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An Aloha Business for 2012

January 3, 2012 by Rosa Say

Last post, we talked about an approach for the January overwhelm that can appear this time of year, and our talk story about it slanted toward the personal. Let’s talk about your workplace today.

If you are a business owner, or an Alaka‘i Manager — one with Kuleana (a sense of personal responsibility, and personal accountability) within your circle of influence, whatever its scope, AND you have the Ho‘ohana intention to manage with Aloha — this post is for you.

An Aloha Business for 2012

What will the Aloha business look like and feel like? Why will it be the best kind of business to tackle the coming year’s challenges with the greatest prospects of success? What will it take, so it truly thrives and prospers?

Here are my suggestions for you.

STEP 1: Allow your people to design their own work schedules, both where and when, and how much.

If you’re a manager who maintains control of a schedule, it’s time to let it go. To be frank, you should’ve let it go a long, long time ago. If you have a group who works to obey their assigned time on the clock versus the demands and mission of the business, you still have a ‘staff’ and not a ‘tribe’ who will rally around a common cause with the vibrant energy an Aloha-valued business thrives on.

Even businesses with operating hours can successfully put their work schedules in the hands of their people, and should do so. You replace the schedule the manager has controlled (and refereed, yuck) with an agreement: Allow your emerging tribe to self-organize around necessary coverage first, and then self-direct, filling in the blanks with the rest of the work. Those ‘blanks’ are the opportunities to go above and beyond mere coverage, illustrating for you the work they choose to do because it is most important, either to them, or to your customer, and aren’t those the two groups of people who count most in the workplace equation to begin with?

You’ll be in for a might-be-rocky adjustment at first, but I promise you, the self-sorting, self-directing, tribe-loving work of your people will begin to reveal its treasures. They will surprise you, delight you, and fill you with pride.

If you’re arguing with me in your head with this, insisting that, “well fine, it doesn’t have to be me, but I’ll probably need a lead,” that lead will emerge — your people will elect their most trusted peer. Let it happen and stay out of it, for you have other things to do (read on!)

A related read in the archives, about giving permission: When Managers Say the Right Things. To be an Alaka‘i Manager, work on this deliberately: Speak with those two critical intentions of giving permission and sharing your appreciation.

STEP 2: Value-align your Customer Service with a value-mapping 12×12.

Imagine what it will do for your business — your profits, your cause, your reputation, your standing in the community — if you improve your customer service x12 in 2012! This is how you get there:

Begin a value of the month program which will focus on work-aligning the answers to just one crucial question month after month, a two-fold one: a) What does this value mean to us, and b) How do we share this value with our customer?

Sometimes the answers will have to do with changing what you allow a customer to do or not do: The answers which emerge as the month goes by won’t only be about you and your tribe. That’s good: Get rid of your sacred cows, reinvent and innovate, move forward and get better.

Start with the values which are most important to you, and work your program with the 12th of each month as day 1: Keep that x12 number in mind every way you can, and have this program take you through next year’s holidays to January 11th, 2013. For instance:

January 12-February 11: Ho‘okipa, the value of service in generosity.
February 12-March 11: Mālama, the value of caring, compassion, and stewardship.
March 12-April 11: Kākou, the value of communication, and inclusivity.
April 12-May 11: Lōkahi, the value of teamwork, cooperation and collaboration.
And so on.

What you will begin to discover — and it will surprise you how quickly this happens — is that your self-directed tribe will apply this value alignment to everything else too: That’s the magic of value immersion. You, as Alaka‘i Manager, take the lead with inspiring the charge for the customer, because they won’t always speak for themselves with the same “me too!” urgency that your tribe will. In fact, think about bringing favorite repeat customers into the program as well: Ask them to be your mentor of the month!

STEP 3: Realign your own Ho‘ohana as an Alaka‘i Manager.

