measurement

Encore: Learning my 9 Boxes

March 27, 2011 by Rosa Say

6th grade was a big year, come to think of it.

After sharing the story about my dad, and how he helped me appreciate my schooling more, I thought you might enjoy some true Sunday Mālama time meeting Mr. Lincoln.

A bit of encore backstory: This post is one I originally wrote for Joyful Jubilant Learning. We were “Learning the Joy of 9” at the time, in a playful month-long exploration of the 09-09-09 palindrome. These were our posting prompts:

What does 9 mean to you?
How can 9 trigger your learning, adding to your learning pleasure in a 9-fold way?
What exploration of 9 will you challenge yourself with in the month to come?

This was one writing assignment I didn’t have to think twice about. So here is Learning my 9 Boxes with a few updates for this new spot on Talking Story.

May there be a Mr. Lincoln in every student’s life.

Waikoloa School

Learning My 9 Boxes

Growing up I did well in school; I liked being there, and quickly discovered my joy in learning. It was obvious to me that what I liked was relatively easy (English, History, Social Studies) and what I didn’t like as much would surely prove more difficult (Science and Math) — just like Kirsten says! — New Learners for the New Economy So I tried real hard to find some favor in those things I didn’t like.

However all through my lower grades I could not come to grips with numbers. With every advancing grade it seemed to me that math got worse, in blatant, unreasonable defiance of that surely-sacred law that “practice makes perfect.”

Mr. Lincoln

Then by some divine intervention, Mr. Lincoln became our math teacher in the 6th grade, just in time for Algebra. It had to be a miracle of some kind, because I was in Catholic school, and all our other teachers were nuns. I would soon learn that was but one small reason Mr. Lincoln was miraculously different. Very different.

The nuns were specialists. Each grade had a homeroom teacher, but you’d have the same nun for each subject of the curriculum from kindergarten all the way up to the 8th grade, so unless she stopped teaching for some reason, you had to learn to like her too; the subject itself was but the half of it. Well, something happened to Sister Margaret Alice, who’d been our math teacher, during the summer after the 5th grade. Not sure what; when you’re only 10 or 11 years old you aren’t given many reasons for things happening, they just do, and you accept them knowing you don’t have much choice in the matter anyway. So when we walked into our math class at the beginning of my 6th grade school year, there was Mr. Lincoln, a regular man ”“ he wasn’t even a brother or priest! And he was our teacher!

From the very beginning we knew he’d be temporary, only there until they found another nun to replace Sister Margaret Alice, and sure enough, by the 7th grade Mr. Lincoln was gone. But we had our full 6th grade with him, and for me, that was enough: Mr. Lincoln was going to be the one to finally help me learn to love numbers ”“ in Algebra no less.

The Breakthrough

All these years later, Mr. Lincoln has become larger than life in my memories of him. He’s become a math god, commanding all the happy numbers of the universe. I’ve freely given him the credit in silent prayer with every corporate balance sheet or profit & loss statement I have had to reconcile, and every business plan or pro forma I’ve had to write. I’ve blessed his memory each time I’ve managed to get my income tax returns to be at zero (versus paying or getting a refund) because my withholding was right. Whenever I gave a training class in financial literacy to my employees having figured out the best way to present it to them, I’ve imagined Mr. Lincoln playing chess or poker in heaven with Dean Pennington (my high school class advisor, and the one who convinced me to take Business Law in college), again winning both game and debate on why good business strategy should not be overly complicated. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I would not be an entrepreneur and principal of three businesses today if Mr. Lincoln had not been my 6th grade math teacher.

Yes, he was nice. Yes, he was kind. Yes, he was patient. Yes, he was very, very good at explaining the mysteries of Algebra. However my breakthrough came the day that he explained something extraordinary to us. He said that math and numbers are two different things which happen to work together well, and we could use numbers for more than just math. It sounds incredibly obvious, but back then this was like a pronouncement of permission thinking sent straight from heaven.

Mr. Lincoln said something like, “Put aside math for now; don’t even think about it. Let’s figure out how you can learn to like numbers.” It was like reinventing all of numerology all over again, and doing it any way you wanted to. Even as a lowly, do-as-you’re-told, be-seen-and-not-heard 6th grader.

Folding Paper

One of the first things we did in class was fold paper. Mr. Lincoln gave each of us a blank piece of paper and said he wanted us to fold it any way we wanted to: We could make columns, we could make boxes, we could make triangles or a pie —we could even rip a piece off if we wanted it square instead of rectangular.

