initiative

To be Alaka‘i, be First

June 28, 2010 by Rosa Say

If I ask you what you’ve initiated lately, what would come to mind, and how quickly?

We speak of Alaka‘i in a wealth of context, for there is so much included within both managing and leading. There is much too much, and we need to focus.

For the coming week, I want you to try something: Think of only one thing, and have it be INITIATIVE.

Alaka‘i at its value-best is about initiative: We seize it for ourselves, and we are attracted to it in others.

We know inherently that initiative is about being first in something, and because we’re first we’re naturally pioneering — we’re exploring options and testing them, never resting on our laurels, for that would be duplication at worst, and improvement at best. However initiative is about complete freshness, newness, experimentation and bravery. It is about BEING FIRST.

Having a learner’s mind will equip you magnificently, so do not hesitate. Shed off any protective husk you may be keeping around you. Be first this week. Take initiative. Be Alaka‘i.

Update: Here is another take on this, just added to my Flickr pages:

“I want to be fire.”

“But you can’t. You’re a lily, and we live in the water.”

“Are those facts, or are they happenstance? I can change.”

“I don’t think so” you can’t change that much. There are some things you just have to accept.”

“Well, I don’t. You might accept them, but I don’t. I’m still going to try to be fire.”

“Gotta admit, there is something happening here in your trying” how does it feel?”

“Scary, but also thrilling, and the thrilling is winning.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Footnote: Mondays are devoted to Managing with Aloha here on Talking Story.

There is more backstory to MWA Mondays here if you are interested, including an index of relevant resource pages: Monday is for Managing with Aloha. My Book Page is here.

On Previous Mondays, Pō‘akahi kākou:

The Real Problem with Leadership

May 25, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

One problem with leadership, is simply that we don’t have enough of it.

The bigger problem with leadership is that it isn’t attractive to us. We, as individuals, aren’t accepting it as our Kuleana, and personal responsibility. We keep looking for someone else to lead, for the truth of the matter is that we prefer being followers (and sadly, armchair quarterbacks ready to complain.)

Here’s the catch: The best leaders are the ones who expect more leadership from you, not ‘good’ following.

Jacob LOST — In Lost, Jacob was on a quest to find another leader, and someone who could do what he could not. Photo courtesy ABC.

Are we looking in all the wrong places?

If you do a search on Amazon.com for leadership books, over 61,306 results come up, and those are only the ones with the word ‘leadership’ in the product description’s keywords. (If you’re curious about the comparison, as I was, 603,208 results come up for ‘management.’)

My theory is that so many people write about leadership because we’re still yearning for it: We seek it by trying to articulate it better, so we’ll know exactly what we’re looking for, especially in a world which is anything but static and stable. As with most things, we can better grab onto something we can tangibly identify.

I’ll often remind myself of this longstanding leadership quest so that I focus better in my own writing about it. What I’m trying to do, is to help you see leadership as the visible evidence of self-leadership behaviors: Leading is for you, and not just “the other guy.” If you look for leadership in someone else, you will always be looking, and you’ll always feel frustrated.

So there’s three ways I’ll break leadership down when writing about it:

I’ll connect it to the creation of energy as our most important resource (my way of defining leadership), for hopefully, that’s very desireable to you: Gathering your own energy is where you must start. You fuel up.
I’ll write about the opportunities we have to lead, and state them as your calls to action (recent examples have been Sense of Workplace and Job Creation).
I’ll write about that action as activities that are not larger than your life, but highly possible: They are tangible bits which squarely sit in your own circle of influence.

However what’s very frustrating for me, is that I constantly hear back: “It needs to start at the top, right?” and the finger-pointing at the boss will begin immediately. Maybe so; maybe improvement does need to happen with your boss too, but what if it never happens? Will you really be content with playing the victim forever? Why not start any necessary improvement with you?

We have to stop this blame game where we constantly look at someone else as the reason we do not take action and behave better, or with greater bravery. Please stop focusing on what the other guy is doing about it, and look within. Leadership is scarce when there’s a scarcity of initiative — yours.

Be honest: We’re looking for saviors

Leadership is open to everyone, and opportunity abounds, but we don’t see it that way. We refuse to, and shield ourselves in self-righteousness instead. Pure yuck. It’s a cop-out to say that the problem with leadership is the way someone else does it (or doesn’t).

This is something that really bugs me about election seasons, such as we’re in right now: They proliferate the misconception that leadership is about title, position and placement. We get stuck in believing that “winner takes all” and he or she will now be the only one who is “the leader” when that simply isn’t true. The smartest thing the so-called winner can do is tap into the leadership desires of his or her previous opponents to channel them, such as President Obama did when he asked Hillary Rodham Clinton to work with him as our U.S. Secretary of State.

However if he hadn’t done so, would Clinton have stopped her practice of self-leadership, neglecting to renew her initiative? I sincerely doubt it. She would have looked for another opportunity, and so can you.

Be your own savior. Solve the leadership problem by always asking, “What about me? What can I do?” or if it’s more comfortable for you, ask, “How can I help?” and “Where can I start?”

The way we solve “the problem with leadership” is to solve our problem with self-leadership being missing from our personal practice. Your small wins can create big domino effects.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Archive Aloha: Here’s a Take 5 of related postings:

Initiative, Humility and the Local Way
Who leads? You do. In the Sweet Spot Quote: “The trouble with all or nothing is that it is often too intimidating to choose all, making it much too easy to choose nothing.”
Guilt-Free Self-Leadership: 12 Possibilities
“What’s in it for me?” is a Self-Leadership Question
Leadership is Why and When and Management is What and How

Check out the post tags for more.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 and will add copies to Talking Story when they blend nicely with our conversations here. 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”. There are some differences in this Talking Story version, most notably that most of my hyperlinks will keep you here on this blog.

