Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

Archives for June 2007

The Best of 2007 on Talking Story

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Each December we look over the past year to see which Talking Story articles have resonated most strongly with the Ho‘ohana Community. This is always a fascinating exercise for me, for they are not necessarily those I would have chosen, or had felt strongest about in the writing: They make this list by merit of their visits tracked during the calendar year according to FeedBurner.

These are the twenty-four which have emerged as the front runners for 2007, listed from the most recent (December 2007) to the oldest (January 2007).

If you have a different vote, add it to the comments and tell me why!

  1. Stress-busting for December: Project Sweet Closure
  2. Talk Story: Brand versus Reputation ”“ 4 Questions to start with
  3. Hey Boss, Why are you Blogging?
  4. Why “management” has a bad rep
  5. The month of July was devoted to our Community Forum on Ho‘okipa, the Hawaiian value of hospitality. See a complete recap here: Mea Ho‘okipa Live Their Aloha Every Day
  6. Big Brother Blog, Little Sister Coach
  7. On Ho‘ohiki: Keeping your promises
  8. Arghh! Too many widgets, cookies, blog blingees and community toys
  9. One I wish was even more popular? Believe in your Biology! because it’s a great thing to know.
  10. 5 Things Employees Need to Learn—From You
  11. My Five Self-Imposed Blogging Rules
  12. To Do, and To Stop, with ‘Imi ola
  13. Paper: Peeves and Pleasures
  14. Twelve Rules for Self-Leadership – definitely in the #1 Spot
  15. Twelve Rules for Self-Management – closely behind at #2
  16. Newly thinking about; Motivation
  17. How we Choose to use our Voice
  18. Vital Friends, The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without
  19. Waiting Tables and Work Ethic
  20. Not the Tomatoes!
  21. Service is Monologue; Hospitality, Dialogue
  22. Aloha; a Celebration of Who We Are
  23. Hawaiian Friends

  24. One I am always pointing to! Ho‘ohana: Love Your Work. It’s my mantra!

    Teaching, Learning, and Sense of Place

Here are the previous years: 2006. 2005. 2004.

How to deal with a Bad Boss

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Blessed girl that I am, when I came home from my recent trip there was a package waiting for me with a book inside (thanks Dave!)

The book was Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. As on the book jacket blurb, "This irreplaceable career handbook gives anything but standard advice to the next generation of workers. Penelope Trunk -in her very distinctive and candid way- provides indispensable guidance to millions of members of Generations X and Y."

I haven’t read it cover to cover yet, but I have been dipping into it, reading parts of it at random and loving it. My post title refers to this:

New Rule 33 for Success:
There are No Bad Bosses, Only Whiny Employees

Want to deal with a bad boss? First, stop complaining. Unless your boss breaks the law, you don’t have a bad boss; you have a boss you are managing poorly.

I spend so much of my working time getting less-than-good bosses to improve, this was refreshing to read for a change!

With further book dipping I quickly saw that Penelope takes her swipes at me and my generation of boomers pretty often (and I don’t take it personal, as a group we deserve it) but she levels out the reality checks both ways, no generation spared. Am really enjoying the read.

Take a look at Dave’s book review over at Rothacker’s Reviews.

As a side note, I showed the book to my Gen Y son to see if I could entice him into reading it, and his first (and so far only) comment was, "She’s just like you; girl author with a guy’s tie on the book jacket. Glad we don’t wear those things here."

Book_cover_2 Managing_with_aloha

7 Wonders of Learning – Help make it happen!

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The countdown begins!

Ho‘ohana Community, here is our opportunity to participate in something pretty spectacular, and I know it would be easy for all of you to do, lifelong learners that you are! All you have to do is contribute your 7 favorite learning links!

