I doubt the premise of the show was much of a surprise to any manager anywhere. I could easily imagine all the heads nodding at their television screens, saying, “Welcome to my world.”

So what will the Alaka‘i manager do about that? You can have an Aloha approach to dealing with your layers (or your ‘bubble’ as President Obama refers to it) which is much better than resorting to going undercover. Sneaking around in your own company is not that great an idea for the reasons Jon Younger offered up on his Guest Insights for The Washington Post yesterday: Why “Undercover Boss” gets leadership all wrong. Younger wrote:

While popping the lonely-at-the-top bubble, "Undercover Boss" creates a much bigger one: creating a deeply suspicious work environment in which business leaders risk the confidence of employees in their leaders and colleagues. One of the most important jobs of the boss is to create a positive work ethic and a supportive work environment. The undercover boss does the reverse, establishing a culture you and I certainly wouldn't want to work in.

The short term impact: good TV. Longer term: a big hit to teamwork, productivity and performance and, probably, the bottom line. Would you want to work in a place where you didn't know whether your mate was a co-worker or a corporate spy? Had the boss simply visited with teams, or worked night shifts, or utilized an employee survey, he or she would have learned most of the same information without destroying trust.

A boss who misrepresents him or herself invites employees to misrepresent themselves, or perhaps misrepresent the company or its products and services to customers. Sneaky leadership authorizes sneaky behavior from others. What's next? How long before unethical conduct is acceptable in other areas, such as sales overcharging customers just a little, or accounting cooking the books just a tad to see if anyone is paying attention? Two hour lunches - why not? The most likely consequence of managerial deceit is, well, a culture of deceit.

I have higher hopes for Undercover Boss. It did disappoint me in a couple of different ways, yet near the end of the show’s premiere I tweeted, “Happy to hear all the #undercoverboss chatter! Hope it gets workplaces buzzing, talking about things we assume can’t be done, when they can” and I meant it, for I prefer to think of the show as a conversation starter, and with that positive expectancy. As I will often write here, I don’t believe we talk story enough, allowing for the continued conversation which can truly matter, and that certainly proves true within the workplace.

And you will never convince me that a workplace which cannot improve in some way exists.

Undercover Boss IS another reality show, constructed for entertainment ‘value’ according to the judgement of those making that decision at CBS, so take it with a grain of salt if you watch it. Make that a big rock of cleansing Hawaiian salt, for next week’s preview clip highlighting “reindeer games” at Hooters’ has me very concerned, and stopping short of any “see it for yourself” recommendation one episode into it.

If you watch Undercover Boss, allow it to challenge you.

Walk your own gauntlet in doing better as an Alaka‘i manager accepting your Kuleana [your personal responsibility and accountability] for the health and well-being of your workplace culture.

I agree with the cautions Jon Younger well articulated in his article, and I add my voice to his in saying, don’t go undercover in your own company, for there is a better way.

So let’s talk about that, shall we?

What is the better way?

Start from the place of what your company values are, the ones you hold near and dear to your heart, knowing they define you —or you couldn’t work there, certainly not as a manager charged with demonstrating them, championing them, and upholding them to ever-higher standards!

For instance, in an ‘Ohana in Business® as defined by the Managing with Aloha business model, we apply the values of

Kākou [inclusiveness and the language of “we”]
Ha‘aha‘a [humility as open-mindedness]
Mālama [caring within the stewardship of workplace assets]
and
Ho‘ohanohano [Aloha, dignity and respect to all people]

to any discussions that have to do with the way we communicate. We get these values to guide us and grow us.

In addition, the Daily 5 Minutes® (D5M) is our adopted tool for ensuring that we talk about anything and everything, and as often as we need to: We commit to it, and we practice it daily: Two Gifts: Values and Conversation. If they are ever done, our employee surveys are not anonymous, because they don’t have to be. Managers are responsible for ensuring that anonymity isn’t required in order for people to speak up without fear of repercussion: They foster a culture of open communication, with other tools in addition to the D5M used so healthy communication is practiced constantly and not left to chance.

Does our ‘Ohana in Business® approach take a lot of work? Sure. That’s why managers matter.

That is, they matter when they courageously do the right work.

That can be the way you can watch future episodes of Undercover Boss: Reveal a manager’s right work. Have episodes of the show challenge you as the manager YOU are. Ask yourself the questions it triggers and be honest with your answers. What would you do if you were in the shoes of the managers portrayed in the show? Help your peers who co-manage with or alongside you, to see what they must see when blinders threaten the health of your workplace culture, and ask them to help you see better too.

If Undercover Boss can convince CEOs that the job of managing people at any level in a company must be a calling which serves human beings, I’ll be cheering for it.

Related posts in the archives:

1. A quick review of the Role of the Manager the Alaka‘i way, and as a calling:
   Reduce your Leadership to a Part-time Gig in 2010
2. How leadership and management are defined connected to energy in the workplace:
   3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces

We have all heard the sentiment of my post title in some form. Perhaps our parents said it to us first, as they protectively watched us choose our earliest budding friendships, fully knowing how little they could truly change or minds; usually they’d make us more stubborn about it.

You may have proved them wrong back then. Or, you may have had to admit they were right, as they smiled that “I told you so” look parents can have without having to say a single word.

Did you learn the wisdom of the admonition as you got older? Are you choosing well, when choosing the company you keep, whether they be friendships, networking liaisons, community associations or workplace teams?

And relevant to Alaka‘i managing and leading, how is this a management topic?

1st, can Aloha be choosy?

