Managing with Aloha Coaching

Mālama in our 5-Beat Rhythm: What can you sustain?

I received an email over the weekend from someone who has a birthday coming up in the next few weeks. They wrote (yes, I am escaping any “he” or “she” hints on purpose!) to let me off the hook, saying, “Rosa, you cannot possibly continue to do these birthday postings on MWAC for everyone in the Ho‘ohana Community; are you really intending to do so?”

They are right, I can’t sustain them in the way I’ve done this month, for the Ho‘ohana Community is too large at this point. I will need to celebrate your birthdays to come in other, manageable and sustainable ways. I didn’t even get everyone in April done!

Since it was our value study for the month, I picked April as an example of what Mālama for birthdays can be: It’s the month of my own birthday (and I don’t shy from celebrating it), and it was a good opportunity to share some thoughts I have on how we adults need and deserve to have our big day celebrated just as much as children do— it’s important.

When I think about our theme of “Mellow Mālama Maintenance” over the past month, the question, “What can you sustain?” is a good one for our wrap up these last three days of April.

Let’s look at the 5th Beat again:

BEAT 5: Manage well! Great managers and those who self-manage create their future, and they don’t settle, or wait for things to just happen to them. Self-coach going forward, by making note of your future follow-through.* Create a strong, intentional weekly plan with your Calendar and Weekly Review. Integrate specific actions into Dailies and/or other parts of your Trusted System. Create your 2-Column Chart to help you with final decisions and commitments: In Column 1: Actions to Keep In Column 2: How I will Keep Them: NEW HABITS *That follow-through link is new, and not on the original template --- from March: The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With --- perhaps another (or preferred?) tool for you to integrate?

The fact that I will have to somehow adjust my birthday celebrations is fairly easy to explain.

However there is something else I have decided is not sustainable here at MWAC: The 5-Beat Rhythm in its present form.

I practice what I preach here each month right along with you, and in short, after several months of trying to, I have realized that I have not been able to arrive at my own Mellow Mālama Maintenance with the MWAC version of the 5-Beat Rhythm.

The 5-Beat Rhythm works wonderfully well in two other contexts

Hau‘oli la hanau to Tim Milburn!

Please join me today in wishing a Happy Birthday to Aloha spirit spiller Tim Milburn.

“Tim Milburn is one of my heroes. Has been ever since I’ve known him. Tim inspires me.”
—Add Value to People, Talking Story, March 2007

Tim is the artistic and creative soul who gives his talented eye for design to Joyful Jubilant Learning for us with images like these, and the learning templates and banners you have seen there over the past two years;

You can see more of what Tim does at his own two blogs,studentlinc and College Students Rule. You can buy the brilliant resources he produces and download some value adds for free.

It will not take long for you to realize that though Tim's graphic art is what can pull you in, what makes you fall in love with him is his writing.

As he says so succinctly on his Twitter profile, Tim is a leadership junkie.
[Tim, I gave you my first Twitter nudge just now--- have no idea how that works yet!]

“When I want nothing but complete happiness, I read Tim. Tim is infectious joy gone wild, and he is incredibly smart! His optimistic and enthusiastic writing is a kind of leadership food for me. Tim Milburn is a man on a mission, and he will not be held back; he is focused on student leaders, however he sees potential in everyone and everything, and he inspires me to be a better person than I am.”
—Sunday Mālama: Spirit Spilling, August 2007

I first met Tim when he had left a comment for me at my first blog Talking Story. It was July 3rd 2005 (take that link and you will take a walk down our Ho‘ohana Community memory lane!) When I followed the link he left behind, I arrived at a site that was nothing like the studentlinc we see today; there was no art or graphics at all, not even pictures within his posts. However I was in love with Tim instantly, for his warm and witty writing reached out and grabbed me. It still does. Me and so many others: On Joyful Jubilant Learning, we bow down to Tim as our artistic director and graphics guy (and with good reason), but we start throwing kisses (and reading in entirely new ways) when he writes for us.

“Early on, I began to understand that people want to be a certain way, but they often act in ways that go against their desires.  It's the difference between actual values and desired values.  A person may have a desired value of honesty, but in reality, they may cheat a little, lie a little, and act in a way counter to the value that they speak so highly of.  It is a subtle issue of character.  A person can begin to live with a perceived self (fantasy) that is actually different than one's real self.  A leader is one who can enter a situation and point out the differences between hoping to act with certain values and actually implementing those values.”
—Tim Milburn

On Joyful Jubilant Learning, Tim really personifies each word of that name we have chosen for the site. I marvel when I look back over the time I have known him, and realize what a learner Tim really is. I am in awe and profound gratitude for his giving nature, and am continually astounded by what he does for me within pure heart. I dedicate today, this Sunday Mālama to Tim, fully realizing just how much Tim is the one who Mālamas me.