If you Ask for Initiative, Grant it

December 17, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

‘Initiative’ is usually high on a manager’s list of traits they’d like to see in the workforce, but you may need to give that more thought in early 2010.

Be completely honest: Would you welcome initiative if you actually got it, or would it put you in the quandary of possibly having to turn it down? How often might you be saying “No, I’m afraid we can’t be doing that right now” to your staff, and killing their initiative in the process?

What says your Business Model?

Our “Great Recession” is demanding that our business models change to adjust to the changing habits of the consumer. It’s good news: Companies must be responsive to be successful, and we now have the opportunity to weave this innovative responsiveness into our organizational cultures.

More often than not, the strategies within a company’s business model would not be described as very democratic, and usually employees are fine with that: They don’t expect they have the right to speak into the basic strategy of how a business functions on the bread-and-butter level. Thus that’s not the level that their initiative gets to play out, and get brilliantly demonstrated.

Make room for what you ask for

That said, no manager is going to say, “You can take a break from demonstrating any initiative right now until we figure some things out.” Sounds silly doesn’t it.

And yet” that is exactly the impression we are giving many we have on staff. Those words may not specifically be voiced out loud, but business owners are still running their companies lean, and with a wait-and-see hesitancy which is killing much of the initiative we’ve seen in the past. “Let me check with my manager” is a phrase the customer is hearing much too often.

‘Initiative’ is a big word. It can be a bucket for so many different behaviours that are still aligned with your values though money may be tight and your business model is still in flux. So define it. Exactly what initiative would you like right now?

Talk about self-starting and systems fluctuation with your team, and break them down: What kinds of work initiative do you still wish to see them demonstrate on a daily basis? Instead of saying “no, don’t” or “please stop for now” look for ways to say “let’s try something new instead and see how it works.”

Please keep asking for new ideas, and give them some fertile soil in which they can germinate and take root instead of whither and die completely. Think of it as container gardening, until the business model decisions are done, signalling that time your now-budding seedlings can be moved to the flower beds.

Start where your customer will notice

When you have these discussions with your staff, I recommend you start with a focus on Ho‘okipa (hospitality) and the service they can, and should be providing. Much of it has to do with the sincerity and graciousness of effective communication, stuff that doesn’t cost you a dime, and are more about setting expectations, making them clear and consistent.

I encourage you to be quick with whatever decisions you may be making with your business model. However know that there is little reason for your staff to put their initiative on hold while you do so. If you do, it will be very difficult to start those energies up again.

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. Here is the link to the original article there: If you Ask for Initiative, Grant it.

Who leads? You do. In the Sweet Spot

October 20, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

The trouble with “all or nothing” is that it is often too intimidating to choose all, making it much too easy to choose nothing.

Reality is, most of our naturally occurring choices fall in between the two, and their outcome would significantly improve if they became choices which were more conscious and intentional. ‘In between’ all or nothing can be a very good place to be.

In fact, ‘in between’ is where you find the Sweet Spot.

Leadership is a perfect example.

We get too awestruck when we think about leaders. It’s another reason I prefer saying we’re all managers seeking to both manage and lead.

Say “Leader” and most of us think about charismatic dynamos who are a bit larger than life, giving speeches and leading hordes of people, and we don’t relate to them that well, thinking, “Well, all the power to ‘em, but that’s just not me.”

Sweet Spot

You’re wrong. Leading is you.

When you really think about it, there is a tenacious degree of self-leadership required in just getting out of bed each morning and intentionally making your way through your day.

There is a influential degree of leadership at play, when you state an opinion about something or take a stand, and lo and behold, another person agrees with you. You’ve opened their eyes to something they did not see, you’ve helped them hear about something which had previously escaped them, or you made them feel a stirring which ended up moving them to action.

That’s huge.

And you know what? You may have achieved that magnificent feat in something as simple as a good conversation. You did all that without the extra baggage that comes with being up on the top in Charismatic Leader Land, being politically correct for mobs of people (and wasting an awful lot of time in the process).

Today, and for the rest of this week, look for your Sweet Spot.

Identify it (‘Imi ola: Seek your best possible life).
Appreciate it (live within the value of Mahalo).
Get comfortable with it (Nānā i ke kumu, look to your source).
Then get more intentional about it (Attach it to your Ho‘ohana).

Here is a reminder to save you a click:

Ho‘ohana is Your Intentional Work

From: I want a Labor Day about Ho‘ohana.

To the Alaka‘i manager, Ho‘ohana is why managers matter, and both managing and leading matters.

Work can and should be a time where you are working to bring meaning, fulfillment and fun to the life you lead.
Ho‘ohana. Work with intent, work 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 intention, in sync with the goals of the business.
Be one of those managers.

~ From Chapter Two in Managing with Aloha,
Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business
You can read the full chapter here, a page on our dedicated site for the Ho‘ohana Community.

No doubt about it. Ho‘ohana happens best in sweet spots, the ones between all or nothing.

(I didn’t talk much about nothing because it isn’t an option worth the consideration” Nothing has nothing to do with Alaka‘i, whereas having it all just might… “What’s in it for me?” is a Self-Leadership Question.)

Here is another one from the archives, one of my most popular e.v.e.r.:
Twelve Rules for Self-Leadership with a LOT of Sweet Spot possibilities and in-between places.

My mana‘o [The Backstory of this posting]
Each Tuesday I write a leadership posting for Say “Alaka‘i” at The Honolulu Advertiser. The edition here on Talking Story is revised with internally directed links, and I can take a few more editorial liberties. What will not change? That we talk story! Self-leadership is very much on my mind these days due to these Alaka‘i initiatives:

October’s Ho‘ohana: Sweet Closure, and
I can’t let this one go: A Sense of Workplace Call to Action