Isn’t Aloha the value of unconditional love and acceptance?

Yes it is.

So how do we reckon with being choosy about people?

Aloha accepts all people unconditionally as our fellow human beings, worthy of the Aloha we then give, within the values-held belief that all people are good, and thus worthy of our love. And remember: If you are to receive that beautifully authentic Aloha Spirit from other people, you have to be obsessed with giving them yours first!

Keep this positive expectancy, and optimistic belief close to you: If people seem less than good at any given time, it is a behavioural issue, or an expression of where their values are at a disconnect with yours; they are not irreparably “bad to the bone.” Everyone can always return to a place of their goodness.

2nd, what comes next, after acceptance?

Beyond this foundational belief, we must be realistic when we think about what comes next, after our unconditional acceptance lays a good-attitude foundation. We know we cannot be all things to all people; we cannot possibly act on all our attentions with Ho‘ohana intention. (About Ho‘ohana).

This “what’s next?” intention is where our deliberate choosiness comes into play. Who will we align our actions with, for beyond Aloha, they share in other values currently within our Ho‘ohana’s intentional and disciplined focus?

Perhaps ‘Ike loa (lifelong learning) is the value:
Who will we associate with, intending to learn from them? We know how much learning can open us up, and with very personal vulnerability, and we know we learn best from other people.

Perhaps ‘Imi ola (creating best-possible life and legacy) is the value:
Which vision and mission will we support, and lend our voices to? Which cause will we champion, knowing that it can add richness to our life and make some meaningful difference to others? What effort reflects the values we believe in, and also want to be known for, today and after we leave this earth?

I love your sentence Rosa: “Opportunities present themselves as long as I pay attention.” This paying attention part is half of the equation towards success. The other part is “doing.”
~ David Rothacker, February’s Strengthening. We know it as Love.

What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say

Your “doing” of everything puts up a kind of mirror of what you believe is worthy of your efforts. Otherwise, why bother?

Conversely, if your actions are very badly chosen, and seem a disconnect from your normally demonstrated values, you will cause people to wonder if you have changed course with your convictions, if you are currently paying attention as you should, or if you are trying hard enough. They might wonder if you’ve given up on something, or if you even care enough to make better choices.

What you do, will always precede the reputation you have, and no matter what you might actually say. Our reputation is something we earn; it gets awarded to us by others.

When Alaka‘i is the value

I must assume you have read this far, because you seek to self-manage well, and manage others as your calling.

When management is your calling, and you’re on the job for the right reasons, you are passionate about helping people within goals connected to their self-development. You want to support, enable and empower them. You serve them as you teach, coach and mentor them to stretch, learn, grow, and get continually better.

The workplace basics you steward and foster:
Your team represents good people who always work with “good behaviour.” The workplace is values-aligned, and they are productive within it. Call this that basic of Aloha acceptance.

The choosing of “what’s next” for you both:

1. Self-management, and self-leadership. We work on ourselves first to set a good example (live and work with aloha) and to inspire others (manage and lead with aloha)
2. Good to great self-development: Ho‘ohana causes something to happen. You work on moving from consistently good, to the greatness you are capable of, Palena ‘ole, without limits and in all capacities (physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual).

And let’s get real: Managers will indeed choose who they will do this with. They are supposed to be choosy! If they aren’t choosy about it, they’re frustrating everyone else. The stars within any workplace are never content working with others who are apathetic, complacent or mediocre: Low performers bring them down, and drain energies.

When Aloha is woven through-out this progression as your guiding value, there is simply no way you can go wrong. Even when your results may differ from what you originally set your sights on, you have discovered that love applied within your work (your Ho‘ohana) has become a strengthener for you.

You’ll be the company you keep

This process, of applying the value of Aloha to where you Ho‘ohana, and intentionally work as a manager, is all about the managing and leading which concerns other people. It is something Alaka‘i managers work on every single day. More often than not, they work on it every single working hour.

But make no mistake about it: They choose to do so, and they do it, getting great work done.

Within this choosing, there are times you will make the hard decision to release someone from your team. Be brave about that decision when you know you have done your best in trying to work with them, for if you have done your Aloha best, that decision to release them is best too. You’ll be releasing them to a new and likely better possibility with discovering their own Ho‘ohana elsewhere; you’ll usher them back to their foundational good.

The release from obligation or an ill-chosen job is a gift when given with the strengthening love of Aloha:

Work gives meaning to our lives. It influences our self-worth and the way we perceive our place under the sun. Being great at what you do isn't just something you do for the organization you work for, it's a gift you give yourself.
~ Robin Sharma says "Be a Rock Star" in The Greatness Guide

The question of whether or not we have dared to reveal root cause in Hawaii’s public education woes, is FINALLY getting better exposed as a consequence of all the political posturing and finger pointing gone chronic since our first Furlough Friday. I’ll probably have several readers rolling their eyes when I say this, but at this point of all the continued drama, we should be thanking Governor Lingle for rocking the boat enough for us to see the huge drag of barnacles which have kept us from smooth sailing all along.

“Prompted by widespread discontent over public school furloughs, three former Hawai‘i governors say it is time to overhaul the state's education system and they've drafted a manifesto of education reform.”

“Our combined experiences have convinced each one of us that a change is needed,” said [Ben] Cayetano, who was governor from 1994 to 2002. “I just don't think that the elected board has worked very well.”
—Loren Moreno, Ex-governors urge education reform

Make that four governors if we include Lingle… from the same article:

“The former governors' pitch for education reforms comes on the heels of Gov. Linda Lingle's call for an amendment to the state's Constitution to abolish the state Board of Education and make the superintendent of schools a Cabinet-level position appointed by the governor.”