If you tackle my first two suggestions with full commitment, you will be able to redesign your own day-to-day work as a manager — and as an emerging leader — because of the natural replacement of tasks that happens for you.

It won’t all be peaches and cream at first, for you have to get through the crucible of change that leads to the good stuff. For instance, you may discover that some people leave the tribe (or are forced out) because their comfort zones erode and they can’t evade the radar any longer — ultimately a good thing. Taking care of your tribe will always be Job One of the Alaka‘i Manager, but you are progressing magnificently, and growing as your people grow in their own self-direction. Keep your eye on the prize!

Eventually, there will be two game changers you can concentrate on from now on, because you have brought them into the realm of your “adjacent possible” (see footnote):

  1. The development of your people: How can you mentor their growth? Start here: Are you doing the Daily Five Minutes yet? then review this: Annual Appraisals, and then key in to ‘Ike loa, the value of lifelong learning (Review chapter 11 in Managing with Aloha.)
  2. Your business model: Re-sort out the financial common sense and innovative sense of your business model — compensation, profit-sharing, reinvestment, community philanthropy, all of it. Become the leader you haven’t had the time to become up to now, for that time is here.

I know you can do this, for you are an Alaka‘i Manager.

I won’t be posting again until January 12th or later, so you have the time to plan this, have your group meetings necessary, invite customer mentors and get started. Do write me if you have a question, or encounter a speed bump and we’ll talk story about it.

We ho‘ohana kākou, and always with Aloha!
Rosa

… if you ache for something fresh to read between now and my next posting, remember that you can always click over to my Tumblr, Ho‘ohana Aloha, and see what finds are getting added there.

Footnote: “Adjacent possible” is an environmental condition I learned about in Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. “The phrase captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation… the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself” — if you, as manager, are willing to take that leap into a better future, bringing your workplace with you.

Irresistible

Are you just catching up with our Ho‘ohana Community now? Here are links for our most recent talk stories this week:
January 1: What do you know to be sure? Hō‘imi ola.

Hau‘oli Makahiki Hou — Happy New Year!
I sincerely hope that 2011 ended with ma‘alahi joy for you (contentment), as it did for me. I am flush with the lush generosity of Mahalo (an elemental gratitude) as I sit and write this for you. Good endings help us create good beginnings…

January 2: Value Verbing: Theme 2012 with your Aloha Spirit

In my Makahiki letter, I’d said that I love this time of year because it is Ka lā hiki ola (the dawning of a new day) at its most pervasive moment: We human beings collaborate in self-care, and in our Ho‘ohana intentions. The whole world seems to be in sync, as we collectively look back to assess what we’ve come to know. We corral our confidences and our strengths, and then we look forward, expectantly, and with hopeful optimism knowing those confidences and strengths are packable and adjustable: They’ll remain with us, and they’ll remain useful.
What’s not to love? In a word, the overwhelm.

Written for January of 2010, and a good read to review: The ALOHA Point of View

Purchase Managing with Aloha at Amazon.com in hardcover, or in the Kindle Store.

A Job of any Merit: Your 3 Options in Worthwhile Work

October 3, 2011 by Rosa Say

This blog post turned into a longer essay, but I hope you’ll still read it, and that you’ll share it, for it’s important: If you haven’t yet done so, it’s time to ask, “What can I do?” about securing worthwhile jobs and stemming rampant unemployment.

Everyone can do something. Everyone.

I ended my last post with this:

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 economist Paul Krugman refers to.

— Whose Confidence Should We Be Talking About?
[In The Phony Fear Factor, Krugman had asked, “After all, why should businesses expand when they’re not using the capacity they already have?”]

As I read it again, I want to strike that ‘as a business person’ caveat, for deciding on the jobs of our future is something we ALL must be involved in now as good citizens — and as good people. Standing by, watching events unfold, and waiting for someone else to change the world isn’t an option, for the hurt has become chronic. If you have any doubt about that at all, quickly scroll through a few of the stories on this new Tumblr, then come back: We are the 99 Percent. Our economic woes affect all of us in some way, even the ‘lucky ones’ silently suffering with the pain of survivor guilt.