He then explained that whatever we ended up with would be our template: When we counted up how many spaces our folds had created, we would know what our favorite number was —naturally, because our spirit said so. From then on, every time he gave us a homework assignment, we could apply it first to some patterning or iteration of our favorite number, deciding if we liked our pattern or not, and jogging a happier trail toward the answers he would eventually teach us to find.

Iteration:
“A process of achieving a desired result by repeating a sequence of steps and successively getting closer to that result.”

In other words, we could make our own math rules. Mr. Lincoln was either crazy (and the nuns didn’t know it) or he was brilliant. As you can guess, I think he was brilliant.

The 9 Boxes

As I sat in Mr. Lincoln’s class that day, I folded my paper in 3 equal columns and 3 equal rows, and got 9 boxes. It was the day that I instantly and magically stopped being intimidated by the number 9. I learned to embrace it, and get it to work for me. It’s a template I use even today.

And just as Mr. Lincoln said I could do, I use my 9 boxes for way more than just math. The first homework assignment he gave us was to think about the special things in our lives, and collect them on our templates within the spaces we created so they could be at home with us in math class too. I don’t recall what they were, but I do remember that my 9 boxes each had a single word in them (all in English, no Hawaiian). It remains a way I will teach managers to dream, and drill-down from their most compelling values words to articulating their vision.

As you can see from this picture, I use my 9 boxes every single week to do my Strong Week Planning: The arrows are normally not there, but are drawn in for you to see my process. When I do my Weekly Review I write my project management in each square and pattern my work flow.

The flow arrows were there on the 9 boxes I used to decide what order the 19 values of Managing with Aloha should appear in the chapter progression of my book: The arrows did the double duty of segmenting each box into two, with Aloha naturally starting in the middle as fertile ground and centering. Number 19 is my Epilogue, and as Ka lā hiki ola, the value of hope and promise, it is my “dawning of a new day” (the literal translation of the value) and on a brand new page of 9 boxes as the page title —the one which would become the 9 Key Concepts of my business model. Yep” The resulting grid morphed my book into a business.

I teach managers the fine points of the Daily 5 Minutes with 9 questions knowing their understanding will be complete once they fill in their own action plans for it in the template: They will move from having 9 questions to 9 incredible answers which value their employees and make them feel exceptionally confident as their manager and partner.

Iteration Drill Down

Best of all, 9 was simply my beginning.

I now LOVE 5. Do these ring any bells?

The Daily 5 Minutes ®. Definition and story, and full category. If you’re not giving your staff the gift of the Daily Five Minutes, you’re not Managing with Aloha „¢
5 Things Employees Need to Learn—From You. I am fond of saying that we learn from people, for I fervently believe that we do.
Performance Reviews: There’s a much better way. Turn your mandates into a positive and highly useful process in 5 steps.
Getting back our Practical Wisdom. “Change talking” in 5, and the power of our language of intention.
And focus-significant last year: Take 5 in 2010: A Game-Changing Ho‘ohana.

As a writer I’m a fan of the number 3, and I use the Rule of Three in every keynote-length speech I give (Copyblogger explains it well: How to Use the “Rule of Three” to Create Engaging Content):

The number 1 makes me focus (though this one is a bit of cheat, for it expands to 3 columns): Improve your Reputation with 1 List.

But for me, learning by numbers all started with the number 9 —and with an incredible teacher named Mr. Lincoln.

Tell me what you love about 9. How you might impulsively use the 9 boxes if faced with a blank template of them? I would love to get more ideas, and have a ream of printer paper just waiting to be folded, so I can continue to learn —from you.

As Brad Shorr shared with the original JJL posting:

Rosa, I wonder where you would be in your career and life without Mr. Lincoln. It’s amazing when we trace back to the roots of what we have become. A while back I had a cartoon strip project (that may be coming back to life!) where we were telling a story in sets of three three-panel cartoons. I found the structure of 9 very conducive to storytelling: a set up, a twist, a result. It was the first time I ever took a mathematical approach to joke writing, and the client and I were both extremely happy with the result.

We can probably all relate to what Cody Robert shared: I love what he says about “math as a language.”

For me Rosa, it was quite the opposite in that I had no trouble learning math in school at all. But, the application is what became vexing. What use were all these rules and theories outside of simple scribbles on paper? In reality, it seemed, all someone had done was make up these systems and rules of “math”.