We’re getting a bit closer, but not close enough… ah, here!

“This is not my idea: Former State Rep. Brian Schatz  perhaps first posited the idea that the best way to fix our public school system is to "blow it up" and start over from scratch. Well.  Thats not likely to happen.  But the political consensus is growing that something has to change.”
—Jerry Burris, Time for school board change

Almost... Let’s just say it directly shall we?

At root cause of our public education woes, is NOT the money we need to get more instructional days back on the school calendar.

At root cause of our public education woes, is NOT (as former superintendent Patricia Hamamoto whines) a “school system [needing] the support of the governor and resources so that principals and teachers can do their work.” (Moreno)

At root cause of public education woes, is a HUGE management problem. Alaka‘i management and leadership is sorely MIA, and the principals and school administrators we have in place are NOT getting their jobs done effectively, nor accepting responsibility for all the factors which ARE directly under their control and ARE within their sphere of influence.

Forget the goverrnor, forget the legislature, and forget the union bigwigs for the moment: Just how many principals and school administrators in the system are there? This has got to be an awful large group of people, who have to admit, with heads bowed low, that they have failed to be a management and leadership group which is a force to be reckoned with, because they are simply good at what they do both individually and collectively. They have been unable to mentor teachers effectively, manage their existing resources well, and lead by championing the learning which happens within the instructional days we DO have.

We have a huge group of people who have not found their management sweet spot: Who leads? You do. In the Sweet Spot.

Money helps, sure. But money doesn’t solve student apathy, teaching complacency or mediocrity in championing learning.

Money doesn’t solve finger pointing, and blaming others when you need to improve your own performance.

Alaka‘i managers who manage well and lead effectively are those who solve these issues with whatever money they have to available at any given time.

Ask any manager in virtually any business, how much they do, and what they can change and effect each day where money is totally irrelevant: How Managers Matter in a Healthy Culture. The issue is normally not money, but time and energy, and the people who are willing to devote both, but in ways where neither is ever wasted or squandered.

I keep wondering about this bit in Moreno’s article, and I hope Hawai‘i, that you are too, and that your questions are getting louder and more insistent at a very local your-neighborhood level.

“People at the teaching level ought to have the ability to work out how the system would work best for their children. We need to give principals and teachers more authority, make it possible for principals to really manage,” ex-governor John Waihee said.

But then this...

“DOE chief financial officer James Brese said school autonomy was the main thrust of Act 51, and that much of the theory behind the governors' proposal is already in place. In addition to controlling 70 percent of their budget, principals, along with their school's School Community Council, make decisions about the purchase of textbooks and supplies, the hiring of teachers, librarians, resource professionals, tutors and other personnel.

"Everything that is student-achievement-related is being spent at the school level," Brese said. The other 30 percent of the DOE budget, about $530.7 million, is spent at the district or state level and deals mostly with running the school system, including bus transportation, food services, utilities, building repairs, unemployment benefit administration, workers' compensation, federal compliance and other expenses. Brese said it would be inefficient to have principals be in charge of those functions.

"It is a lot of work that is not going to add any value to student achievement. Principals need to be the educational leader for their school, and having to take care of all that administrative-type stuff just adds more work," Brese said.

Aha!

If you are a teacher, frustrated because of the support you do not receive, manage up: Get your managers to manage and lead better and do their job. Demand that your unions work for you where you need them to support you best, and work in partnership with your administrators.

If you are a principal or administrator, please speak up and let us hear from you! What’s going on? If I was a parent with a child in your school, I’d be in your office demanding to know.

Managing and leading are profound responsibilities. Seize them. Auwe, our children are counting on you.

Besides, do your work well, and then our governor and legislators can get back to solving some of our other problems.

Fact is, it truly pains me to write something like this, for I am one of the most vocal managers’ advocates you’ll find: I want you to prove me wrong. The comments are open for you.

We’d been walking and talking for a good amount of time, and so my question was not entirely out of context or noticeably surprising to him.

His response was one I hear relatively often, careful and safe, but not usually offered unless it is mostly true. He said, “They are very well liked.”

It’s an answer which doesn’t tell me much at all, for as I see it, a well-liked manager isn’t necessarily an effective one.

Better to be liked than unliked; no question there. It’s great if people feel you are approachable, and your likeability does factor into your relationship building, and into the coaching that a team will readily accept from you. However the acid test is this: Do people consistently perform for you?

Alaka‘i managers channel available energies into best-possible workplace productivity which is values-centered, customer-focused, and mission-driven. Their popularity can make the effort easier, but you and I both know “nice” managers who simply don’t get much done, and don’t inspire others to get meaningful work done either.

Ramping up that acid test, I also want to know if workplace performance is reliably consistent, whether or not a likeable manager is even around.

The most effective managers I know, are those who are pushing their teams into extraordinary levels of self-direction, frequent collaboration, and productive messiness in the workplace cultures they are fostering. Do sparks of creativity occasionally fly, sizzling their way into leaps of passion? Are new ideas regularly germinating in a fertile environment, often rooting and bursting into bloom?

If you feel your people like you, ask yourself why that is.

By all means, congratulate yourself for the human face you put on management, and the good revealed within your likeability factor, for I have no doubt you’ve worked hard to achieve it.

Then to be a great manager, and be Alaka‘i, dig deeper, and ask yourself just how much your team is performing for you, and how much progress they are steadily making toward that vision you have both deemed important, and have committed to.