In figuring out what we can do, let’s explore this notion of having the ‘right’ job a bit more.

What are the brass tacks these days — the basics of having a job of any merit?

People protesting the economic system walk on a financial district sidewalk as office workers head to work on September 19, 2011 in New York City. (Michael Nagle/Getty Images)

Option 1, their vacancy. Option 2, your vacancy.

As far as jobs go, those who seek work have the same two options they’ve always had: Either they apply for posted job vacancies, or they create a job of their own and fill that one.

The first option has been the easier one in times of prosperity, but we all know it’s gotten much tougher in recent years, and no one sees it getting better anytime soon: There is a Great Reset happening in the ways we choose to both work and live, as economist Richard Florida explains so well (I highly recommend you read his book). Meanwhile, many of our long-term unemployed have simply given up on option 1 altogether — that’s how tough our reset has become.

Part of the present unemployment problem (recapped here), is that people are looking for jobs which no longer exist: They have to change with the times, and they haven’t done so yet. Their old job isn’t coming back, and much as it might hurt to hear it, that might be a good thing — it’s called progress. We know we’ve been shifting from agricultural work, to industrial work, to knowledge work for over a century now. New skills (associated with new jobs) must replace our old skills (that were associated with eliminated jobs), and we’ve got to let go of the old or get left behind.

Related Reading: Thomas Friedman did a good job summing up the changes which have occurred in the last 7 years alone in the Op-ed he wrote for The New York Times this past Saturday: How Did the Robot End Up With My Job? He focuses on the effects of technology, but he also points out how our vocabulary is changing.

Option 2 isn’t limited to entrepreneurship

Used to be that the second option — creating a job of your own — largely meant entrepreneurship, and going into business for yourself. We tend to jump toward that entrepreneurial assumption when we think of creating jobs ourselves, and many will all-too-quickly eliminate it, stating, “That’s just not me” without thinking it through more carefully.

The most enterprising and confident among us are going that route, to be sure. They are becoming entrepreneurs because they see the new possibilities market shifts will reveal — they find consumer confidence where it does in fact, exist. They’re better than the average person in corralling whatever resources they need to get started on an idea, and they continue to build on their dreams, reinventing wherever necessary. They have a talent for seeing possibility in downtimes; they see voids as opportunities they can fill, and thus, serve the rest of us. Most important of all, they are willing to do what it takes to succeed, fully knowing there’s no side-stepping hard work, however good an idea may be.

That’s why going into business for oneself isn’t for everyone, even though we might accept that work of our own design will be thoroughly worthwhile no matter the difficulty. Other variables may be in play, such as family members who end up assuming entrepreneurial risk with you. (By the way, teaming up with others and getting good partners is the smartest route to take — you pool more ideas as you share the risk, and needn’t take the leap into business creation all alone.) Still, entrepreneurship is only part of that second option, and this is a time to explore what else it can mean: You can’t just give up on working because you’ve given up on finding a job.

If you limit Option 2 to the entrepreneurial label, well, that’s a limit you impose on yourself.

If ‘entrepreneurship’ scares you, call it something else.

Don’t let the word scare you off: If you don’t want to be an entrepreneur, call yourself a free agent, or a ‘work creator’ instead. Talk about your efforts as gainful employment, and focus on what that should do for you. As long-time readers know, I like that better anyway, for the Ho‘ohana associations with good work. Shift to your own language of intention.

For instance, creating a job of your own can also mean freelancing: You are able and willing to be the person that other businesses will outsource their work to. Many are making this choice, and turning bundles of ‘odd jobs’ into the mainstay of the work they do. It may not be that lucrative to start, but it’s definitely a place to grow from. Freelancing can pay the bills, keep people active and involved, and more optimistic and energetic. They’re in the game enough to play it instead of warming the bench, or worse, just watching from outside the chain link fence.

