This past Tuesday I stated that the biggest sin in business today is mediocrity. Today’s post is about what I feel the answer is with correcting that sin, so if you missed it, click over to: The Biggest Sin in Business Today and then come back. We’ll wait.

Ready?

How do you, the Alaka‘i manager, banish mediocrity in your workplace? I believe your best possible strategy is this:You replace mediocrity with energy.

Energy generates Ho‘o Power

As with Ho‘ohana, [intentional, Aloha-driven work], Ho‘o power makes things happen.

Blast from the past:

My favorite Hawaiian coaching word is a very short one: Ho‘o. We hear it more as a prefix to other Hawaiian words, as it turns nouns into verbs. By itself, ho‘o means to make something happen. Ho‘ohana: Work on purpose, and with intention. Ho‘ohanohano: Bring dignity and respect to your actions. Ho‘okipa: Give unconditional hospitality, and serve. Ho‘oponopono: Make things right, bring them to balance.

Workplace energy functions the same way batteries do for your favorite electronics: You can have the most high tech camera in the world, and it will do absolutely nothing if its battery is dead. It no can Ho‘o.

Our Say “Alaka‘i” vocabulary is worth repeating:

• LEADERSHIP is the workplace discipline of creating energy connected to a meaningful vision.
• MANAGEMENT is the workplace discipline of channeling that mission-critical energy into optimal production and usefulness.

Great managers cannot channel good energies they are unaware of, or energy which doesn’t exist. And remember – you can’t shift this responsibility to someone else within our discussions here: Alaka‘i managers are those who both manage and lead. We refer to management and leadership as disciplines, not as separate roles, titles, or positions on an org. chart. If a designated leader is not creating energy, then the buck stops with you.

Alaka‘i managers are Energy Creators

If you are a manager (and all business owners are managers too) assume the role of energy creator in your company. Change the title on your business card to Energy Creator; come on, I dare you. Whatever you have there now is probably more normal, and normal is boring.

Your greatest resource in any workplace is NOT time (or financing), it IS the energy required to make the time and other resources you have available count for something worthwhile and meaningful.

Your greatest asset in the workplace is NOT your people, it IS those people with the most consistent energy levels; energy to dream, create, evangelize, and perform magnificently.

Energy powers your production capacity.
Energy powers your service capacity.
Energy is what will dazzle and delight your customer.
Energy is what sustains a vital business, and a lack of energy is what will kill it.

Mediocrity is your red flag that energy is missing, however that’s never a situation that a great manager can’t fix, and fix pretty quickly.

To Start, Be Kūlia Contagious

Great management takes great work and there are no magic pills: You aren’t going to get a complete how-to in this one blog post. The over-arching goal of Say “Alaka‘i” is to trigger possibility, help you reach higher, and break things down into week-to-week actions you can work on, continuously recharging your own battery cells of self-motivation.

However what we can do today is remind ourselves of the big picture view, while making that big picture embraceable and achievable: We can set the stage for positive energies to grow and flourish more than they presently are.

Here are three ways you can begin to be the Energy Creator you need to be, starting TODAY.

1. Be Contagious, for Energy begets more Energy

Ho‘ohana: Work on you first, and produce the best work you possibly can. As far as your staff and partnerships will be concerned, self-management must be in residence within the person in charge before they’ll allow any management or leadership technique to step foot in the door. Your reputation for being a self-managed individual will be key to the privilege you earn in your calling for managing and leading others.

Then, get excited: Tap into company vision by remembering why you are in business in the first place, and set your sights on making magic happen. Yep, magic. When you really think about it, the Ho‘okipa I still crave will be great, but you want more than deliriously happy employees and customers don’t you. Of course you do! You want magic in your own life, so go for it. Magic for you doesn’t happen in boring work. Amp it up, take some risks and have some fun while you work, and set the best possible example for others to follow. Make room for them so they can join you, and co-lead with you. There will always be enough followers, but there are never enough leaders.

2. Avoid the Middle and Work on the Edges

Commit to the value of Kūlia i ka nu‘u: Excellence generates enthusiasm and is contagious; everyone loves it and everyone wants it. However excellence isn’t ordinary or normal – when something enters the realm of the normal it’s no longer viewed as excellent. The more something is thought of as normal, the more ho-hum boring, commonplace and mediocre it gets. Even if you copy the best practice of something, it’s still a copy and is no longer as compelling, exclusive, cool or sexy.

Therefore, if you want excellence (and really, why bother with anything else), you’ve got to be willing to push at the edges of virtually everything, and nothing can be sacred – absolutely nothing. In fact, the more unexpected your targets and projects the better. Constantly ask your team “Why not?” about every wild idea which comes up, and be enthusiastic in recognizing and rewarding their creativity. You have to pursue what others think of as impossible, and you must repeatedly insist: Everything we know of was impossible until the first person did it. Let’s be first. “First” is found on the fringes and way up in front. “First” leads and never follows.

3. There can be no Basic Standards, only Extraordinary ones

At this point I can guarantee some of you are getting an attack of the “yeah, but”s and are thinking, “Well Rosa, reality bites. I can’t work on cool, sexy and edgy until I can clear my decks of all the existing normal stuff.” You know what? You’re right.

However it’s also true that the minute you clear your desk something else lands on it – also in that category of the “normal day to day stuff” and you feel like you’re caught in a vortex or vicious circle. While there is a good case for the importance of standards, they really can hold you back and weigh you down unless you are more intentional and deliberate about them.

Sidebar:
Dave Navarro recently wrote a good essay about this: Why You Do What You Do (And Why It Should Scare You). I highly recommend you give it a read.

There is really only one answer: As the saying goes, you have to kill two birds with one stone. As you “clear your decks” you need to tackle them with the first two approaches we’ve spoken of: Ho‘o and Kūlia: Be relentless about being the best, and excel. Eliminate or reinvent any process which drains energy instead of generating it.

And don’t you dare wimp out and stop at systems and processes! Be the Best Boss with the highest value standards and develop your people: Not only do people love and want excellence for themselves, they want to be surrounded by it, finding it in their peers. No one wants to be associated with a mediocre workplace which is populated by mediocre people.

Ready to Roll?

If I am missing anything here I would love to hear from you: Let’s make Ho‘okipa energy happen. Is there anything else you feel is critically important in the big picture view of creating energy in your workplace?

If you don’t want to publicly comment here for me, that’s okay – IF you talk about this with your own workplace team. Ho‘okipa, the Aloha-inspired way that we in Hawai‘i should be delivering great customer service – to the visitor, and to each other – is what will keep you in business.

Archived Articles Linked above

• The Biggest Sin in Business Today
• What’s your Calling? Has it become your Ho‘ohana?
• Be a Deskless Manager: Ho‘o!
• If you want to know, ask!
• Can you define your Leadership Greatness?
• Who says you can’t do that?
• How Managers Matter in a Healthy Culture
• You Are Your Habits, so Make ‘em Good!
• While the Big Cat was Away
• The 2 C’s of Technology and Early Adoption
• The Friendship Factor; Be the Best Boss Instead
• Alaka‘i Managers Coach, and they Facilitate
• Hawai‘i’s Primary Recession-Proof Strategy is Ho‘okipa

Tags: assets, energy, Kūlia i ka nu‘u, productivity, reinvention, self-management, strategy, vision

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Alaka‘i Management, Process and Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.