Ask yourself if your people are enthusiastic, and if they have a positive expectancy of each and every day they clock in. Assess how much people have grown while you have been on watch and in charge. Chalk up a score which details their new learning, and how they have applied it.

Be honest with yourself about how much of their growth was because of you, and because you know this to be true:

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be,
and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832),
German writer, scientist and philosopher

Just great. A “yeah, but” from our emotional intelligence.

As a Say “Alaka‘i” reader, you are aware of my answer. In the financial literacy which is as real as it gets, hard, soft, and everything inbetween, wealth is a value. No matter what goes on in our world, and no matter what factors are at play at any given time, our values are “hard concepts” in my mind: They will always be foundational to why we care, why we bother when we keep trying, and how we go about surviving.

I gave a 20-minute talk about this to an audience of association executives in New York City last week, and I was asked if I would share the transcript of my speech for their future reference. Here it is, for I thought you might enjoy it too, as a good summary of many of the conversations we have had here. My hope, is that you will have it be a mirror image of the business model you give your attentions to today, for you and I both know this to be true: We humans, at our rock-hard, real-as-it-gets core, are “soft and fuzzy” in the true intelligence which matters to us. Task at hand, is getting that to match up to the way we work — from now on.

~ ~ ~

Aloha mai kakou— a hau‘oli makahiki hou— e mahalo keia lā
My Aloha to all of you, and a very happy New Year. Thank you for allowing me to share this time with you.

As you might guess, a luncheon speaker who wrote a book called Managing with Aloha has a mission in mind for these next 20 minutes we spend together, and I'm not going to lie to you, I do! My mission however, may not be exactly what you think it is, and so I’ll start by stating it, for Aloha has no hidden agenda, and neither do I:

By the time you get out of your chair and walk toward the rest of your life, I want you to feel that Aloha is much more relevant to you than you previously may have thought. Once something is relevant, you answer that question we all get in our heads about everything we decide we’ll award our attentions to, “What’s in it for me?” And despite the negative connotation that question can have at first-take, I think it is a very useful question from a perspective of self-leadership, just as useful as Aloha.

Relevance, and usefulness are two of my favorite management concepts. Because, well, they are relevant and useful, and probably never as much as now, in this aftermath of a “great recession” we find ourselves in. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, and we all need to know “What’s in it for me?” and also, “Why should I bother?”

So let’s get to it:

Condensed into its shortest, and most relevant version, my story as a manager who loves being one, is simply this: Managing, with Aloha as a value, worked wonderfully for my business success and my own well-being at work, it worked brilliantly for the employees I had the good fortune of learning from. So now I offer Aloha as something which I am certain can work for you, even if you never set foot in our Hawai‘i nei, though we hope you will one day.

My mission of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business, has gotten to be an everyday and every thing kind of presence for me, precisely because it is so relevant and useful. Managing and leading are verbs, actions all managers take regardless of their titles or positions on an org chart. To not talk about the managing we can do, with Aloha, has gotten close to trying not to think, or not to breathe for me. It is a mission which had come to be, because it helped me make sense of my life, and my working history, as someone born and raised in the Hawaiian islands deeply affected by sense of place. Very cool to have a mission you feel is all you, fitting you as snugly as a second skin. We call it “having Ho‘ohana,” an on-purpose intention within worthwhile work which is all-in us, whatever we define the mechanics of our work to be.

My mission started as a way to help me make my roots healthier, and to help me understand my sense of place in a more tangible way, a way more ethical, pragmatic and sensible in the work I was doing while in the hotel business. My approach, was gaining a better understanding of Hawai‘i’s ancestral values, and it led to my discovering many of the answers I needed for my questions about a better future. I was involved in hard work, but I wasn’t that sure why I even bothered. I didn’t want my work to be a job and nothing more.

I am a local girl, 4th-generation native by birth in Hawai‘i, but without a single drop of Hawaiian blood in me. As you might imagine, that gave me some explaining to do with other native Hawaiians who felt I had too short a native-born only ancestry to write authoritatively about Hawaiian values, or emotionally enough, and they were quite bold in their indignation at first, looking me directly in the eye, and saying, “How dare you!” You see, the big deal about values, is that they explain our behavior, and that’s what I was daring to do. And yes, I dared, for the payoff was too big to ignore.

When we, as managers, equip ourselves with a values vocabulary in the context of a work environment, using them as the building blocks of a workplace culture, we make that culture relevant to a community, healthier for our employees, and much more useful to us as the ambassadors of a company’s mission. It takes diligent focus at first, but in the process, we do make our job as managers easier.

I was careful to study with the kūpuna, our indigenous elders, before publishing anything, but quite honestly, that was happenstance initially, a stroke of good luck as I just jumped in and did it, and the result of my getting very fascinated with our Hawaiian values simply as someone who is a lifelong learner through and through: I’m kind of a learning nerd, and study of a subject I am highly curious about is an energetic high for me. Applying what I learn, and having it work its magic at work is the icing on the cake.

I was within year 17 of a 30 year hotel career when Managing with Aloha became my sensibility for healthy workplace culture: 17 years of learning to approach my work the hard way with all the bruises to show for it. I had plenty of passion for my work up to then, but as odd as it might sound to you, I never completely understood why I did, and I just did it. It was work at a passionate level high above going through the motions, but it wasn’t high enough, in that it wasn’t intentional for me —so believe me, I completely get it when people say “passion isn’t enough.” My work was what I was supposed to be doing according to my parents, my teachers, my bosses and employers, and even my fairly well-educated brain… By most standards I was an exceptional employee and a highly successful manager, fulfilling smart standards —all but my own.