It wasn’t for many years later until I began understanding the quiet importance of all the math I had learned. How it is a most efficient means of describing what was previously indescribable in our world. It then does me no surprise to hear that you learned its application at such an early age! Math, as a language acts not only to describe what we see around us, but what we envision and plan. Thank you for sharing this sweet revelation with me yet again.

Saturday stillness at school

Archive Aloha

Numerology for Managers: Great video in this one on the Magic of 9.
Leadership Needs a Numbers Breakthrough: We have long given each other such awful, negative connotations to numbers in business. On the one hand, numbers are revered as supreme; they are the measurement metrics of our universal business language. They are pragmatic. (Hear the sighs of all your CFOs and CPAs?) However let it be known (or surmised) that you are at all “bottom-line driven” and you strike fear in the hearts of all your employees and their families. Shifting context can help.
The 30-70 Rule in Leading and Managing: A manager will both manage and lead. They will be most effective at achieving results which matter when 30% of their time is dedicated to leading, and 70% of their time is devoted to managing.

Numerology for Managers

September 3, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

Quick Preface:
A good number of connective coaching links in this posting today for the TS reader who is a manager and MWA student: I add the Talking Story links at the ending if you prefer to keep your clicks within Ho‘ohana Publishing.

Early in the publishing process, my favorite one-line description for my book, Managing with Aloha, would come from my agent Roger while we were still in copy-editing mode. He called the MWA philosophy “a sensibility for worthwhile work.”

Loved it. It was very reaffirming for what I hoped MWA would be.

Sensibility makes me think of common sense, something that always seems to be in short supply —especially when you realize you need it most. It also makes me think of being practical, of “keeping it real,” and of usefulness.

The words “worthwhile work” are all about Ho‘ohana, which you know to be my favorite one of the Hawaiian values (Don’t get nervous: Aloha is core assumption and unwavering belief; it graciously allows others to be ‘favorites.’) For me, Ho‘ohana is mission-critical.

MY MANA‘O
(what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~

ALOHA is about you living with authenticity in a world populated with other people. We human beings were not meant to live alone, we thrive in each other’s company. Aloha celebrates everything that makes you YOU.

HO‘OHANA is about you making your living in our world in the way that gives you daily direction and intention and leaves you with a feeling of personal fulfillment every day —not just when you have accomplished large goals.

Can Numbers Become Common Sense?

This past Tuesday, I wrote “Leadership Needs a Numbers Breakthrough” as our September Aloha because we managers seem to have a “can’t live with them, can’t live without them” kind of relationship with numbers. We make conventional associations with them ”“ like budget, ROI, and other financial terms ”“ which are necessary measurements, but not liberating enough. Not captivating enough. Not sensible in the every-day scheme of things. Sure, they are sensible to all the people in Accounting, Banking and Finance (and we do respect and appreciate them; we do), but numbers only as measurements have not become common-sensible in how we approach our work every day ”“ in how we approach our Ho‘ohana.

What we managers are supposed to do, is get work to make sense. We are the people who bring sensibility to worthwhile work. MWA is a values-based philosophy seeking to help, by giving you tools to work with (like the Daily 5 Minutes), but the execution of it all depends on you.

So here is September’s challenge: How do we get numbers to make sense?

I don’t have all the answers. I have a few which work great for me, knowing what works well in my business, and with my goals, hopes and dreams. I’ve been able to turn them into better tools; shared a story about that yesterday with the Joyful Jubilant Learning Community: Learning My 9 Boxes.

You need to do the same thing for you.

If there were a better, kick-ass, highly common sense “Numerology for Managers” what might it possibly include? Any ideas?

Beyond Your Spreadsheets and my 9 Boxes

For instance, Paul Diamond had shared this video with us on Joyful Jubilant Learning yesterday, about the Magic of 9: Parlor trick, or common sense thinking?

[~YouTube link for those using RSS and not seeing the embed here~]

I asked JJLer Ruth Radney, who teaches a “Creative Math” class for high schoolers, “What do you consider the difference between a learning trick, and cheating the learning process?” and Ruth responded:

“There are some students for whom this is just a tool to help them remember facts, but to many students, it becomes a fascination. 9’s are particularly unique, and as students learn one “trick” they begin to explore to see if other numbers have similar attributes or surprise characteristics. To me, that turns a math “trick” into a tool for exploratory learning.”

The bold above is mine: I truly think “It becomes a fascination” is key. The other phrase we can key on (pun fully intended) is “tool for exploratory learning” for we managers can be all about tools — and they need not exclusively be spreadsheets!

