Managing with Aloha

‘Imi ola Gets Personal

Managing with Aloha was published in November of 2004. So as I write this, nearly three years later, one of the questions I am most frequently asked in our Ho‘ohana Community is, “When is your next book coming out?”

I’m not sure. I suspect it won’t be for a while, and my living of ‘Imi ola, our value of the month, has a lot to do with it.

Flickr photo credit

The publishing of MWA was a defining moment in my life. It launched me into self-employment after a long corporate career and it became a business card of sorts that was way more than I’d ever imagined it would be. I nalu’d it, and went with the flow I found myself in, wholeheartedly welcoming the newfound opportunity I had to bring MWA to more organizations. It created a life for me quite unlike the one I’d had before, and it’s been a very, very good life. I am living within my ho‘ohana, counting my blessings daily that I can do so.

What is my ho‘ohana? I describe it on page 32 of MWA:

I love to teach, and in particular I love coaching managers. I love the science of business and the democracy of free enterprise, where ultimately the customer rules. I love reading, I love the written word and I love the study of how language can influence relationships between people. I love the new global possibilities of networking. I love the notion that we can choose our own destiny and create it. I get passionate about all these things, and by indulging my passions I gave life to Managing with Aloha.

When you choose to live the value of Ho‘ohana, you choose work that is part of who you are; you enjoy it. You choose meaningful work that is worthwhile and satisfying for you, and thus it can be done with true intention.

‘Imi ola however, is about creating your best possible life. That’s something I’m still working on, and in the context of Managing with Aloha I’m not done exploring that yet.

ManagingWithAloha.com welcomes the “Dawning of a New Day”

Aloha to all of you in 2007 my Managing with Aloha Community!

I am honored you are here to share this dawning of a new day with me, and with all who have chosen to participate in our mission to manage and lead with dignity and nobility.

In late November we celebrated our two-year anniversary of the publishing of Managing with Aloha, and our childhood of the MWA movement would be called the “Tremendous Twos!” The book is in its’ third printing, and more importantly, we continue to welcome many more managers who will excitedly proclaim, “I am learning to manage and lead with aloha!”  Managers matter, and you can make a significant difference in the world of work.

Our value for the month of January is Ka lā hiki ola “the dawning of a new day,” and it could not be more fitting for this, our 2007 chapter as we imua, and go forward. Your subscriptions to www.managingwithaloha.com have skyrocketed, and I am exceptionally grateful of your intentions, help and commitment, for I freely admit (with not a little embarrassment) that while residing on a blogging platform this site has not been updated all that frequently up to now. This year that will change.

Therefore, for both old and new subscribers alike, here are my intentions, i.e. my MWA Ho‘ohana for 2007:

Ho‘olālā: The Business Planning Process

Within Managing with Aloha we have a name for the Business Planning process familiar to many companies with the ending of one year and beginning of the next: We call it Ho‘olālā. This is the process we recently used in our Volcano Retreat for SLC.

Ho‘olālā means to ‘make plans.’ To make plans is to prepare for moving forward in the best possible way.

Business Planning is when you actually use things like Vision, Values, and Mission – they aren’t things which someone made pretty sentences for in framed art on the walls. In Ho‘olālā they line up and are used like this:

1. First we recommit to a very specific Vision, so everyone is clear on the ultimate objective we are planning FOR. In Ho‘olālā we are only aiming for the immediacy of the coming year, however you still need to ask big and brave questions, and the questions we ask are;

• What will be the best possible outcome of 2007? What is the Vision which will cause us to be at our best and our bravest?
• What EXACTLY will we have accomplished by this time next year? Is it an outrageously beautiful sight to behold? What does it look like, feel like, sound like, taste like?
• Why is it so important to us? Why will it be meaningful to the rest of the world? How will it be BIG?
• Why are we the best people destined to make this Vision happen? What is our responsibility for leadership?