So in this study of values, I eventually got to the point where the history of it all was fascinating —it continues to be fascinating the more I delve into Hawaiian history —but my goal was not to explain the past: I was more interested in its relevance to the work I was doing every single day —no matter what that day threw at us, and for our industry’s business prospects in the future. And simply said, the work I was doing every day, was about managing people, and specifically, people in a hotel business which sells Aloha like some charm bracelet draped around every conceivable business model you can imagine connected to the travel and hospitality industry, models intent on making healthier profits.

That’s what we business people are supposed to do, right?

Does that sound like self-justifying, commiserating marketing yuck to you? Greedy green monsters hidden in Aloha service clothing? Sounded that way to all my employees too, no matter how prettily I tried to dress it up in any business-speak. They did not want Aloha to mean revenue, and if that was what I wanted as their manager, you can bet I’d have undercover sabotage or a full-blown mutiny on my hands. They would serve my customers, and serve them well, but they would not sell if any resulting wealth defined Aloha as revenue.

Fact is, we managers cannot define wealth simply in financial terms because our employees don’t, and that is a reality you will never, ever change or escape. Money is part of everyone’s reality, and our unemployment in this global recession is the evidence plain as the nose on your face, but wealth is a value —not a result. Wealth may be better financial health at a base level, but once you are earning it, wealth is also defined by family, connection to our ancestry, and our best vision of our future. All of these find their inner spirit, their constancy, and their strength in the values which shape our thinking, and our actions. And when the needs of our spirit are met, we find that any additional wealth we gain is most satisfying when shared in service to the community which had been there for us, and lifted us toward our greater good.

Wealth, as a value, is the reason ‘social entrepreneurship’ flourishes despite all odds, and even when non-profit business models flounder.

Wealth as a universal value, is the reason countries all around the world have flocked to help Haiti even though they have costly problems to address in their own back yards at home.

So if Aloha is a value too, one which does not mean revenue, what is it?

When you are born and raised with a Hawai‘i sense of place, this is what Aloha is, as briefly as I can possibly describe it to you with the etymology of the word:

Aloha is the combination of two smaller Hawaiian words, ‘alo’ and ‘ha.’

Ha is the breath of your life, a concept which is like DNA to the Hawaiian people. When you breathe in, and collect your breath, you are collecting a type of intelligence from three centers of being, which is DNA-like in that it is unique to you. It comes from your gut, where your ancestral wisdom resides, your genitals, as your intention for continuing all life in future generations, and your head as mindfulness which is as close as you can come to being graced with divine intervention. Those three things (ancestral wisdom, forward-looking intention, and divinity), combine in each and every breath you take, the breath which will propel you toward living the rest of the following moments. This is what we mean by someone’s Aloha spirit. That is ha, the breath of your life, and the engine of your body.

Whereas ha is inside you, ‘alo’ is on the outside. Your ‘alo’ is the face you present to the rest of the world, and much different from DNA, your alo is of your choosing. Your demeanor, your presence, your blending into the world and opening up to what each and every day offers up to you —and to what each and every person you encounter offers up to you —you choose to make those encounters happen well, or you don’t. Alo is sort of like personality and mood, whereas ha is more like the character you have when no one is looking, character you will always have, and only borne of ancestral good.

One of the most beautifully compelling beliefs about the Hawaiian culture, is that there is no such thing as a bad person from the standpoint of ha: People are born good. There is only bad behavior, chosen in the manipulation of your alo for some mis-directed reason, but a reason which can always be redirected toward good when you manage to purposely connect to your ha.

So put them together, and Aloha is living your life from the inside out, where both inside and outside are a harmonious and healthy match, perfectly aligned, and willingly shared with the rest of the world. Thus Aloha is referred to by most in Hawai‘i as the value of unconditional love. Love for self and others. Loving yourself enough to share who you are in complete authenticity and vulnerability. “What you see is what you get, and it’s me, and it’s good!” It is a greeting hello, as in “I offer myself to you completely.” It is the Aloha of goodbye, as in “when we part our Aloha remains ever shared between us, helping us remain healthy and connected” for life is not meant to be a solo proposition.

We have mostly spoken of managing employees with Aloha, but imagine your customers getting that feeling from you!

At first Aloha sounds really woo-woo, soft stuff intangible and unmeasurable doesn’t it. However make no mistake about it; to the people of Hawai‘i it is REAL, and it is sacred. Imagine how my employees felt trying to script it, and then sell it.

To be clear, I have never, ever been down on business: On the contrary, business is my playground, and as a deliverable beyond the book, Managing with Aloha is an operating system in a healthy organizational culture where we focus on Aloha-woven management practices, including having a healthier attitude and reality check on economics. You are looking at a manager’s advocate who is quite a champion of financial literacy.

Money is not evil; it is a means to an end, and when you have it, business life is pretty sweet. Simply because you can do way more good than you can without having it. I believe that businesses have a responsibility to offer thorough, and completely transparent financial literacy training to all their employees; it’s one of the smartest financial strategies which I know of, because it answers that “what’s in this for me?” question I mentioned earlier, but on several levels: Your employees learn financial lessons in a harsh new great-recession world as they co-author better business models with you. They are close to so much, and chances are, they have a clue to the answer of some financial riddle which presently evades you.

Everyone needs and wants money today. A co-authored, value-aligned business model is one employees support, never dreaming of sabotage or mutiny, and never succumbing to far bigger evils: the mediocrity of going through the motions and not caring, or the hopeless feeling of there being no other option in sight.

