As you read last time, (Can you define your Leadership Greatness?) I like making a practical difference between ‘good’ and ‘great’ just as much as I enjoy working with the pragmatic differences between management and leadership. Alaka‘i leaders are tenacious in their pursuit of greatness, for they know that nothing less will do in a world overcrowded by mediocrity.

However I don’t want you to discount ‘good’-ness totally: Good can be good enough, and there is an acronym I learned a couple of years back from Employee Engagement expert David Zinger that has served me well in that reminder. David taught it to me as GEMO, which stands for “Good Enough, Move On.” As David explained, GEMO “helps avoid perfectionism, dithering, delays, and other productivity traps and snarls.” GEMO can be a great tonic for any analysis paralysis or obstinate behavior which might trip us up.

We all want Progressive Work

When you really think about it, most of us will not bemoan hard work. Working up “a good sweat” is thought of as worth the effort it takes —when we see or feel results follow. What irritates us is stalled work, or those efforts which seem to be repetitive without going anywhere or producing anything. We aren’t satisfied or fulfilled when the work we do isn’t progressive; instead, we feel frustrated.

Remember our Alaka‘i management definition? “Management is the workplace discipline of channeling mission-critical energy into optimal production and usefulness.”

Frustration is one of the biggest energy-drainers there is. Alaka‘i managers know this, and as they walk through a workplace their frustration radar is on high alert – it’s part of that respect for people’s time and effort we spoke of last time. When they notice people getting frustrated in any way the Alaka‘i manager will zoom in and ask what they can do to help.

So what is ‘GEMO good?’

“Good enough” means that stepped-it-up progress has been made and you can now “Move on” in some way within the process you’ve set your sights on completing.

Every operations and systems-thinking person on the planet will likely think that’s a pretty loaded sentence, and I agree —it certainly is. It is also highly contextual: Good enough in ABC company may not necessarily be good enough in XYZ company, or at all related (apples versus oranges), for it depends on the vision that the mission-critical process is trying to achieve. The reason I asked you to do some in-writing definition this past Tuesday, is because your definition of greatness matters BIG time. It has to sync up to your energy-creating, highly meaningful vision. If you pull it out now to read it, you should instantly see your contextual connections to different workplace processes.

A useful metaphor

I’m a late-in-life learner to the game of Chess, and I happened to learn it at the same time I was struggling to understand my contextual GEMO in one of my own company projects last year. The project was new; we’d never done it before, and so we couldn’t rely on historical learning from our past mistakes or successes. We were creating something new, and the best marker for our sights was forward to our vision.

Chess was a very useful metaphor for me at the time, for as I learned more about the game I could tell that I would never improve much if I did not learn to think two or three moves ahead: If I stayed stuck in single-move thinking I would never win a single game unless my opponent happened to fall asleep at the game board.

To win at Chess means moving with baby-step progress. Moving any other way is just stalling, and your opponent knows it.

GEMO to your workplace win with Conversation

Systems work and process management is everyone’s business in every workplace. Alaka‘i managers don’t have all the answers, but they channel the energies it takes to come up with them, and the easiest way you can do that is by being a conversation starter.

Those who are closest to the work at hand will always describe it in the most detail. What great managers can do in the service they provide to the team, is slightly shift the normal conversation about work so that it is more expansive – stretchy enough to welcome in open-minded new thinking and fresh ideas.

The GEMO conversation shift is about movement and progress. Get your team together in a huddle, and talk story to pool your answers. When you break down a work process you are presently working within, when is there movement and progress, and when does it stall and seem repetitive?

• Can you define your Leadership Greatness?
• If you want to know, ask!
• Bring Hawai‘i to the Workplace by ‘Talking Story’

One of the things I enjoy creating are web-based learning environments designed for Managing with Aloha. They are usually set up for the team coaching I do around ‘wow projects,’ and so I will often ask my executive coaching clients to proofread them for me; we might also use their staff as our project trial-runners —tapping into their ‘real-time work laboratory’ helps me, and they see it as a free fringe benefit of additional staff training added onto their existing coaching programs.