2. Second we revisit our Values. We talk about those values which center our company, serving as our very reliable constancy no matter how much change swirls around us. We re-evaluate the Vision we spoke of previously, asking if it is specific enough and focused enough when filtered through our Values, for if it isn’t we will not have 100% commitment and belief in it.

It is in this part of the process that we reckon with our ethics, our intellectual honesty, and our emotional integrity. Yes, values are that critical.

Blending Vision and Mission with the Season

I am so excited!

I had included this snippet in my December 1 Ho‘ohana E-letter (subscribe here for your own copy) and today is our Day One for the two-night, three-day retreat it speaks of:

“Sometime earlier in December, we take a two-night, three-day retreat to work on our Business Plan as an ‘Ohana in Business, deciding what our strategic initiatives for Say Leadership Coaching will be in the New Year to follow. It brings us to the closure of one year, and the deep, no-holds-barred planning re-energizes us for the next. As we do with many of our customers, we start with Vision, and we write our Mission. We take care to be sure both align with our Values. Last, we own it, re-writing our personal and professional Ho‘ohana (the ‘Imi ola Mission Statements).”

This will be the fourth time I have done this since Say Leadership Coaching was born (2007 will be our fourth year in business). In the past three years, this has been a no-frills kind of thing, done at my home office and mixed in with the interruptions of normal office hours. Not really a “retreat” at all. This year however, we are going up to a cabin at Volcano Village, just outside of Volcano National Park. The cabin is one of bed-and-breakfast comfort and luxury, with a fireplace that is very necessary this time of year at that elevation, but we will truly be sequestered so we can focus, focus, focus, and FOCUS.

Splendidly unique in our islands, Volcano is a place of incredibly nurturing mana, divine power emanating from land which has been scarred to the sacred by Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire. The picture below was taken on one of my morning runs at Volcano in years past: It is the beginning of a place called Devastation Trail:

I am excited for I feel this will be the perfect way to bring one year to closure while devoutly preparing for the promise of the next. Perhaps we can get our 2006 to a place where it is also “scarred to the sacred.”

Managing with Aloha: We Reinvent Work Value by Value

Aloha and Welcome! ~ If you have arrived here on the recommendation that Managing with Aloha is a top productivity blog, please click through to this page for the information you are looking for: MWA3P: Productivity and Working with Aloha ~ If you are here for Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business in its entirety, keep reading this page! Mahalo nui loa, ~ Rosa Say

Managing with Aloha explores nineteen different Hawaiian values, and how to bring these very universal values to businesses today of every endeavor.

The Hawaiian words may seem foreign at first, but our universal, all-embracing discussions will be familiar to you, and those we coach quickly discover that using these “new words for old values” helps them reinvent old assumptions into better usefulness. We explore common sense, everyday approaches to blending the social and economic goals of business enterprise in ways that permeate our organizations and our community, defining a more meaningful sensibility for the way we work. We learn to become great managers and leaders. And in the process, we as managers learn to love our work too.

Managers get their work done through others —it’s as simple as that. As a manager you have the potential to affect the lives of people in profound ways, something you need to understand and take responsibility for. The best way to manage someone well is to honor their values as you remain true to your own, and given their universal nature it is highly probable many of your values are shared. Our values define our behavior, and in business, consciously working on values becomes synonymous with writing the software that drives effective work processes.

And we know that it isn’t “as simple as that.” That is why Managing with Aloha was written to help you.

Incorporating the language of values into a company’s culture demands meaningful communication, win-win agreements and a long term commitment to excellence: It becomes a language of intention which helps us “walk our talk” with integrity. When this is in place, work is conducted strategically, consistently, and successfully. Managing with Aloha helps us see this, and it explains how the arms of Aloha embrace the capacity every manager, and every employee has, to make a positive difference in the work they do.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sitemap: More about this website.

Managing with Aloha was created as an on-going resource for readers of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii’s Universal values to the Art of Business. You’ve read the book, and you’re excited about the possibilities it presents for you; now how do you make it your reality?