Freelancing is simply independent work, done for several people instead of just for one. Said another way, the other part of the ‘create a job of your own’ option has been to give up on the thought of being a full-time employee with benefits. They’re steadily decreasing benefits anyway, with things like pensions going the way of the dinosaur, and this shift in thinking may not be that hard to do anymore. Shore up your financial education in constructing a personal, ‘business of my life’ kind of business plan, so the economics become clearer to you. Ignore the rules (and business managers) other people will blindly and obediently follow, and then forge your own way. You step back to the simpler, basic economic rule of working, living, and playing within your means — as our grandparents may have said, you earn your own keep.

I like to think of this ‘I’ve got no employer’ status as the choice to eventually cut out the middleman (and it’s also the premise of Business Thinking with Aloha). You don’t sign up for the work that someone else has designed, accepting whatever the baggage that comes with it. You opt for the work which best fits into the design of your life instead, whatever job-shape that work might turn out to be. It’s good work, because it’s your work. Work fits into your life, not the other way around.

You know you’re too big for most jobs anyway — your capacity for greatness is way bigger than any single job.

Turn struggle into new learning. You’ll make the effort exciting again.

Many people feel forced into this now, but when you really think about it, it’s much easier to follow the purpose and clarity in your own rules — as long as you do it the smart way, and do learn the ‘dollars and sense’ of personal economics as a societal creature.

We think of this as willpower and discipline, but it’s more about open-minded learning: There are concrete strategies here, such as the practice many are newly learning to follow of eliminating the debt in their life. They are eliminating their use of credit, taking specific actions from cutting up credit cards and using public transit, to getting rid of mortgages in favor of renting. We have experienced how too much credit = longer term debt = stuck in life rather than living it fully. We are newly learning how debt has represented liability on our personal balance sheets.

You needn’t go as far as adopting frugality or austerity in learning more about today’s economics. For instance, there’s great innovation within downsizing movements, and others regarding urbanity, greening, permaculture and eco-living, and you can learn your own best way forward. ‘Ike loa, and the value of learning is the golden ticket to exploring your most desirable options.

But back to jobs” there’s one more option to cover in our brass tacks of the basics.

Option 3, work with the middleman, then help him change his game.

Option 3 is the one I personally find I’m thinking about most these days, in my own work’s passion with value-alignment, and in other industries, like banking and housing, fully cognizant of how we can effect change as consumers, and not just as employees (those who follow my Tumblr have witnessed my explorations).

Like the other two job options I have covered, Option 3 has always been an employment option too, but it differs in that it applies to the people who already have a job. It can also apply to those who presently do volunteer work, but hope to be paid for it one day – they help shift the existing business model, to make future compensation possible.

Option 3 is about being willing to change the game of job definition when you’re already somewhere in the system. You have a job, but you know it can be better, and you actively work to help make that happen. You see where other jobs could, and should be in place, and you help your employer see the light, whether they be the business person, entrepreneur, or boss in charge as ‘middleman.’ You lend whatever support you can, so they will feel more comfortable with taking their leap of faith in new job creation.

This might be something you do for yourself because the job isn’t totally right for you yet either, however know this: Improving the way the game is played in business helps everyone. Those who are happy with their situation, have to call upon their sense of decency and share the wealth — and I don’t just mean monetarily, but by sharing their well-being: Wealth is a Value. People are hurting now, and those who have a job — any job at all — can’t sit back and not empathize with that hurt elsewhere in their communities.

“One of life’s greatest laws is that you cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening your own as well.”
From: The Core 21 Beliefs of Managing with Aloha

Jobs of any merit, deliver personal dignity.

We call it Ho‘ohanohano in Managing with Aloha, the value wherein people feel they can conduct themselves with distinction — that’s what employment does for people; it gives them a means of putting a professional signature on the work they produce.

