We’re almost there.
My “twelve years later” 2nd edition of Managing with Aloha is with the printer, and their galleys are on their way to me for final proofing. Thus the book should be released later this month!
I will briefly preview my 2nd edition just for you, my wonderful MWA blog subscribers, at post’s end with a sneak peek of the new cover, placed there because I don’t want to bury the lead with my true intention in writing this particular posting: Let’s talk story, about what we gain from working with value alignment.
Future forward!
When you edit something, as I’ve been doing with Managing with Aloha over the past year, whether it’s your writing, your conversational style, your habit stacking, your approach with handling performance appraisals— editing work invested to revise just about anything, really— the act of editing packs quite a punch.
Inherent in revising anything, is your intention to make something better.
Good editing will bring the best within past practices back to mind, and it will challenge you in ways that help you value something at the very heart of Ho‘omau— you cause the good you created in the past to be long-lasting. You carry that good into your future, making it newly relevant. From our 19 Values of Aloha:
Ho‘omau is the Hawaiian value of perseverance and persistence. In practicing this value, we become more tenacious and resilient, and thus, more courageous. Ho‘omau also means to perpetuate, and to continue in a way that causes good to be long-lasting. Those who ho‘omau do not give up easily, and they consider mistakes and failure to be temporary conditions from which to learn and move on from.
When you reflect on past good, past successes come to mind, and any mistakes or failures have softened with time, turning into cautionary measures. You’re wise to ask yourself, “Hmmm…how can I keep using this?” When you’re a manager, your team invariably comes to mind, and you ask yourself, “How can we keep using this?”
When I think about Managing with Aloha— future forward, I can get overwhelmed with the possibilities. Thinking about value alignment as our core, repetitive, and ever-strengthening practice however, quickly calms me down and gives me focus.
Let’s talk Value Alignment
To edit, is to correct, check, improve, emend, polish; modify, adapt, revise, rewrite, reword, rework, redraft; shorten, condense, cut, abridge; clean up, cross out, red-line and blue-pencil.
To edit your own past work, is to brush away the cobwebs, welcome the light of a new day, and add your best improvements from more recent learning. At times, you will even “kill your darlings” or *gasp* change your mind.
Value alignment comes back into these editing processes with a rather straightforward question. You ask yourself, do I still believe in this?
With Managing with Aloha, my own answer has been a resounding, yes, I absolutely do! and I instantly return to my Why?
On the one hand, editing a book is a long and very detailed process, and I’m wallowing in that feeling of accomplishment one gets after finishing a major project, and being able to throw your hands up in the air, push your chair back, and scream, “I’m done!”
On the other hand, I feel like I’m at the cusp of a new beginning: MWA’s first edition is twelve years old, however the revision we put into MWA’s second edition makes it feel quite new again.
When I think about our next-stepping once the book is out in the wild on its 2016 wings, so much possibility becomes far easier for me to imagine. This second edition says to me: No more same-old, same-old: Managing with Aloha is brand new again.
A significant part of my feeling this way, is that I have learned so much from investing my time and energy into this project, both from doing the work itself (which has been quite challenging at times), and from others who’ve been working with me — as we have repeatedly said about ‘Ike loa, the value of learning, we learn best from other people, and we stretch; “long (loa) on knowledge (‘ike)”
Recharge your Ho‘omau with New Relevance
This fact of intensive work, that newness awaits you at the end of any project you’ve value-driven with Ho‘omau, is what I want to convey to you.
In our past studies of Ho‘omau we have tended to focus on persistence, tenacity, and resilience. We have talked about the continuity of Ho‘omau quite a bit, repeating the phrase, “cause the good to be long-lasting” until it is woven into the very fabric of what we understand Ho‘omau to be about— continuity.
However, when I reflect back on what we’ve done together, I see our concentration on finishing well as an ending, opposed to recharging and starting anew.
I believe we should always finish well, especially in regard to conversations being super-sensitive about necessary follow-up. What I am newly experiencing for myself, and talking about here to share with you as encouragement, is that when value-aligned with Ho‘omau, finishing well serves to recharge and renew you.
An old standard, becomes a brand new approach. (…and so does this standard, and that one…)
A tribe’s insiders’ language, becomes a brand new Language of Intention.
Old partnerships, find new energies in their collaboration and corroboration.
Respecting history and legacy doesn’t feel museum-like or mythical; it becomes mission-possible.
A preview of Managing with Aloha, Second Edition
As promised, here is a brief summary of the key changes made to Managing with Aloha 12 years later.
—the book is now softcover, 308 pages long, and looks like this:
—every single chapter has been newly revised and edited, from a little to a lot! The book’s setting, if you will, my expertise, has expanded from my history in Hawaii’s hospitality industry, to diverse fields, thanks to bringing MWA to others via Say Leadership Coaching. I have had the best clients! They teach me more every day in very lively workplace laboratories, think tanks and task forces. When I assert something will work for you in the book, I am doubly, triply sure of it.
—Those summary boxes which ended each chapter in the first edition are gone, replaced with more new content. For example, you will find that I have substantially rewritten the chapter on Alaka‘i, the Hawaiian value of leadership.
—in my personal point of view as author, I intended Managing with Aloha to convey a few key themes that would complement its central thesis of values-centered management, and its presentation of the 19 values of Aloha. In the second edition, you will find I have taken more care to highlight those themes:
- Sense of place and universal values function together in worthwhile work.
- Healthy workplace culture-building happens with the ‘Ohana in Business model.
- Managing with Aloha is more than being thoughtful and gracious; it takes intentional work coupled with a Language of We intention of inclusiveness.
- Our most important constant to never lose sight of: Managing others is a profound responsibility. Second, the courage to lead is critical, and desperately needed in today’s world.
- To become an Alaka‘i Manager, learn to manage first, lead second. Kūlia evermore, with the 5 Aloha Intentions: Live, work, speak, manage and lead with Aloha. Do this for yourself, so you will have it to share with others as your Ho‘ohana.
—there is a brand new Epilogue, which shares the Managing with Aloha Ethos, and discusses culture-building. Ka lā hiki ola, which had been the subject of the first edition Epilogue as “the dawning of a new day” is now Chapter 19, as our value of optimism, hope and promise.
—what we think of as our Managing with Aloha creed, A Manager’s Calling, the 10 Beliefs of Great Managers, now has a section of its own in the book—it is the Addendum which follows the Epilogue.
—the book now has a self-coaching complement to it, so the reader may use it as resource and journal. The blank Notes pages previously ending the first edition, are now placed throughout the book with coaching prompts in their relevant places, with more instruction on how to use them in the How To Read This Book section of the Introduction. Alternately, these prompts can be used for workplace book clubs.
—the traditional Index that was in the first edition has been changed, reformatted into a Story Index, and a new Concept Index which includes quotation credits and the Footnote Index.
—altogether, we (this project took a village!) feel we’ve put much added value into the Second Edition, yet we have left the price the same: $24.95 is the book’s suggested retail price.
Here is a look at the back cover:
Stay tuned for the date the book is released!
Meanwhile, have you subscribed to our new Talking Story newsletter? We’re having a lot of fun with it.
Back to you: What project are you working on, which could use value alignment in the spirit of Ho‘omau?