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Book Review: Reboot Your Life

February 11, 2012 by Rosa Say

…Energize Your Career and Life by Taking a Break.

Reboot Your Life: Energize Your Career and Life by Taking a Break by Catherine Allen, Nancy Bearg, Rita Foley, and Jaye Smith
Link to Amazon.com: Reboot Your Life on Kindle, currently just $2.99

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Are you due for a break, a meaningful, and restful one? If so, the best time is this time, and you can reboot your life all in one fell swoop.

Sabbaticals have broken free of the academic world, and they’re good for everyone, helping us keep better perspective of whether we live to work, or work to live. If you need a bit more convincing, the authors of this book have done a great job at reframing sabbaticals for us into the more modern notion of a “reboot break” covering 7 different versions that have become evidence of its mainstream appeal, and its wisdom.

I’d picked this up fully expecting it would well complement my recent urging that we managers consider the 20-hour work week as a wholesale societal rebooting of our normal workweek, a reinvention which is the silver lining of our Great Recession — and it does. The subject of a reboot break is covered thoroughly — there is much more content within this book than I’d expected to find — and I’d sum it up in these two themes: Convincing you of the benefits and possibilities (including good discussion of how to broach the subject with your employer), and then coaching you in making it count once you take the leap.

I’ve been able to take a 6-week sabbatical annually since purposely designing it into my business models back in 2004. My family, friends, and MWA clients know it as Ho‘omaha, the holiday hiatus given to all in my ‘Ohana in Business: We close for 3 weeks in December, and another 3 weeks in January. It now feels very natural and right to us, and best of all, it’s totally guilt-free; it feels smart, and it’s become quite strategic. I know we’re fortunate, now taking our Ho‘omaha holidays as matter-of-course as we do. So I also hoped the book would help me be more empathetic to those without the same freedoms we enjoy and capitalize on. Rebooting of some kind is often a transition which comes up in the Ho‘ohana coaching I do, so I can help managers bring more of ‘Imi ola into their lives as a value of lifestyle inventiveness and creativity.

The authors do not speak of values explicitly, but as they read The Reboot Break, MWA practitioners will make their value alignment connections often, and make them easily. For instance, the authors offer this as a common pattern of the Reboot Breaks which are most successful:

1. Creating Space – putting your life in order
(MWA’s Mālama, Ho‘okipa, Kuleana)
2. Reconnection – revitalizing connections to people, places, activities, and self
(MWA’s Lōkahi, Kākou, ‘Ohana)
3. Exploration – learning new things, especially through travel
(MWA’s ‘Ike loa, Ha‘aha‘a, Nānā i ke kumu)
4. Reentry – starting a new chapter of your life
(MWA’s Aloha, Mahalo, Pono)

I found the authors covered their subject well, offering substantial testimony over ‘what if’ supposition, but I still think the reader will have to be predisposed to the idea first if they’re to take the plunge and use this book as their roadmap. How badly do you want your own break, and how brave and determined are you?

Your best strategy might be the team approach: Get your work team and your family to read this with you. If you are between gigs, a good companion to this, perhaps for the “Exploration” phase of the reboot break you take, would be The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People by Carol Eikleberry: My book review is here.

From my own experience I can assure you: Ho‘omaha once, and you’ll never go back to a life without it.

View all my book reviews on Goodreads

Why Goodreads? They have become an App Smart choice for me, for I want to return to more book reading, and have set a goal to read at least 30 books this year. 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.

Previous review done for Talking Story: Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

Use this link if you prefer to read my book reviews here on Talking Story.

More on Reading in the Talking Story archives:

  1. Managers, you need to READ
  2. Deliberate Inputs
  3. Books Come to You at Least Twice

Ubiquitous platitude and ultimate backwater

October 23, 2011 by Rosa Say

It is the most ubiquitous platitude of corporate life: “People are our most important asset.”

Book, Ball and Chain
Book, Ball and Chain by Kurtis J. Garbutt, on Flickr

The undeniable reality of course, is that the human side of enterprise remains the ultimate backwater. It’s the last item on most CEOs’ list of strategic priorities. It’s where mediocre executives go when they can’t cut it in the “real” parts of the organization. Be honest: how many companies do you know that are as creative, as disciplined, as businesslike about the people factor in business as they are about finance, engineering, and marketing?
— William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre in Mavericks at Work

So what can we do about this?

I remain convinced that the role of the manager must change: The Reconstructed, Rejuvenated, Newly Respected, and Never Underestimated Role of the Manager

We chip away at it, but we have yet to tackle it as an all-out campaign, elevating the role of the manager once and for all.

Will you be our champion in your company?

Aloha! Just joining us?

Talking Story is the blog home of those who are learning to be Alaka‘i Managers — those committed to managing and leading with Aloha. Read a preview of the book which inspired this movement, and visit our About Page.

Talking Story with Rosa Say

Whose Confidence Should We Be Talking About?

October 1, 2011 by Rosa Say

Economist Paul Krugman makes a good point in writing of our Phony Fear Factor:

“Extended periods of ‘jobless recovery’ after recessions have been the rule for the past two decades. Indeed, private-sector job growth since the 2007-2009 recession has been better than it was after the 2001 recession.

We might add that major financial crises are almost always followed by a period of slow growth, and U.S. experience is more or less what you should have expected given the severity of the 2008 shock.

Still, isn’t there something odd about the fact that businesses are making large profits and sitting on a lot of cash but aren’t spending that cash to expand capacity and employment? No.

After all, why should businesses expand when they’re not using the capacity they already have? The bursting of the housing bubble and the overhang of household debt have left consumer spending depressed and many businesses with more capacity than they need and no reason to add more. Business investment always responds strongly to the state of the economy, and given how weak our economy remains you shouldn’t be surprised if investment remains low. If anything, business spending has been stronger than one might have predicted given slow growth and high unemployment.”

