Another Kākou Message: Interpreting GEMO

Have you decided what your next Kākou message will be yet?

David Zinger of our Ho‘ohana Community has written about a mantra that is one of his current favorites; he calls it GEMO:

GEMO gets things done. I have relied on the statement "good enough, move on" to avoid dithering and to set a very high level of accomplishment this month.

He further explains on Slacker Manager:

GEMO is an acronym for Good Enough, Move On. It helps avoid perfectionism, dithering, delays, and other productivity traps and snarls.

Here is how you practice it. You work at something, you begin to run out of steam or you know more needs to be done but there are other projects and things that need to be done so you say, GEMO. You move on and you know you can come back to it and improve it later.

This is a key phrase for me: “so you say, GEMO.” Saying it, and having all in earshot understand it, creates Language of Intention.

Kākou messages create conversation

Now here is the really good part. Just as David demonstrates for us, creating Kākou messages is fun: They bring an inspired lift to work. At their very least, they focus attention and the inquisitiveness of others who want to be in the know when a new phrase or acronym like GEMO starts cropping up. The really good part?

I also call your attention to a comment David’s article drew from Dean Fuhrman; Dean talks about how using this GEMO principle became the catalyst for much conversation within his work team about how they define excellence, and when it is even reasonable to expect it:

“GEMO is a good principle because it can cut through the futzing around with stuff that is unnecessary but there ought to be some discussion about what the performance standard (or expectations) should be ... The unarticulated, but generally understood principle underlying this whole discussion [had by his team] was this: we must do everything we do exceptionally well, very precisely lest we fall off our game and spiral down into the void.

Two things about this unarticulated principle: (1) everyone applies the standard in a different way because it is never really talked about openly and as a result the standard is applied person by person, even by the principle’s most ardent supporters and (2) it is impossible in today’s very fast moving world to achieve this standard even if it were well defined and understood … there is too much to be that precise about.”

Kākou messages are normally short, and they are catalysts, they are not entire speeches. The longer they take to say by one person, the more they become preaching and soap-boxing. A great Kākou message allows the leader to be quiet quickly, listening for those opportunities to be mined from when others start doing the talking.

Mahalo Ikaika, this was perfect for our value study this month!

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Just joining the conversation? The links I have offered above connect this post to these earlier articles of Kākou study: October 2007: Kākou. Communicating with the Language of We

• On Kākou messages, with a Starbucks example: We are bronco bull riders. We hang tough.

• On attention focus: Kākou is the value of Communication: We all want to be In The Know.

• On the skill of listening in conversations: Are you a Conversation Killer without realizing you are? Three Tips to help. This has proved to be the most popular article here on MWAC this month so far.