On this, his birthday, Tim Milburn is a gift to all of us.

Hau‘oli la hanau Tim :)

Know you are loved today. You are admired for your work as student leadership mentor, and as the learner, artist and author that you are for us, but you are loved because of the good soul and man you are.
Me ke aloha kaua pumehana ~ Rosa

• About celebrating birthdays: Keith is right, and lucky me, you know it too.

Civil Responsibility in 2008 for Hawai‘i and for you

“By its very definition, civic responsibility means taking a healthy role in the life of one's community.”
—Senator John Glenn

Worldly social media is fascinating learning (Joyful Jubilant Learning), great for connectivity (LinkedIn) and fun (Twitter), but what’s up locally?

I am starting to read our Hawai‘i newspapers again to find out, and I’ll explain why.

Values-based management starts with self-management

The short answer is that my values of Mālama (stewardship) and Kuleana (responsibility) are self-talking in loud voices lately, and I am feeling I need to be a better local citizen than I am.

The world-wide web connectivity we have is fantastic, however I cannot help but wonder if I should be coming home more often.

Right now you have to be living under a rock in America if you are not hearing about the deeply serious and troubling state of the airline industry. The proposed merger of Delta and Northwest, who seek to combine to create the world’s largest airline, is the story of a business model which must be radically redesigned to overcome a 2008 year-to-date loss that adds up to $10.5 billion dollars.

Yep, no typo there --- $10.5 billion.

Compare that number, just from two carriers in four months time, with this: The Air Transport Assn reports that the airline industry’s biggest annual loss came in 2002 in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when all carriers reported a combined loss of $11 billion.

According to an Associated Press story, Delta and Northwest both blame their losses primarily on exorbitant fuel prices and write-downs of their companies’ value, however anyone who knows how business models work in total knows that almost always, “primarily” is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. (And I stand by what I previously wrote here: Working Beyond Their Means).

What does this mean for my home?

This was reported in that same Associated Press story, and is alarmingly true right now:

“Hawai‘i visitor industry sources said higher fares [which are inevitable] would impact that state’s major industry, tourism, which came of age with the advent of jet travel and is wholly dependent upon the airline industry.”

Wholly dependent is painfully accurate. There is a saying here in the islands that when tourism catches cold everyone gets sick. From fuel for the airlines to the second highest national average paid at our gas pumps (California is more expensive), everyone in Hawai‘i has the sniffles and we are starting to hear an awful lot of coughing.

Our dependence on the airline industry is easy to understand. Even if you are on another island within the Hawaiian chain, a mere speck in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, I cannot drive to pay you a visit. Boat travel is usually unrealistic if it is possible at all. Tourism is one part of the picture: Most of what we purchase as consumers is flown in.

This is truly a time to think about our lack of self-sufficiency and how we have been both working and living beyond our means. [See How is Your Workplace affected during a Recession?]

So why my return to the newspapers?

I am wanting more empathy with my neighbors and local community. I struggle to understand why some local thinking is the way that it is. The AP story I have been quoting above was on the front page yesterday, and panic is setting into the Hawaiian economy.

I am wanting to help be a voice of reason and more confidence however I can. Things do sound pretty awful, but I am an optimist and always will be. I do believe in that saying that goes, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Personally I read and interact as much online as I can, boycotting more paper anything in my home and business, other than the blank kind you journal or draw on to release your creativity (and my precious books). In that regard I am far, far, FAR from being your normal Hawai‘i citizen in my habits.

They say that people in Hawai‘i are among the most web-connected in the nation, and we are indeed a hub of national and international business. Our largest employer is not tourism, but the U.S. Government. Yet when I go to the grocery store, to a carnival or community town hall meeting —even workplaces in business— I would guess that the way 70% or more of the people I mingle with learn of issues, and are connected to the rest of the world, is through the newspaper and our local news broadcasts, NOT online.

Much as I would love my neighbors (and even many of my customers) to do so, they do not read JJL or this site religiously, they are not on LinkedIn, and they do not Twitter. You can only engage with the people who are there to engage with you!

The influence and insularity of the newspaper and the gullibility of our population is beginning to worry me in that panic never helped anyone all that much, and calmer voices must prevail, but they must be voices proposing some solutions and conveying confidence and positive expectancy.