What I would add to this, is that we in business have to lead more assertively, and much more quickly. We have the power to affect change, and we’re not doing it:

“I think what business people are saying – hey, we’re gonna pull back, sit on the sidelines, and let the country make a decision as to which way they want to go in.”
— Quote: Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television

That’s simply unacceptable. And it’s downright foolish. If we’re as unhappy with the government as we say we are, why are we so willing to let them be our misguided saviors? Get action back in your own two hands, and stop giving away your power so naively.

Confidence resides in YOU

It’s true that ‘consumer confidence’ is low — it’s low because uncertainty is so high, and we’re being prudent, saving whatever dollars we have as a contingency strategy. Arguably, this is something we should’ve been doing all along — it’s called living within our means (i.e. our actual earnings) AND having an emergency fund for ourselves, versus living on credit and over-extending ourselves. Our low in consumer confidence is actually part of a healthier self-correction: Something like walking away from a mortgage contract we’d signed shouldn’t be the kind of choices good people feel forced to make.

So that’s the quick diagnosis of ‘consumer confidence.’ Fine. Now, let’s talk business confidence. Let’s talk about your confidence with the work you know can be done, and done right now, today, because you are doing it.

Let’s talk about your confidence in business as the great enabler it is, working on those time-honored concepts of strategic initiative, mission, and vision. Let’s talk about your confidence as a business person, business manager, and business leader with good ideas, because working in business is what YOU do. Let’s demonstrate those things, and how good we are at doing them.

Business can lead the way to future prosperity for all of us, by bringing back the certainty that can hit home for us on a very local level. When we see success in our own community, national stumbles in a deadlocked congress don’t seem as dramatic to us. As a business person, you bring success back by championing the confidence you DO have, and demonstrating that confidence in the work which does happen. Focus on what CAN be done right now instead of focusing on what cannot be done. Waiting and hoping for things to get better is a lousy business strategy. Actually, it means there is no strategy at all.

The future will always be uncertain by nature — we can’t know what hasn’t happened yet. However we can focus on what we see happening in our own neck of the woods: We can see where the flywheel starts to turn, and we can give it our local heave-ho. Invest in what you do know, and in what you know you should be doing about it. Be more hopeful because you are tuned in to your own confidence levels — wherever they are playing out for you.

Beyond the numbers: Decide on the kind of jobs we need

Along the way, we in business will create more jobs which frame the work we know must be done. [See: What gainful employment ‘should’ do for you.]

I am increasingly of the opinion that the void we have to fill is about having the right jobs in place, and not just jobs as a number. As a business person, you have to decide what the jobs of your future are, and then put those jobs into production: You cannot fill vacancies for jobs you haven’t designed yet. You design them because you are confident about the work those jobs produce — that’s the unfilled capacity Krugman refers to.

And no more waiting on anyone else.

Beautiful Confidence is a thought to keep close for the weekend: “Confidence is good’s natural extension.”

A “wake-up call” isn’t enough

June 4, 2011 by Rosa Say

It takes courage to change, and forge a new future: Have you got that courage in you?

I was not at this presentation, and can only base this on Dan Nakaso’s article written for the Star Advertiser, but I am newly encouraged knowing that Richard C. Lim is our new director of DBEDT, the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Perhaps that “T” should be dropped at the end.

Nakaso wrote: “Future of tourism called into question: The state economic director surprises business leaders with his stark outlook.”

“Lim, who has been running DBEDT for six months, outlined a gloomy economic picture for the islands and said tourism has essentially remained stagnant for the last 20 years and can no longer be relied on to move the economy into a prosperous future.”

He is absolutely right, and being kind in saying it’s only been this way for the last 20 years — try 30 or 40. The business model is broken; it’s dysfunctional, or in many cases, missing completely. Any business models which are in place for so-called Tourism Leadership are sadly irrelevant to our community challenges.

I’m a product of our hospitality industry, as is my values-based Managing with Aloha philosophy, and readily accept that writing this can be viewed as my biting the hand that fed me — but how well did that really happen? What is not mentioned in this article, is the sad fact that tourism has not improved our lot in life locally as its wage-earners either; I would much prefer to see our youth and all residents focus on industries which improve their standard of living individually too — and not just for the community infrastructure needs Lim mentions in the article recap.

Our state (and all communities for that matter) need not do for us, when we can prosper and thrive on our own because we work in more visionary industries.

Even if we blindly claim to be good at tourism, or Aloha-suited to it, it’s time we learned even more, and got good at endeavors which will serve us better, via the industries which rely on building our innovative talents with math and the sciences. Tourism has not sustained us well enough in exchange for all the resources we have put into it, especially when you count up our service-industry poor.

This part of the article absolutely floored me, especially reading who was quoted:

“Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics and chairman of the state Council on Revenues, told Lim that his ideas “provoked a lot of good thinking in this room. This is the first time I’ve heard any of this.”

Give me a break! If we assume he is speaking his truth, how has he come to hold the position he holds? Where have they been, and what on earth have they been doing in Hawai‘i economic circles if this is the first time he and others have “heard any of this?” Do they know how to read and evaluate all their charts and economic reports?

Will anything happen now that this speech has been delivered, or was it simply a way to while away some time for those in the room who are too NIMBY entitled and complacent? (stuck in the quagmire of “not in my back yard” thinking and will-not-try opposition).

Knowing all of which Lim speaks is one thing, and having the courage to do something about it is another when you have so many sacred cows grazing in your home pastures.

We can do better, I know we can. I pray we get the will to do so.

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