That’s an incredible gift to give someone.

If you have a job right now, how can you influence your employer? How can you help him or her design and create more work? How can you reshape old jobs that were eliminated into newly relevant ones, and increase the size of your team? Are you speaking up instead of sitting back?

Honestly folks? Option 3 is about being better than you are, and getting involved like you’ve never done so before. Don’t just call yourself lucky to have a job: Start working to get others to enjoy what you might be enjoying, and do whatever you can to help the unemployed from your present circle of influence — share the dignity of work with your fellow human beings.

Dig deep. Ask yourself how you personally can turn the tide of mass unemployment from wherever you now sit. If nothing else, know that we are still in a time of great change and readjustment, and you can’t make any assumptions about your own job either — your anchor.

“In the [prosperity of the] nineties, we saw that a rising tide lifts all boats. Now we see that a changing tide tests the strength of your anchor. What you stand for is as important as what you sell.”
— Roy Spence, CEO of GSD&M Idea City

There are far too many businesses going through the motions now, and resting on their laurels simply because they have held on, not because they have gotten better. That’s just not acceptable any more, nor should it ever be.

Here’s another quote from Roy Spence:

“The thrill of life, at least in my experience, is to create something that was not there before. An article that has never been written, a painting that’s never been painted, a business that’s never been done… I think the thing that always got me through was the belief that, in some moment, I never had a job. I always had work to do. I know that sounds a little bit trite, but not to me. I think you go get a job to make money, I think you go to work to make a difference.”

Let’s go for that thrill, that work we have to do to make a difference. Often, as we constantly talk about here with our Managing with Aloha sensibility for work, creating something that was not there before means putting values in place where they belong.

“The logic of competition has evolved from the imitative world of products versus products, to the revolutionary fervor of business models versus business models, to now, the promising realm of value systems versus value systems.”
— William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre in Mavericks at Work, explain “strategy as advocacy.”

Finally! You can’t just have a company anymore and automatically be successful. You have to have a cause, and one where your values are at work along with your ideas.

So to sum up: Brass tack options in jobs of any merit:

  1. Apply for posted job vacancies. Even if this works for you, know that skills are changing and still in flux. Continue to work on relevant skills-mastery. If you get your foot in the door somewhere, jump down to option 3.
    [This strategy might help: Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch]
  2. Create your own work. Be more creative and open-minded to your possibilities. Learn more and choose good partners, but no more middleman of any kind: You be the designer of your personal economic rules.
  3. Change the game from within the system. Stop warming the bench. Be an inventor and re-inventor and get actively involved in helping your community as a whole. Use your insider’s position and access to in-play resources to full advantage. Leverage whatever you have, wherever you are, and be a maverick.

Where are you, and what will you choose? Choose so you can take action.

Please talk about this with each other. As I said in the beginning, everyone can do something. Everyone. And that includes you.

In New York City’s Financial District, hundreds of activists have been converging on Lower Manhattan over the past two weeks, protesting as part of an “Occupy Wall Street” movement. The protests are largely rallies against the influence of corporate money in politics, but participants’ grievances also include frustrations with corporate greed, anger at financial and social inequality, and several other issues. (Image via Flickr CC by David Shankbone)

Credit for both images: In Focus with Alan Taylor for The Atlantic.

Revisiting Value Immersion: Where are your hot spots?

March 9, 2011 by Rosa Say

Immersion has recently taken center stage in our Managing with Aloha vocabulary and Language of Intention by way of our value alignment conversations here on Talking Story, which in turn led to my newest ebook: Value your Month to Value your Life.

So as you can imagine, the concept of Consumer Immersion leapt off the pages of a book I’ve recently read by Ron Rentel (with Joe Zellnik) called Karma Queens, Geek Gods & Innerpreneurs. The book’s subtitle is “Meet the 9 Consumer Types Shaping Today’s Marketplace” and if that intrigues you, I’ll be posting a full book review before the week is over.