This is all leaving me with much to think about. What degree of Mellow Mālama Maintenance will still allow me to sleep well at night, knowing I am also being a good citizen?

“A generation that acquires knowledge without ever understanding how that knowledge can benefit the community is a generation that is not learning what it means to be citizens in a democracy.”
—Elizabeth L. Hollander, Author (1817-1885)

Flickr photos by KellyB. and Paulo Prabo.

Keith is right, and lucky me, you know it too

The Keith I refer to is Keith Ferrazzi.

This is what he wrote in his book Never Eat Alone about birthdays:

As you get older, the people around you start forgetting your big day (mostly because they think they want to forget their own). Mom might not call a day late, but your brother or sister will. “Why remind the poor guy he’s getting up there in age?” Before long,that residual disappointment turns into resentment, and the resentment turns into apathy. Or at least the appearance of apathy.

“Nah, birthdays aren’t my thing,” I hear people say all the time. You persuasively tell your family, “Don’t do anything big, but if you do something, make it small.”

Well, I don’t believe it. I’m onto your game, friend. You care, and so does everybody else.

We’ve been conditioned since childhood, despite our best efforts to be “Birthday Scrooges” in adult life, that our birthday is all about us. It is your day, and it has been since you were a kid. And even when you’re seventy years old, deep down inside, despite all your protestations, a little recognition of that seventy-year-old life feels good even if you don’t get a big red wagon anymore.

Don’t kid yourself —EVERYONE CARES ABOUT HIS OR HER BIRTHDAY.

I had a birthday where so many of you cared! The comments here, and on Joyful Jubilant Learning (mahalo Dwayne), the tweets and direct messages on Twitter (a birthday first for me—amazing) the emails and phone calls blew me away. I was talking story with someone the entire day through, not alone for a moment, though I took the day off to lounge in my sweats and stay home!

No one should ever be alone on their birthday, or think that they are. No one should ever have a birthday where too many people forget, or that one person who might mean most to them forgets.

Now of course there must have been ‘moments’ where I was indeed alone; physically I spent a good portion of the day by myself. However I never noticed those by-myself moments; there were too many others where I was dwelling in the joy of being connected to you.

I have celebrated a lot of birthdays in my life, and I have learned how to enjoy them —Keith is right; we can’t be “Birthday Scrooges” when life is so rich: there is just too much to say thank you for, and I don’t think we ever get all caught up with the saying of it.

However deep in my heart I believe you would not have forgotten, even if I hadn’t put up my own sweet-tooting, magnolia-blooming post about it. That is not who you are.

Mahalo nui loa; thank you all for sitting in my big red wagon with me.
The day, my day, was fabulous! All because of you.
~ Rosa

Photo: Flyer Flickr by Crystl.

We human being are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.
—Dalai Lama

Hau‘oli la hanau. Mele Ma‘alahi.

Happy Birthday today, to me! What a charmed life I have, able to give myself the best gift – a day off, completely unscheduled… this has got to be one of the best perks of being self-employed (and not starving)!

Birthdays are meant for counting our blessings (of which I have a ton), rejoicing with prayers of gratitude, and saying mahalo e ha‘aha‘a (thank you within humility) to as many people as we can, for no life lived got that way as a solitary affair. Somebody helped. Lots of bodies helped! So I have a glorious day ahead, where I am free to talk story with the people who mean so much to me, saying thank you for all they so wondrously add to this life I celebrate today.

I like the way that writer Kristin Hunter phrases it:

“First it is necessary to stand on your own two feet. But the minute a man finds himself in that position, the next thing he should do is reach out his arms.”

White magnolia by tanakawho.

If you have a moment to share a comment with me today, leave a quote with us that you will keep close to you when your birthday comes, and tell us when that glorious day will be! All spirit spilling is welcomed here, for it is part of you, and thus part of aloha.

Mahalo for sharing my day with me!
Rosa

Postscript:
This was the gift I gave myself last year...Tim Milburn was the somebody that helped!

To Do, and To Stop, with ‘Imi ola

 

Earth Day is Mālama the People Day too

I was part of a group think-tank not too long ago concerned with ecological community volunteerism by businesses. I was asked to participate because Sense of Place —driven community initiatives is a part of my ‘Ohana in Business model within MWA, and a part I have been quite vocal about locally. As a small snippet, this is part of what you will read on my company website:

We believe that all businesses have a responsibility to community: They must understand their sense of place.