On the contrary, when people work in an environment managed with Aloha, they arrive at their own Aloha authenticity. It is a profound gift, one your work culture has given them. Then, they pursue the Ho‘ohana intention of deliberate work, where they understand why they bother, and they want what’s in it for them. They work incredibly hard for it. When your values are aligned, they want what’s in it for you, what’s in it for your vision and mission, and what’s in that cool and sexy future which better financial health will bring you.

So where do you start? You start with you.

Whatever you learn here today, make it relevant, and make it useful. Answer your “Why bother?” and “What’s in it for you” questions from that fertile place of your own Aloha. Live from your inside out. Say what your values are, stand up for them, and live by them. Then having done that for you, do it for your team, and welcome Aloha authenticity from everyone connected to the work you do.

I commend you for being here today, and for learning. If you are here, you are open to being better tomorrow than you were yesterday. Learn well enough to go back to your workplace and teach financial strategy as financial literacy. Be open to finding your relevance, and the usefulness lifting you to your greater good. Some call it ‘legacy.’ You will find the definition of wealth you can pursue with honor, with dignity, and with respect for the person you are meant to be. Wealth will have become your Aloha value too.

“His/her commitment level is eroding.”

“There is a lack of commitment in his/her approach which I do not understand.”

“Isn’t commitment to the team and to the company something we can rightly expect?”

I am not hearing these things about staff and the employees that these managers work with. I am hearing it in regard to their peers and partnerships, and about other managers. There is unrest, and a nervousness that commitment to career is disappearing, and that a “me, myself and I” attitude is trumping company commitment and team commitment much too often.

We managers will accept that it is part of our job to “rally the troops,” but it isn’t something that we expect we need to do for each other too. Other managers are supposed to understand, drink the Kool-aid, and be enthusiastic. Other managers are supposed to buck up and get the job done, and be the fall-back contingency go-to people when all else fails.

I agree and I don’t agree.
I agree when there is a healthy workplace culture in place in a relatively healthy business model. That’s when I have high expectations for managers too.
I don’t agree, in that those toe-the-line expectations are a pretty tall order in a time like this, when most business cultures have taken hard hits of uncertainty and inconsistency, and business models are experimental at best.

I’m not that surprised this upheaval in management ranks is happening. We’re in a time where change is running rampant, loyalty has been sorely tested in the face of lay-offs and furloughs we were once sure would never happen, and the predictability of value-alignment has flown out the window. People aren’t apt to commit to a business where uncertainty rules each day: They aren’t sure what will happen next, and which values are revered —and financed by a sustainable business model.

And newsflash: managers are people too.

There is usually just one exception. People do commit to healthy business culture. They will commit to a team which they’ll describe by saying, “Well, if we must go through this, at least we’re going through it together, and with a team I respect and trust.”

In a healthy business culture, the “how” you approach change remains relatively consistent whatever that change happens to be. People don’t feel they need to fortify their own positions in a healthy culture as much as they do in an unhealthy culture where the “how” is as big a question as the “what, why and when.”

Tough decisions get made in healthy cultures too, but they are more predictable when those tough times come, because according to the tenets of the business culture, the decisions “make sense.” Values are known and they are respected.

Bottom line? Character matters.
And what is character? Alignment with values known to be chosen by a company’s culture.

And when workplace culture must be rebuilt in a new business model, it is individual character within a team which seems to matter most.

Character is like Aloha: For you to get it from others, you have to be obsessed with giving it, and demonstrating it first.

What is true leading all about? From the archives:

3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces

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.

That is an expectation of leadership you cannot allow to intimidate you.

You may think to yourself, “Who am I to possibly know what will happen in the future? How can I create a clear and compelling vision of possibility when I can’t make any substantial promise about it?”

Don’t worry about those things which are out of your control; no reasonable person expects that of you, and it is unreasonable for you to expect that from yourself.

Over at Unfolding Leadership, Dan Oestreich just gave us a great example of how even a great business mind can miss some big implications when promoting new strategies, but he didn’t let that possibility stop him, and neither can you. (I’m referring to Tom Peters. Read more here: Walmart is Us).

There are two things you can do right now:

1. Focus on those things which you know you can effect in a way that makes them better tomorrow than they are today. Don’t take care of the whole world, but do seize responsibility for the part of it you dwell within: Live, work, manage and lead with Aloha (For 2010, with Aloha)

Live with Aloha: Focus on one family - yours.
Work with Aloha: Focus on one team - yours.
Manage with Aloha: Focus on one sense of workplace - yours.
Lead with Aloha: Focus on one Ho‘ohana - yours.

2. Take it one day at a time, and go for those small wins. We talked about that last week: Small Wins Create Big Domino Effects.

Focus on one person’s gratitude - yours. (Mahalo)
Focus on one person’s passion - yours. (Ho‘ohana)
Focus on one person’s attitude - yours. (Aloha)
Focus on one person’s learning - yours. (‘Ike loa)

Tomorrow is the future too (‘Imi ola). Alaka‘i managers seek to tweak tomorrow in some way which will add a jolt of attention-grabbing energy all around them, one of positive expectancy for good things, versus hand-wringing and stalling within a sense of overwhelm.

If you get passionate and intentional about your own Ho‘ohana (intention with worthwhile work), and seize full “this is all on me” responsibility for it (make it your Kuleana), we’ll all get on board with you too, for you will be creating the Alaka‘i future of positive expectancy we all want.