Here’s what we’ve said about Value Immersion here on the blog:

The most effective ‘Value Your Month to Value Your Life’ programs I’ve seen in workplaces, succeed because they go for value immersion. For example, if Kuleana is the value for the month, they look at everything happening during that month through the lens of Kuleana-colored glasses, with the intention of tweaking processes for more value alignment. People put their hand up to work on what comes up. Bosses give the green light to stretch inter-departmentally, encouraging those conversations, and knowing a welcome mat will be in place because the value has been adopted everywhere, even if temporarily.

“Everything happening” means you’re nalu-ing it: You’re going with the flow as events and activities naturally happen because of past habit or current developments, and what you’re “tweaking” is largely your responses to all those things inclusively. As you do so, you tackle everything that Kuleana affects (returning to our example) as the value of responsibility and accountability. For instance Kuleana is a tremendous help as criteria, filter, and priority-sorter when selected during times of company change, because responsibility is very much like motivation: it’s personal and self-driven.

What Value Immersion tackles best is apathy and complacency, for it uncovers the three workplace sins of auto-pilot, lies of omission, and tacit approval.

Compare this with the Consumer Eyes process of Consumer Immersion:

“Consumer Immersion involves tours of category-related hot spots, expert interviews, hands-on experiential visits, and a multitude of real-world consumer interactions. During our Immersions we break bread with consumers in cutting-edge restaurants, sip cocktails with them in their favorite bars, and query them on the street, at the gym, and in the supermarket. Together with our clients [Consumer Eyes is a brand and innovation consultancy] we see how life looks from the consumer’s perspective and let that learning inform all the brainstorming and insight building that follows.”

“Our view of Consumer Immersion is that the best place to investigate consumers’ lives is to speak to consumers where they live, to follow them as they go through daily chores and errands, and to interact with them in a variety of real-world settings. Informally stopping a consumer in the supermarket as she ponders your category on the shelf is amazingly enlightening. Hanging out with 21-year-olds in their favorite club will enable you to examine both their emotional lives and drinking habits at once. Drinking rituals are highly communal, and watching patrons order drinks in a bar can shed a lot of light on how drink choices change over the course of the evening.”

Let’s take the liberty of changing one of those sentences a bit, shifting it to workplace context:

Our view of Value Immersion is that the best place to investigate workplace culture is to speak to business partners (i.e. our preferred name for ‘employees’) where they work, to follow them as they go through daily job tasks and business initiatives, and to interact with them in a variety of their sense of place real-work settings.

Essentially, Rentel is talking about catching people in their natural element, and with their guard down:

“In these situations [of Consumer Immersion], there’s no lapse between what consumers say they do and what really goes on. No matter what a consumer might say about her condiment usage, there’s no substitute for opening up her fridge and seeing a crusty bottle of hot sauce on the back of the shelf and a well-used bottle of mayonnaise up front.”

“So that’s what we do — together with our clients we interview, observe, and join consumers in their activities everywhere from a kitchen table in Boston to behind the counter of a juice bar in Malibu.”

Return to thinking about how you use Value Immersion in your workplace:

Metaphorically speaking, where in your operation are the ‘kitchen tables’ and ‘juice bars’ where more Aloha-based values can deliciously, and nutritiously be served?

The art of managing well is a situational art in so many ways. We seek to catch people doing something right so we can applaud it, appreciate it, and yes, clone and strengthen it. We want to reward the behavior we that we want to have more of, and with value-mapping we are becoming more specific: We are appreciating and celebrating value-aligned behavior.

But so much rides on seizing those opportunities where we “catch people doing something right,” doesn’t it.

Wishing and hoping is not a reliable strategy, for all it delivers is happenstance.

So think of your value immersion design — that simple, yet strategic decision to have a Value of the Month in your workplace as the way you start — as deliberately creating the hot spot you will benefit from.