Contextual Clarity: our Definition of ‘Managing’

We’ve said that management is about the ‘what’ and the ‘how.’

We managers channel available energies productively. We make the workplace vitality-charged by making it interesting and dynamic.

I do want you to think about sensibility and possibility as a winning combination. After writing “Leadership Needs a Numbers Breakthrough” I popped it into my Palena ‘ole category within the personal indexing I do ”“ the 9th Key within the MWA 9 Key Concepts. It felt most natural to me ”“ it made the most MWA sensibility ”“ because numbers can be both precise and infinite in the framing they offer.

9. Palena ‘ole (Unlimited Capacity):
This is your exponential growth stage, and about seeing your bigger and better leadership dreams come to fruition. Think “Legacy.” Create abundance by honoring capacity; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Seek inclusive, full engagement and optimal productivity, and scarcity will be banished.

For me, the number 9 is associated with abundance: It holds so much in that 4-fold capacity (physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual) and I can always drill down from there. I can drill down into my Alaka‘i Language of Leadership AND my Ho‘ohana — into my sensibility for worthwhile work as a manager.

It helps to always start with abundance because your choices seem so plentiful, and you can then pick the choice which fascinates you most. Fascination is your ticket to self-motivation. We cannot really motivate others, for motivation is an inside job. But if we help them become intrigued and fascinated, their motivation will naturally follow.

I would love to come to a new, cool and sexy definition for “Numerology for Managers” by the time the month is over: It is a thought which intrigues and fascinates me because I think it will be useful, especially if we make it sensible.

Will you help me think about this? Let’s talk story.

For those who prefer them, here are the Talking Story, JJL, MWA and MWAC copies of the links embedded in this posting:

At Joyful Jubilant Learning: Learning to Be of Use
At Managing with Aloha: Choose Values
What’s your Calling? Has it become your Ho‘ohana?
Leadership Needs a Numbers Breakthrough
Two Gifts: Values and Conversation (About the Daily 5 Minutes)
At Joyful Jubilant Learning: Learning My 9 Boxes
Management is What and How
3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces
Following is NOT a Passive Activity
At Managing with Aloha: The MWA 9 Key Concepts (About Palena ‘ole as the 9th Key)
Do you ask Good Questions? (About framing)
Do you define your Leadership Greatness?
On MWA Coaching: Palena ‘ole: Discover your 4-Fold Capacity
Your Alaka‘i Language of Leadership
How Managers Matter in a Healthy Culture
Newly thinking about~ Motivation

Article originally published on Say “Alaka‘i” September 2009
Numerology for Managers

The 30-70 Rule in Leading and Managing

July 30, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

July is quickly coming to an end. When I looked at my calendar earlier this week, the 07.30 numbering for today triggered a thought: I have not yet told you about the 70-30 Rule in managing and leading, have I.

‘Rule’ is a short, compact, easy word to remember and so that’s what we call it, but it is more of a guideline, and a goal Alaka‘i managers will commit to achieving. It goes like this:

A manager will both manage and lead. They will be most effective at achieving results which matter when 30% of their time is dedicated to leading, and 70% of their time is devoted to managing.

We manage and lead every single day. What constantly shifts is the amount we will be working at each one, devoting X amount of time to managing, and Y amount of time to leading.

When we feel we are compelled to curtail our management actions a bit and start leading more, we are beginning to get impatient ”“ the good kind of impatience (in contrast to the not-as-good impatience of micromanagement.) We have an idea about something, and it is about how we want the future to be different in some way than how things are right now.

Something else has happened as the idea grew in intensity: We can no longer come up with any good reason to wait.

— Leadership is Why and When

We have spoken of the differences between management and leadership at length (as we define them in our Managing with Aloha ‘Language of Intention’). As we think about the 30-70 Rule, let’s keep within the context of what we have most recently discussed here:

Leadership is Why and When: Leading is about acting on your good impatience for a new idea, one you fully realize will lead to change. Dedicate 30% of your time and effort to this leading.

Management is What and How: Managing then, will be about the execution of what it takes, and how it must be done for your visionary idea to become our new reality.
Dedicate 70% of your time and effort to this managing.

Learn to measure effort

I’m guessing your first question might be, “Why 30-70? How did you come up with that?”