Join us in our big, hairy, audacious goal to Saturday, 07-07-07 and

Listen, Laugh, Learn, Link, Love, Live
and Leap to Wonder

  • Listen — welcome new ideas and every teacher, listening fully opened
  • Laugh — with the positive and uplifting joy others are ready to give you
  • Learn — with childlike curiosity and in a collaboratively jubilant way
  • Link — use others’ lessons learned as a springboard for your own, sharing your knowledge freely
  • Love — tap into your passion for learning, and be of loving heart in your new bonds with others
  • Live — be a shining example of the Lifelong Learner; “Be the learner you want to see in the world”
  • Leap — to a new experience, stretching past the familiar, accepting leaps of higher intuition.
    Allow learning to transform you, and to bring you to Wonder.

This is the BHAG we are leaping toward at Joyful Jubilant Learning:

On 07-07-07 we are determined to collect at least 777 Learning Links, possibly more.

This is a shout-out to all lifelong learners, readers and writers alike. Will you help us reach our goal? 

Click over to JJL today for the details on how you participate.

Ho‘o! Let’s do this, and help make it happen!

Why is this here? KISS it and Leap it.

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Why is this here?

I love this question. It’s currently the front runner as my summer of 2007 mantra.

I keep looking at all my stuff (and ‘stuff’ comes in an astounding amount of different clutter-heavy forms) and asking myself Why is this here? And further, How much does it matter that this is here at all?

I am not quite sure why this happens for me, but as predictable as the calendar pages turn, the summer months get me to think about productivity, and in particular, how necessary de-cluttering my life is, if I am to be more productive than I might presently be. When it comes to productivity there is always room for improvement.

KISS – Keep It Simple and Summery

Maybe it’s just the lightness of summer. For instance, and in comparison, I think of the winter as very heavy. In summer you’re shedding whatever clothes you can while still remaining decent, while in the winter you are piling them on, layer by swaddling layer.
While we tend to love Christmas, fact of the matter is that it’s a very burdensome holiday; all that decorating, gift shopping-wrapping-sending-receiving, meal planning, worship and end-of-year soul-searching, money finagling and unScrooge-like behavior to fit into the calendar! On the other hand, the summer gives us the 4th of July, and encourages us to just have an outdoor picnic, get healthy, and blow something up (I mean fireworks”) You can also have a few garage sales and really make a clean sweep of things while collecting some piggybank money for the next rainy day.

Thanks to our Ho‘ohana for June (our live-work value of the month), I have already rewired this summer feeling I get: I’ve connected my Productivity! De-clutter! voices to KÅ«lia and Break ThrÅ«! It challenges me to go for the more dramatic, to go for bold and edgy, and for the extreme when tackling whatever project I’ve set my sights on. If not, it will be just another summer where I take just another swipe at breaking through clutter and old systems without any significant leaps forward.

Why not Leap it?

No just another. I want to leap. Not reach, not jump, not scale, but LEAP. EM Sky brought this word back into my consciousness in an email conversation we had with our JJL authors, and it’s stuck with me in my summer productivity context too. The leap I want is not a leap of faith, but a calculated leap that spans worthwhile work I have fully planned and executed well.


A leap of faith would mean that I believed well; a calculated leap would mean that I intentionally created action, and did well.

Leaping can also relate to form and function work, which always feels great to me. For instance, on the heels of asking myself Why is this here? (function) is, Where could it be that would be better? (form).


An example: Though I am still learning to use it, I suspect that the better place (form) for a couple of my financial spreadsheets (function) now on Excel will end up to be QuickBooks.

Example #2: I used to do all my blog posting drafts in a Word doc, and now I write them directly in my TypePad drafts, finding that they get lined up, fleshed out, and programmed for posting far better than before.

Folks, I must tell you, this is the stuff of break throughs. Sometimes we look for really big things, letting BREAK THROUGH be this big white elephant in the room, when as the saying goes, even an elephant gets eaten one bite at a time (or something like that.)

However keep in mind that the Why? question is the important one. You need to first ask yourself why you need anything at all before you ask yourself where it could work better, for maybe the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t work at all anymore. Why is the de-clutter hero of the day.

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