To get your focus back, think about tomorrow, or this coming Friday, or next Monday. you’ll know what to do, and how you must lead. I have faith in you: Now have faith in yourself.

For more on the Hawaiian values I have referred to, visit: Managing with Aloha ~ Why Choose Values?

Photo credit: Grapefruit Splash by John Steven Fernandez

Yet from where I sit, the half-full, optimistic view is getting easier day by day, slowly still, but surely. People are investing in training and education again, or they simply are getting braver about asking for help, reaching out instead of hunkering down, and that alone has me cheering. My invitations to speak have started to flow in greater number, and my travel calendar is filling up. Good for me, yes, but highly dependent on my responding to you.

One way a speaker like me keeps her fingers on the pulse of what people are feeling, is through the agendas of the conferences we are invited to participate in, and the conversations which happen in the hallways. Currently it is very, very clear that financial strategies within shifting business models is a hot topic —as they should be.

In 2010 everyone wants improved financial health

However, the fact that everyone wants financial health is as much of an assumption as managers can make.

If asked, “What’s the value of more money to you?” would you and your staff answer in the same way, even if I asked you to keep your answers in the context of the business?

You must be sure you both want your company to make money for the same reasons, that you agree on how you will go about it, and how you will spend it. If not, having more money in an economy as emotionally charged as ours is, could actually add a whole set of new problems you’ll need to deal with. Are priorities for spending, versus saving, versus investing clear? Have the “what’s in this for me?” and “will I reap what I sow?” questions been answered?

Whoa: Isn’t that my prerogative?

This is, and has always been, a tough reality for managers, and the business owners they represent, to accept. They feel that many financial decisions are their prerogative, their right, and that every other employee of an organization signed up for that reality, knowing that is just the way it is, and that not all things are democratic.

My question to you, is this: What is more important? Maintaining your “benevolent dictatorship” about your financial strategies, or gaining a collective intelligence, and a more collaborative, and trusting team environment?

Others in your organization are much closer to a host of variables than you can ever hope to be —and often, it’s a closeness that IS their job, and not yours. They need to learn from you, and you need to learn from them. Together you make a better team, and come up with better answers. Chances are, they have a clue to some financial answer which presently evades you. You cannot know everything: It is preposterous to think that finance is an exception.

Wealth is a value

Fact is, we cannot define the wealth of a healthy business simply in financial terms as managers because our employees don’t, and that is a reality you will never, ever change or escape.

Money is part of everyone’s reality, and our global recession is the evidence plain as the nose on your face, but wealth is a value too, and not simply a result. For most of us, wealth is also defined by family, connection to our ancestry, and our best vision of our future. All of these find their inner spirit, their constancy, and their strength in the values which shape our thinking, and our actions. We cannot help but bring our feelings about all these things to the business which employs us, especially when we are expected to help the business become more wealthy than we are likely to ever be as individuals. When the needs of our spirit are met, we find that any financial wealth we gain is most satisfying when shared in service to the community which had been there for us, and lifted us toward our greater good.

Thinking of wealth as a value can help you so, so much. The big deal about values, is that they explain our behavior, and sharing values gets us to collaborate within better agreements. When we as managers equip ourselves with a values vocabulary in the context of a work environment, using them as the building blocks of a well-functioning work culture, we make that culture relevant to a community, healthier for our employees, and much more useful to us as the ambassadors of a company’s mission.

Frankly, we make our job as managers easier in the process too. As we have spoken of here before, money is not evil; it is a means to an end, and when you have it, business life is pretty sweet. Simply because you can do way more good than you can without having it. Those “doing way more good” decisions merit discussion!

The goal is financial literacy, and transparency through education

I believe that businesses have a responsibility to offer thorough, and completely transparent financial literacy training to all their employees. It’s one of the smartest financial strategies which I know of, because it answers that “What’s in this for me?” self-leadership question on several levels: Your employees learn financial lessons in a harsh new great-recession world as they co-author better business models with you.

Everyone needs and wants money today. A co-authored, value-aligned business model is one employees support, never dreaming of sabotage or mutiny, and never succumbing to far bigger evils, such as the mediocrity of going through the motions or not caring, or the hopeless feeling of there being no other option in sight.

So by all means, work on those business models. However if you are pursuing more learning in the process, do not exclude your staff: Learn together. Whoever the financial guru doing the teaching, take the time to compare notes, and teach each other as well.

You’ve had a few tastes of them here: Mantra and theme type encouragements about vocabulary and language of intention which will keep the focus where you want it to be - the “drink your Kool-aid” kind of stuff, which I do think is very important. Vocabulary, and the words you use are powerful, both with inspiring others as an Alaka‘i manager, and with your own self-talk.

What I am switching to now, is the next step: now that I feel better organized, I must engage with definitive action.

Is that where you are too?

Those who lead consistently set a great example, and if you want action from your team they need to see that you are leading the way: You’ve started.

My goal within my Strong Week Plan for January 11 through 15 (Monday through Friday) is that I will achieve a Small Win.

I know, that getting to action taken, and action resulting in achievement, is a good way to start my year off right, and that I must do so as early as possible. My Small Win can begin to create a positive expectancy for me for the whole year through: That's the Big Domino Effect I am going for. Positive expectancy. Belonging with me, and within me.

A “Small Win” is not small as in insignificant.
It is small as in, you cannot fail unless you completely go lazy on me or get stuck in procrastination. (That was a sample of my self-talk, with “you” meaning me.)

And it IS a win, and a win that isn’t insignificant either. It’s an important win.