Very early in my management career it became crystal clear that I had to learn to measure using a variety of expected business metrics. Many of us will learn to measure results (sales reports, profit and loss, ROI) and we will learn to measure work performance (annual performance reviews, incentive and commissioning programs). However there was always a lot of frustration woven in all these systems and processes of fairly standard business measurements for me. It is a frustration I see play out over and over again across industries and at all managerial levels within organizational hierarchies. We measure what we are expected to, not fully understanding why we bother, and how it can really help us.

We learn these metrics connected to financial results and work performance as industry or corporate rules and conventions: They are given to us as expectations. However we will rarely learn enough (if anything) about the cause and effect chain reactions which lead up to the results we get: The frustration stems from feeling that so much ends up happening by trial and error.

Worst of all, that trial and error is often packaged up and dismissed as learning we must attend to as part of “paying your dues.”

Well, it took me a while (I paid those dues), but I eventually figured out that to be effective with achieving GREAT results and work performance, what I had to learn to measure was the effort put toward making them happen correctly. I also had to qualify that effort. So I qualified it as the “great business calling of Managing with Aloha” and I categorized that calling as both managing and leading by specific, values-based definitions.

I then learned that those categories would best complement each other in a certain proportion over years and years of tracking them within my work performance teams. 30-70 evolved as our golden rule for the best reason: It consistently delivered the best results when it came to our vision of what Ho‘ohana (worthwhile work) should be.

Start by knowing where you stand

Greatly improve your effectiveness by doing more leadership (creating energy) and less management (channeling energy). Management matters and will always be necessary to a certain degree, but the constant goal of the Alaka‘i manager is to lead more and not less.

—How to Stop Micromanaging, Part One

Most of us will manage way more than we lead, regardless of our position on that conventional role progression from supervision to middle management, to upper management and owner/director leadership. Even the guys and gals at the very top of the org chart lead too little and manage too much, regardless of the industry or sector they are in.

President Obama is a highly visible example to watch right now: He led a lot during his campaign, talking about his ideas for the future constantly so he could share his vision and get us to buy in, and say so with our votes, but most of what he does now is manage. His day-to-day managing includes repeated statements of his leadership intentions, but now into the 7th month of his presidency, he is not yet back to the consistent new idea generation we spoke of in “Leadership is Why and When” for he has found that more management is being required of him. He must delegate it, or do it himself.

The practical application of “learn to measure effort” is that you must also come up with how you “qualify that effort” and then “categorize it” too: As I asked in my last post, “Who is in charge of you?” That’s not to say that you can’t get help, but be deliberate in making your choices. You can use what I suggest by way of the Managing with Aloha sensibility for work, and the leadership/30 ”“ management/70 categories/metrics, or you can come up with something on your own, but you must make it tangible and measurable, and meaningful to you, so that at any given moment you know where you stand.

Once you know where you stand, you know where you need to go.

Because I have clear definitions for management and leadership (as my Language of Intention), I can measure the specific activities I associate with each one. Who cares if the dictionary, or a new business book by a famous management or leadership guru says something different? What is important is my own definition if I execute and act that way, because I then have a consistency of actions I can measure, knowing which one goes in my leadership/30 bucket, and which one goes in my management/70 bucket.

At the end of each week I look at my calendar (as it actually happened), and I assess in a very simple way: I use a green highlighter for my leadership activities, and a pink one for my management activities, then I look at the ratio of hashmarks now color-coding where I stood in my week’s effort: Was it the 3-7 I need, or did I come in at 2-8 or 1-9 instead?

Next, plan ahead for better

Now that I know where I stand, I need to adjust, and move toward where I should be going. So I look at next week’s calendar and measure the ratio I have already penciled in: Will each appointment be about a leadership initiative, or about a management one?

I look at the available blocks of time I have left and can proactively plan better with: How do I fill them in to get the most out of my efforts?

If they are at 20-80, I need to lead more to achieve my 30-70.
If they are at 40-60, I need to manage more to achieve my 30-70.

Management and leadership get so much guru-speak tied up in them, and they begin to seem unreachable. They aren’t.

The 30-70 Rule in Managing and Leading gets them to be activities that you have qualified in the way that matters most to you (as your Leadership Why and When) and that achieves the best results (as your Management What and How.)

I like practical and useful, and I’ll bet you do too.

Let’s talk story.
Any thoughts to share?

Photo credit: Work Tools by stryder10464 on Flickr.

For those who prefer them, here are the Talking Story copies of the links embedded in this posting:

Article originally published on Say “Alaka‘i” July 2009
The 30-70 Rule in Managing and Leading