I asked an exec what he thought of a recent trial I’d written; it is designed to amp-up the energy for teams which have worked together over long periods of time only to fall into auto-pilot habits that now keep them a bit too comfortable (translation of “comfortable:” complacent and settling for the status quo versus edgy and creative). His first response was, “I thought it was pretty good.”

I responded, “Okay, I’ll work on it a bit more: How do you think I need to improve it? Which parts felt lukewarm, or stalled for you? Is anything too boring or fundamentally basic?”

“But Rosa, I said it was good; why can’t we move ahead to the trial, and then work on improving it within the project laboratory?” (He’d done this with me before.)

“Because you said it was ‘pretty good,’ and pretty good isn’t good enough, even as a first-read gut feeling. I want you to think its “Great!” before we waste anyone’s time on it. Then we’ll go from ‘great’ to “Even greater!” within the labs. So where should I start with improving it?”

If you want to be an Alaka‘i leader instead of a mediocre, run-of-the-mill leader, doing a good job isn’t good enough: Leadership is about GREAT and only about great. Are you constantly training yourself on identifying fiery-hot great versus lukewarm good?

Leaders set a Great example —Constantly

Pure and simple, if you settle for good enough in your organization, so will everyone else.

If you stubbornly insist on great and only great, so will everyone else.

Which would you prefer?

Alaka‘i leaders ramp up expectations constantly, and they also do so with a healthy respect for the efforts of everyone in the organization: No one wants to waste a precious minute of their time on mediocre, lukewarm work, and you don’t want them to.

Remember: “Leadership is the workplace discipline of creating energy connected to a meaningful vision.”

What’s Great, and what’s not?

To be an Alaka‘i leader, author your definition of what you consider great to be. Put it into words which will create a vocabulary and mantra. Simply finish this sentence in the most tangible way you can: “The work we do at (your company name) is GREAT when it______________.”

• What does it look like, sound like, feel like? (Energy!)
• What does it cause people to do when they react to it? (Energy!!)
• How does it get people talking? (Energy!!!)

Second, help each team within your organization break that down even further. Coach them to complete the same sentence, but in a more specific way that connects to the work they deliver to every other team within your company: In other words, how do they create cause and effect, where odds are that the only possible outcome for another team working to enhance their GREAT deliverable, is EVEN GREATER?

In your coaching, don’t be shy about responding, “That’s good, now what would be great?” Ask good questions. Get ‘good’ to be about progress versus the status quo; allow ‘good’ to be about those baby steps which are movement, and which grease those engines of sequential innovation, however insist on GREAT being a knock-your-socks-off deliverable that is somehow unique and a star in itself.

Get sequential GOOD to trigger a consequential GREAT.

Coming up on Thursday:

We’ll talk about GEMO and the Alaka‘i management consideration to this leadership expectation. GEMO stands for “Good Enough, Move On” and is that qualifier to achieving progression versus being stubborn about excessive expectations.

I’ve delayed it purposely: Between today and Thursday, work on finishing that sentence above and defining your leadership greatness, for having those specifics in front of you (and in writing!) will help you.

See you Thursday, a hui hou.

• If you want to know, ask!
• Management vs. Leadership: Power up your vocabulary!
• You Are Your Habits, so Make ‘em Good!
• Do you ask Good Questions?
• Writing is for Thinking

Aloha,
How are you, and how have you been doing?

We quietly slipped passed a mini-milestone during the past few weeks of my vacation: May 18th marked 6 months that we have shared this space within the generous Ho‘okipa [hospitality] of The Honolulu Advertiser. I’d say it’s been a good start!

Organizational person that I am (my career was significantly shaped by total quality management and systems thinking, and today I am a workplace culture coach) six months is a long time. I like experiments, projects and pilots, and by long-standing habit I will look at monthly packages of time and measure them by the results of those projects or themes I’d created and assigned to them: What happened? What results were true keepers, and what should I begin to say “No more” to, redirecting my attentions in a better, more useful way?