As a general lay-out, you will find

— This site is designed for first-time visitors here, who probably have not yet read Managing with Aloha, and are looking to start with information on the book itself. Under the HAWAIIAN VALUES heading, take the hyperlink for each value to its individual page, with definition, pronunciation guide, and an index to noteworthy articles written since MWA was first published.

— Managing with Aloha Coaching is a sister site we have designed for those who  HAVE read or ordered Managing with Aloha, and are ready to take action, putting the book’s coaching into their every day practice. We say they are ready to Climb the 4 Peaks, living, working, managing, and then leading with aloha.

Are YOU ready? Visit Managing with Aloha Coaching today, to get started.

The Ho‘ohana Community

Manage with aloha and you are in great company! 

Managing with Aloha has become a movement, with managers and leaders across the globe devoted to accepting full responsibility for the effect they have on our workplaces. They are continual learners, equally dedicated to their own growth —and joy! —as great managers in day-to-day practice.

Are you ready to jump in with full intention? These are the links I’d recommend you visit to get involved: We are waiting to share our aloha with you!

>> Our monthly e-letter, Ho‘ohana ‘Ōlelo™ Subscribe today!

>> Who, or what, is the Ho‘ohana Community? Meet your neighbors and friends.

>> Joyful Jubilant Learning: Where the writers within our community continue to explore the values of Managing with Aloha globally using the new media tools of today, with particular emphasis on LEARNING.

Are you looking for Managing with Aloha Jumpstart?

In 2006 we launched an experiment to bring the MWA start-up program of Say Leadership Coaching to our readers outside of Hawai‘i virtually. We aligned the program, one of self-paced coaching, with Ho‘ohana, then our value of the month program on the Talking Story weblog.   

MWA Jumpstart ® proved to be a wonderful pilot, and we currently are developing our next generation of the program. Old links are systematically being removed, and we will post a notice here when MWA Jumpstart ® returns. Meanwhile, the place to be is Managing with Aloha Coaching, and we encourage you to join our community there.

Visit the Services page of Say Leadership Coaching if you would like to have in-person coaching on MWA brought to your company, or learn about the Executive Coaching program that Rosa delivers personally.

Jumpstart for April, or more for March?

If you have diligently been following along with the MWA Jumpstart program, you were expecting a new Jumpstart for April today, gaining a preview of what our value for April will be, for it is the third Monday of the month.

Well, in reading between the lines, I’ve noticed something in the emails I’ve been so privileged to receive from some of you, and I’m wondering if we should redesign a bit.

No one has come right out and said so directly, but my sense of the feedback I do get, is that the looking ahead and balancing of two month’s programs at the same time in the last ten days of the month has been a bit much, especially if the free-flow of discussions on Talking Story take a turn in which we’d all like to jump in, as happened this month with everyday performance reviews and progressive discipline.

I am feeling that it would be better if we stick to the classic and comfortably predictable framework of the calendar, and have a value of the month in the Jumpstart program truly be a value of the whole complete month, revising the program to one value at a time for you, and for everyone you lead and manage.

Great managers are sensitive to the needs of those they work with, and they are immediately responsive. That’s what I feel I must be (sensitive to your needs) and do for you (be immediately responsive) — even when you are too polite to come right out and correct me!

So, take this Monday, March 20th as the gift of a Jumpstart day off. We’ll continue with Kūlia i ka nu‘u in the remaining 11 days of March— it’s a jam-packed value isn’t it? Let’s ho‘omau, and persevere, reaching for the summit of achievement, and striving for more excellence as we have been with our strategic plans. There is no room for mediocrity.

Rest assured I will continue to direct my coaching more directly to managers and leaders here on www.managingwithaloha.com as the home of our Jumpstart program. We will continue to work in alignment with Talking Story and our Ho‘ohana for each month, and we will Kūlia i ka nu‘u with our study and the program itself, striving for more and more excellence, happily allowing it to be the moving target which challenges us and fuels our commitment to be great managers and leaders.

I welcome you thoughts if you’d like to share them.

--------------------Tracking MWA Jumpstart:

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