In Managing, Do You Balance ON and IN?

I truly hope you’ve been having the same experience I’ve been having with our current value immersion, wherein we’ve tackled a review of the business model we currently work within:

“[what] I am encouraging you to target these two months to come, is your business model. By extension, you will be working on your financial literacy, and your basic understanding of how your business model affects so much in your workplace culture.

Your business model affects everything. It affects your assumptions of what you can, and cannot do. It affects the level of your influence, and your consequential learning. It affects how readily people are willing to share their ideas, which are all worthy of voicing, both good and bad. It affects how connected you are to your industry and community, and how disconnected you are.”
—Ho‘okipa for May-June2017

My experience, has been an unexpected delight at giving myself the permission to question, and even contradict myself with fresh updates (after all, in my case, I am the founder and owner of Say Leadership Coaching).

Second, that sentence above, “Your business model affects everything.” has proved to be somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy: I’ve discovered how true it really is.

Balancing Act on Flickr by Jill Clardy

In Managing, Do You Balance ON and IN?

One of the things we’ve done together (via the Aloha Intentions of our Value Your Month to Value Your Life programming in our Talking Story newsletter), was revisiting a short story called Loved by Bernadette Jiwa of the Story of Telling. Here is a quote that’s a direct hit on the importance of a business model:

“The business expanded. They extended their premises. The owners started working ‘on’ the business not ‘in’ the business. Their new systems and processes changed the whole feel of the place and wiped the smiles off the faces of the staff.” —Loved

I understand her point, yet in my coaching career with executive-level clients (particularly those who are the business owners as well), what I run across more often, are the ones who predominantly work ‘in’ the business, and not ‘on’ it nearly enough.

• To work IN a business is to be involved with it, participating as you need to
• To work ON a business is to see it with fresher eyes, and the perspective of healthy distance

The slide deep into a workplace’s machinations, often starts with micromanaging, and the failures to delegate to others, and/or trust in others… managers will work deep “in the trenches” of the workplace, and don’t come up for a gulp of fresh air often enough, even though they know they really should be doing so.

It’s far better, to constantly self-coach yourself with a “get above this!” be-better affirmation, such as, “I refuse to be indispensable; not nut, not bolt. Instead, I will be helpful; I’ll be the grease on the wheels.”

Managers need to work ‘on’ a business and ‘in’ it —both are important, and it’s a matter of learning how to balance them as necessary.

Model IN — Plan ON

As you continue your work on our May/June value immersion (Ho‘okipa is a Game Changer in Service) and Ho‘okipa by Design business modeling, this ‘on’ and ‘in’ balancing act can be a very helpful lens and filter for you.

A fairly straightforward way to apply this balancing act, is to weave it into the vocabulary we’ve committed to keeping more precise with business models versus business plans: Your model is your IN, and your plan is your ON.

Business Model—“the mechanism through which your company generates its profit—and the day-to-day busyness you’ll fall into as your how-to routine.” —Think of it as your What, Where, and How-to.

Business Plan—“complements your business model, by outlining your company’s strategy and expected financial performance over time.” —Think of it as your Why and When, and as a kind of Insurance Plan.

“Designing model and plan in a complementary manner, is what we refer to as ‘business savvy’ in Managing with Aloha. Without their harmony and strategic business sense, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to afford unparalleled service and the hospitality of your Ho‘okipa by Design.”
—Ho‘okipa is a Game Changer in Service

If you’ve spent any time with Managing with Aloha at all, you also know that the values we choose become the glue holding everything together. They serve as our Why in important ways, blending our mana‘o and our morality in business, and kicking mendacity to the curb. Value Alignment (Key 3) serves as our evergreen How-to.

Take the Long Term View

Determining your balance with ON and IN can be helpful in nearly every time frame; e.g. for today (with sense of urgency), in this coming week (reasonable foresight in planning), over the next month (useful in habit-building), over two months (as we do with our #VYMTVYL value immersion), quarterly (sensible with pilot projects), for the coming year (with mission), and so on, into the future (an ever-evolving, perceptive and adaptive vision).

My hope, with the work we embark on together as a Ho‘ohana Community, is to inspire and initiate through value immersion practices, and with the value curation we do here on the blog, continuing to populate it as a resource. This blog is essentially the sequel to my book, with #VYMTVYL its’ engine, keeping our efforts constant and fresh.

The follow-up timeline of any value immersion we’ve triggered will always be up to you. With business model and business plan follow-up in particular, it is likely that you’re in for a longer term view; you want to carefully consider the adjustments you may make, and take your time with implementing them. You’ll be wise to involve others who are on your team.

This is certainly happening for me, and as for that “permission to question and contradict myself” I mentioned earlier, I’ve loved exploring my own business with the attitude that nothing is sacred, untouchable, or unmanageable —including both model and plan for Say Leadership Coaching, for Ho‘ohana Publishing, for Talking Story, and for everything I decide to take on and do.

Working ON and IN can be a riot — it really can be fun and not a chore. Be a fan of the pilot project: Test your ideas. Experiment. Assess and Re-mix. And as always, write me if you think I can answer a question or help you in any other way.

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter:
Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, released July, 2016
Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

Our value immersion study for the months of May and June 2017:
Ho‘okipa is a Game Changer in Service.