that the pages are copied almost daily, or linked to on company intranets, and in password-protected forums I cannot get into. That doesn’t bother me: It encourages me, and gives me hope, for Hō‘imi: It means that people are seeking better and best. KÅ«lia i ka nu‘u: They strive for the summit!

“Never underestimate the power of giving.
It shines like a beacon throughout humanity.
It cuts through the oceans that divide us and
brightens the lives of all it touches.
One of life’s greatest laws is that you cannot hold a torch to light
another’s path without brightening your own as well.”
—Managing with Aloha page 81

There are six more SLC pages I have turned off for now, or dropped from readily apparent navigation, because I might love them, but I don’t think they are necessary there anymore. If you really do miss them, let me know.

You can start at my home page, and click around from there: www.SayLeadershipCoaching.com

There are two pages in particular that I think will be a win-win for us: Me in asking your help with a site look-over, and you as an Alaka‘i Manager:

1. Are you a manager or leader? Snippet:

My services are for hire, and I have products you can purchase, however I will also tell you about a self-study option which is completely free and without any strings attached to it.

If you are a manager, and you want to be a great manager, there is a reason you found this page, and believe me, your time is now.

2. The Healthy Workplace Compass. A little more about this one:

One of the workshops I have always offered has been called ‘Imi ola Coaching in the past, to help businesses define these compass points when they tackle a reinvention of their business model. This is a new page, where I am publishing the SLC Workplace Compass as an illustrative example: We’ve given this to our clients, but it hasn’t been on the site before.

When customers want to fast-track another program, we ask them to do this on their own first, as a way they can prepare in earnest for the work we will then tackle together.

This page is why I decided to post this on Talking Story this weekend, because I want all of you, my wonderful, faithful Talking Story readers and Ho‘ohana Community, to have it.

Okay, I better wrap this up: You’ll have enough to read there for your weekend!

I’m eager to hear what you think: Email me privately if you prefer.

And mahalo nui loa, thank you so, so much. It’s hard to write this kind of content and be objective about it!

By the way, if you have never noticed it before, the link to Say Leadership Coaching when you are here, reading Talking Story, is always up within the navigation contained in the site banner, under “SLC.COM” for short.

Photo Credit: Street Art Compass by KayVee.INC on Flickr