It’s a win which is meaningful in some way, and what would be GREAT, is if it is somehow connected to your Ho‘ohana and Alaka‘i intentions. (Okay, that “your” was about you.)

• Ho‘ohana as being about the important work you do by choice,
  and for better feelings of personal well-being, and
• Alaka‘i as being about the energies you create all around you and for others (by leading),
  and which you channel effectively (by managing well)

Mine are, and by the time you read this, I hope to be already done with one Small Win, and I will be seeing if I can get a second Small Win in since I’m already on a positive-expectancy roll with the first one I had in mind.

My dominoes will be falling!

So do you have something like that in mind for you too?

Let’s both get our Small Wins done.

January 15th we finish, and January 16 we celebrate. 2010 will be a fabulous year if all weekends are reserved for celebrating, don’t you think?

Photo Credit: Domino by Erica Marshall on Flickr

I started thinking about this as I skimmed over Michael Arrington’s "Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I Love And Use Every Day." He writes:

The scope of the list has changed over time. In 2006 it was just about websites. Now the list includes other web services, some desktop software and even a few gadgets.

These aren’t necessarily newly launched products... This is a simple list of the tech products that are an integral part of my day – work or play. Some have withstood the test of time and I just can’t live without. Others are newcomers that have captured my imagination.

I use most of them every day, or nearly every day, and I would not be as productive or happy without all of them. There are now 24 products on the list.

Far as I can see, Arrington’s habits are definitely not the every day world of most managers unless they’re somehow crammed into their limited off-hours. And he is the founder and editor of TechCrunch. But let’s not dismiss this too quickly.

There has been a long-standing management ‘rule of perception’ that you must be “on the floor” or otherwise in the thick of things “where the action is” and resist being a desk jockey as much as you possibly can. This rule is pervasive, and spans nearly all industries. Conventional wisdom says that good managers roll-up their sleeves, for you can’t reach customers, and get good and dirty in a business operation or within the managing and leading of people if you’re stuck behind a desk.

And aren’t tech products just the fancy new toys of the desk jockey?

Not necessarily.

Conventional desk resistance is wise in theory, for it’s meant to coach managers into working with people more and “pushing paper” less. But here is the important question (as any overwhelmed manager will quickly point out): What was on the paper, and can it be so easily dismissed? Isn’t “real work” much more complex than simply saying it is about being with your people and your customers?

I know that my own tech habits have changed dramatically since I was working in the corporate world full time and not coaching (I made the switch in 2003.) I still consider myself a manager, managing and leading a small team, and were I managing a larger one, not only am I very confident that many of my every day tech tools would be instantly integrated into my work, I am also sure I’d be adding more of them (such as Yammer, an internal version of Twitter, and everything offered by 37signals).

We talked about it a bit before in this post: The Digitally Savvy Workplace. My IT team would be techies who love to teach, and they would be instructed to give everyone in the company internet access (yes, EVERYONE), and get everything we do off hard drives and “into the cloud.” After decades opening Windows to the digital world, I am now learning to use a MacBook Pro, and I would expect my managers to be fluent in both platforms.

Just for fun, this was my own break-down of Arrington’s list, with a few additions of my own. At first I thought, “24! Is he kidding me?” but then I saw I am not that far off. What about you?

On my every day list: MacBookPro, Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Wordpress for blogging, Tumblr for aggregating, Twitter (Helped by HootSuite), and my iPhone (we won’t go into the apps...)

On my weekly/ often daily list: Skype, Digital Camera, Flickr, BlogLines, LinkedIn, Basecamp, TripIt, Delicious

Use it, but honestly not an everyday necessity: Pandora, Audible

Craving: Apple Magic Mouse, Kindle - which I was surprised Arrington did not include

Should be using it much more, must get with it: Ruzuku, Kodak Zi8

Want to learn, and soon: Animoto, Diigo (to replace Delicious), Google Voice, Skitch, Docstoc and Scribd

Would definitely use it if back in the corporate world: Yammer, all of 37signals, YouTube

Very curious, but doing fine without them: Dropbox, Evernote, Hulu

Not yet remotely interested: Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla, TechMeme

Have vehemently rejected as a time sink I cannot afford: Facebook

Greek to me, had to look them up: MOG, Spotify

As little as a year ago, I was very tolerant of managers telling me, “I don’t have time for tech” because I did see that they could survive relatively well without much of it. Today, I am much more assertive about tech learning being part of our managerial core competency.

The evidence is overwhelmingly clear to me that being more tech savvy helps you in three significant ways:

1. Tech tools CAN boost your productivity significantly when you choose the right tool for the right job, and not as a new “toy.” Match up tech features to work you do individually versus within a team. Their new “wow” factor is a dud if not aligned with the work you actually do (or want to do).

2. What the (two most-mainstream) forces of blogging and social media have brought to tech isn’t simply about digital programming (blog platforms) or ninja-networking outside your company (social media) though those two things are great fringe benefits. Tech has enhanced the way we communicate, making every workplace a more mobile, and thus more nimble one.

3. Tech tools and their updates foster lifelong learning, making learning much more cool and sexy in today’s world. In the process, tech is helping us bridge generation gaps as well, changing that way we communicate and helping us to better share life experiences with each other.

So managers, don’t snub your nose at tech tools. Get with the program, and improve the quality and efficiency of your life and your work. Bring advances and progress to the workplace as a means of culture turbo-boosting.

And whatever we choose, don’t we all want this? Arrington says, “I would not be as productive or happy without all of them.” and I must say, I doubt I would be as happy without my tech stable of goodies either.