GEMO

Where PLANNING ends and PROJECTS begin is where MANAGING well follows up on the work you have already put into LEADING well.

Let’s use our October Ho‘ohana of Sweet Closure to review some relevant past postings done here, bringing everything together in the blood and guts of how you are managing right now, today. I write this blog to help you set work in motion in fresh ways: My goal is to help you, the Alaka‘i manager, create (lead) and foster (manage) highly productive workplace energies.

Reading about it is not enough: Let’s do it.

In our Say “Alaka‘i” Language of Intention, we say that managers will both manage and lead in the workplace, tackling those words as active verbs:

Leadership is Why and When
Management is What and How
(those links will help you review those distinctions if you’ve missed that discussion)

As you work on your October Ho‘ohana of Sweet Closure, this lead versus manage distinction is one you can apply to planning versus project work.

Think of ‘planning’ as setting a leadership vision which answers those why and when questions with clear decisions. It creates a job to be done, a job which is very well defined and compelling: The better your decisions, the higher the level of confidence you have throughout the workplace. In the best possible scenario there is an “‘it’ factor” to this plan: It’s attractive and highly desirable. Everyone wants to be a part of it. It’s known as mission-critical, and the important one.
Think of ‘project execution’ as getting that job done one logical piece (i.e. one project) at a time. However the logic does not dim the “‘it’ factor” at all: It just makes it highly achievable in the shortest possible time frame. The longer and more drawn out a project is, the greater your chances of losing momentum. Alaka‘i managers go for quick wins, and they get them to be progressive and successive, where one win follows another in perpetual motion.

What great managers do, is get their people engaged in those projects in the best possible way because those projects are the most timely and meaningful ones. As an Alaka‘i manager, you are setting well thought-out plans into motion throughout the organizational culture, (everyone has some touch point) and the sooner the better.

We should be in this shift by now!

Wrap up any planning you are doing for Sweet Closure and get into project mode! This is a short-term project and we want to get things done. If you are with me in using the holidays as our “put up your feet and enjoy the holidays” goal, it is time to reckon with GEMO (Good Enough, Move On) and get moving.

As we move on with our October Ho‘ohana for Sweet Closure, look back at the planning you have done, and be sure you have this clarity, wherein

“The Plan” you design answers Why and When. It clearly states the key decisions you have made so that anyone you enroll in its objectives can refer to “The Plan” anytime they get immersed in the work itself and feel they need a landmark to refer back to that will keep them on course versus wandering down a rabbit trail. Once project work starts, “The Plan” acts as an expectation filter so projects don’t get cluttered up with irrelevant complexity. The better your plan, the lighter and more nimble your project work.
“The Project” you design is about What components you have chosen, and How you get “The Plan” done: Ideas get practical. Set mile-markers, deadlines, and a final deliverable. The talk-story huddles you will have in the workplace should be dedicated to “The Project” with everything else taking a secondary place on the agenda: Use them to reach agreements on individual work versus teamwork currently in-process so that work keeps moving and does not stall. Alaka‘i managers are always on the lookout for obstacles, barriers, and excuses, and they get them out of the way.

Here are two resources you can use as checklists for “The Project” you come up with in your October Ho‘ohana of Sweet Closure:

1. If you have a copy of Managing with Aloha, review The Lōkahi Challenge for Managers which begins on page 107.

2. Here in the Talking Story Archives: Start a Wow! Project at Work. The post has been newly updated with fresh content, and so most embedded links go forward to newer articles which are recent to our current discussions. I have re-opened the comments for any questions which might come up for you.

My mana‘o [The Backstory of this posting]
Each Thursday I write a management posting for Say “Alaka‘i” at Hawai‘i’s newspaper The Honolulu Advertiser. The edition here on Talking Story is revised with internally directed links, and I can take a few more editorial liberties. Recently my posting here has been very directed and sequential: I am working on my October Ho‘ohana of Sweet Closure along with you. If you are just joining us and would like to read them in order, this article would be number 5 on this list:

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe here for free email updates, here for RSS.