Create your fertile ground of ‘kitchen tables’ and ‘juice bars’ by choosing your values. You have to take that first step.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The easiest way? Grab the ebook.
Just 18 pages as a printable PDF you can openly share with your team.
Read it together, so everyone is literally on the same page.

Don’t Just Add, Replace. Own the 100%

February 15, 2011 by Rosa Say

The phrase, Don’t Just Add, Replace is probably one of the best productivity tips I have been able to give crazy-busy managers over the years. I recently mentioned it within the discussion we had on the challenges when you adopt the D5M: Can you fail with The Daily Five Minutes?

In wrapping my arms around the Big Picture thinking all managers must embrace, percentages have always appealed to me. I first wrote about the strategy of owning the 100% in a posting I had done for Lifehack.org several years ago. Here is a reprint for our Talking Story reference.

Don’t Just Add, Replace. Own the 100%

Here’s a sample snippet of a coaching conversation I have often had with executives. To set the scene for you, it usually happens after we’ve discussed a project or strategic initiative and its value alignment for their organization.

Exec: “This is terrific; I can see how it will make a big difference for us. I’m anxious to get started; we could probably introduce the plan at our next staff meeting.”

Me: “I agree, it is a terrific plan. However let me ask you something before you move on to how you’ll communicate it, or to the campaign you’ll subsequently run with it. What are you assuming this additional project will replace in your existing operation?”

Exec: “What will it replace? Well, the old way we’ve been approaching things; we all agree that our present tactics aren’t all that effective.”

Me: “When you say ‘present tactics,’ how much are you referring to? Are you completely confident that everyone will make the same assumptions you are, and not continue trying to handle both the old and the new? What are the reasons they might want to hold on to the comfortable, tried and true way they’ve always approached this?”

Exec: “Listen, I don’t want to micromanage the thing. I’m sure they can figure it out.”

Another potential stress factor lobbed into the organization. Unless” we continue the conversation to figure out how without micromanaging, the Exec can articulate some suggestions whereby he gives them the gift of reasonableness, not adding to their sense of overwhelm.

You may be underestimating your influence

The reality of most organizations, is that pleasing the boss, in handling directives both old and new, contributes to the significant, and rampant proliferation of auto-pilot, sacred cows, stressful overload, and productivity slowdowns. Like it or not, and whether you want to admit it or not, when you are the boss, people are very selective about the questions they’ll ask you, fearing they are exposing their own shortcomings or lack of self-confidence. If they perceive “the old way” was one of your once-favored pet projects, they’ll hold on to their practice of it, even when they might think better of it otherwise.

When you are about to add to someone’s workload, you should own the 100%. What I mean by that, is that the responsible thing to do, is to own the productivity equilibrium in the operation when you contribute to it.

The one assumption you should make, giving them the benefit of the doubt, is that everyone is already working at 100% of what they feel they can handle. If you add another 10%, you can’t expect them to be equally productive now at 110%. Thus, 10% somewhere else has got to go, and suggestions from you on what that old stuff you are expecting to (or willing to) replace, can really help.

This doesn’t just apply to executives, but to leaders and managers at every level of an organization. Adding versus replacing is contributing to workplace overwhelm every day, and in small ways that add up to BIG drags on overall productivity.

When I coach clients to do audits for process duplication within their organizations, it is amazing how much they find, and how much “Listen, I don’t want to micromanage the thing” turns into “I can’t believe we still do this!”

Even with unanimous agreement on its breakthrough merits, no matter how extraordinary your new idea or captivating project might be, it will add to workload. Excitement dims quickly when the pep rally is over, and reality sets in. You’ve got to reckon with the domino effect any new project or strategic initiative can create, by always seeking to replace, and not just add. Own the 100% and help your organization realize the full benefit of your breakthrough ideas.

(Photo courtesy of Andrew B. on Flickr)

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