Life imitates Art for me, and in going forward from today’s starting point I have two mission-critical projects in the works right now. You will hear more about them as time goes by, but for now, as is relevant to my writing here, I am making a subtle change, one which I think will help us both.

My publishing schedule here will remain the same (twice a week, with Sundays an optional and occasional third day), but my posts will be themed to help us solidify our chosen vocabulary, and better internalize the distinctions that our Alaka‘i learning has made between management and leadership as the disciplines great managers must weave into their daily practice. Each Tuesday I will write on leadership, and each Thursday I will write on management.

We start today, a new pilot of sorts to proactively design our next six months together. Thank you so much for being here, and I sincerely hope you’ll decide to stay.

While the Big Cat was Away

The adage goes, “While the cat’s away, the mice will play.” By merit of its size —and instinctive hunger for those bite-sized feline morsels called mice— we could think of the cat as the Big Cat, the one in power, and thus in charge of the territorial romps these two creatures might occupy.

Though the variables are somewhat different, we fall into that same assumption in the workplace, don’t we. By merit of ownership or organizational position, the Big Cat is the one in power, and thus in charge, and usually he or she is called ‘boss’ or ‘leader’ because of their title, though it could also be because of how their actions influence us. Hopefully, their leadership expressions are good ones.

So let’s say you’re the boss. When you are in the workplace stuff happens because of your very pervasive presence; that’s just the way things are, and it almost seems to happen naturally, the nature of the proverbial beast.

But what happens when you are away? You’ve been on vacation, or away on a long business trip. Maybe it was just a three or four-day weekend, such as the one we’ve just had to commemorate Memorial Day, but the office was still opened, and maintaining hitch-free operations was important; someone had to man the fort.

My question for you is this: What do you notice when you get back?

What should the Boss look for?

I’m in that very fortuitous place right now. I put certain things on hold during my vacation, shutting them down completely, where those working with me took their vacation time too. However there were other things that I left in the good hands of others. I considered my time away a golden opportunity for us both, and I can’t wait to see what happened!

When we get back it is so, so tempting to immediately setting our sights on “catching up” and what we really mean is that we are reengaging, and hoping to get back in stride where it can seem like we were never gone. We look for where we can intercept the action and dive in again, seizing back our reins, and getting back in charge.

One word: Don’t.

Leadership is an attitude which never goes on vacation.

Don’t take right up where you left off. Reengage, yes, but demonstrate your leadership by doing so in a different way. I have two suggestions for you.

1. Begin again. Start new.
Show your team that you changed while on that long weekend, business trip or vacation, and you’re embracing it. You got better. You learned something and grew from the experience. Leadership is an attitude which seeks opportunity constantly, and readiness for leadership never goes on vacation. Now that you’re back, you are going to make your new experiences apply in new workplace usefulness. Use your old leadership pulpit to present ideas that are different somehow, and newly creative. Be a visionary.

2. Reengage in workplace action by letting go.
Look for your newly emerging leaders; identify them and allow them to continue whatever leadership initiative they championed while you were away. Give them your recognition, thank them sincerely, and ask them what you can do now in continuing to support their efforts. Leadership is not just for you and about you: Alaka‘i leadership is a team sport which values leadership in every single expression it makes. If you happen to be the one with the conventional title of ‘leader,’ you must be its biggest advocate and champion.

Adopt a new Alaka‘i adage with me

It goes like this: “While the cat’s away, leader-mice emerge!”

While the Big Cat is away, the mice will be more playful, but that’s okay with the Big Cat! New leadership will emerge in that freedom, and the Big Cat cannot wait to welcome it to the party. When it comes to Alaka‘i leadership, the more the merrier and you thrill to the team sport.

Then there are the possibilities – wow! You’re the Big Cat, and you’ve got bigger and better plans and ideas too. Letting go of the old, and allowing it to energize someone new can be pretty sweet.