~ Originally published on Say “Alaka‘i”
June 2009 ~
When is ‘Good’ good enough?

As you read last time, (Can you define your Leadership Greatness?) I like making a practical difference between ‘good’ and ‘great’ just as much as I enjoy working with the pragmatic differences between management and leadership. Alaka‘i leaders are tenacious in their pursuit of greatness, for they know that nothing less will do in a world overcrowded by mediocrity.

However I don’t want you to discount ‘good’-ness totally: Good can be good enough, and there is an acronym I learned a couple of years back from Employee Engagement expert David Zinger that has served me well in that reminder. David taught it to me as GEMO, which stands for “Good Enough, Move On.” As David explained, GEMO “helps avoid perfectionism, dithering, delays, and other productivity traps and snarls.” GEMO can be a great tonic for any analysis paralysis or obstinate behavior which might trip us up.

We all want Progressive Work

When you really think about it, most of us will not bemoan hard work. Working up “a good sweat” is thought of as worth the effort it takes —when we see or feel results follow. What irritates us is stalled work, or those efforts which seem to be repetitive without going anywhere or producing anything. We aren’t satisfied or fulfilled when the work we do isn’t progressive; instead, we feel frustrated.

Remember our Alaka‘i management definition? “Management is the workplace discipline of channeling mission-critical energy into optimal production and usefulness.”

Frustration is one of the biggest energy-drainers there is. Alaka‘i managers know this, and as they walk through a workplace their frustration radar is on high alert ”“ it’s part of that respect for people’s time and effort we spoke of last time. When they notice people getting frustrated in any way the Alaka‘i manager will zoom in and ask what they can do to help.

So what is ‘GEMO good?’

“Good enough” means that stepped-it-up progress has been made and you can now “Move on” in some way within the process you’ve set your sights on completing.

Every operations and systems-thinking person on the planet will likely think that’s a pretty loaded sentence, and I agree —it certainly is. It is also highly contextual: Good enough in ABC company may not necessarily be good enough in XYZ company, or at all related (apples versus oranges), for it depends on the vision that the mission-critical process is trying to achieve. The reason I asked you to do some in-writing definition this past Tuesday, is because your definition of greatness matters BIG time. It has to sync up to your energy-creating, highly meaningful vision. If you pull it out now to read it, you should instantly see your contextual connections to different workplace processes.

A useful metaphor

I’m a late-in-life learner to the game of Chess, and I happened to learn it at the same time I was struggling to understand my contextual GEMO in one of my own company projects last year. The project was new; we’d never done it before, and so we couldn’t rely on historical learning from our past mistakes or successes. We were creating something new, and the best marker for our sights was forward to our vision.

Chess was a very useful metaphor for me at the time, for as I learned more about the game I could tell that I would never improve much if I did not learn to think two or three moves ahead: If I stayed stuck in single-move thinking I would never win a single game unless my opponent happened to fall asleep at the game board.

To win at Chess means moving with baby-step progress. Moving any other way is just stalling, and your opponent knows it.

GEMO to your workplace win with Conversation

Systems work and process management is everyone’s business in every workplace. Alaka‘i managers don’t have all the answers, but they channel the energies it takes to come up with them, and the easiest way you can do that is by being a conversation starter.

Those who are closest to the work at hand will always describe it in the most detail. What great managers can do in the service they provide to the team, is slightly shift the normal conversation about work so that it is more expansive ”“ stretchy enough to welcome in open-minded new thinking and fresh ideas.

The GEMO conversation shift is about movement and progress. Get your team together in a huddle, and talk story to pool your answers. When you break down a work process you are presently working within, when is there movement and progress, and when does it stall and seem repetitive?

Let’s talk story.
Any thoughts to share?

Photo credit: No Going Back by Mariano Kamp.

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