Therefore we promote culturally-sensitive work process and practice, and we teach, coach, and operate Say Leadership Coaching by managing with Aloha, the hallmark of our own culture. We feel it is our responsibility to bring a Hawaiian awareness and sensibility to all we do, for we conduct our business within the communities of Hawaii, and day-by-day we work and live in her ‘Ohana.

Within our discussions, one of the kūpuna (Hawaiian elders) said something that has stuck with me ever since, and this being Earth Day I found it was one of the first things I thought about when I woke this morning. I am paraphrasing her, but as I best recall it she said,

“I am grateful for the attention that global warming concerns have brought to the care of the ‘āina, however often we lose sight of the fact that the planet is a rock; what of the Mālama we must give to the citizens whom Akua intended the earth to be home to?”

An ecosystem is defined as “a system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment.” The interaction part has got to be there.

The person who said this had been invited to the group as both elder and geologist; I think her profound realization that even her own life’s work, as one devoted to the scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of the earth, was a means to another end was what made such an impact on me. The underlying “Why be so concerned?” of our efforts to preserve our planet is so that we can still live on it.

But live on it how? And as what kind of civilization? What will community and ‘civility’ continue to mean to us? Are we focused enough on the human elements of our community ecosystems?

When I think of our value study of Mālama this month, these are the thoughts which are speaking to my sense of Kuleana, responsibility. Yes, I do think of consumerism quite a bit too, and of how I can curtail my own appetites as another hungry consumer who must give back more than she consumes. However I also remind myself that being more modest in my wants and needs is just a start, for there is cause and effect, give and take, in virtually every issue we face, and in every action we take.

This is a good day to go back to the definition of Mālama we started our month with. From Mellow Maintenance Mālama:

Mālama To take care of. To serve and to honor, to protect and care for. ~ To Mālama, is to take care of. ~ A manager is a steward of assets and caretaker of people. ~ Mālama calls upon us to serve, to honor and to protect. ~ Acts of caring drive us to high performance levels in our work with others. We give and become unselfish. We accept responsibility unconditionally. ~ Mālama is warm, and Mālama is personal. It comes from heart, and it comes from soul. ~ When we Mālama, we are better.

From this value of Mālama comes the word mālamalama. In their Hawaiian Dictionary, Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert define mālamalama as the “light of knowledge, clarity of thinking or explanation, enlightenment” where those things you consider will wonderfully become “shining, radiant (and) clear.” Your path is an enlightened one for you when along the way you are taking care of certain things. You serve them, protect them, and honor them, and in doing so you feel better. You become better.

Mālama is almost magical in this way. In taking care of what you are truly supposed to —for it is “shining, radiant (and) clear,” everything else seems to get taken care of too.

Readings from the archives:

• The Environment and Managing with Aloha
  “What say we try to figure out what the environment has to do with our main themes of aloha, values, work, business, management, and leadership?”
• Sunday Mālama: Please don’t shop for me!
  “I have discovered that I want to achieve ma‘alahi most by getting rid of a lot of stuff, the kind of stuff that we think of as material clutter. I am positive that a good part of any stress I may have, has to do with a great array of my clutter, and it has begun to feel like I can’t shed it fast enough.”
• Sense of Place on the Internet: A Brand New Community Ecosystem
  “Physical place has this huge advantage; it surrounds you —you are enveloped IN it. On the other hand, we leave our virtual places so easily, simply switching off our connectivity and walking away. When there are other people in our physical places they cannot be ignored or lightly dismissed.”

---

If you have arrived at MWAC for the first time, ALOHA and welcome!

This is what MWAC is About, and Mālama is our value study of the month for April.

You are warmly invited and encouraged to subscribe and become part of our Ho‘ohana Community.

Ho‘ohana with us!
~ Rosa Say
More about me here.

The sentence I hear from YOUR people in YOUR workplace classroom

MY MANA‘O ~ ~ ~ If you are new to MWAC, Sunday Mālama is when we mix it up here. I may offer an extreme tangent to our current value of the month (for April: Mellow Maintenance Mālama), or write about something completely different. My very first Sunday Mālama was this one: A Beginning and this click gives you the full index to page through. I call Sunday Mālama my mana‘o meaning that it shares a deeper view of my thoughts, beliefs, and convictions with you, my Ho‘ohana Community. Thus, Sunday Mālama is also an invitation to share your mana‘o if you wish to.

The scenario usually plays out like this:

You hire me with a fairly passionate story on why you would like to have Managing with Aloha taught in your workplace.

We get to know each other fairly well in our planning of the workshop I will deliver for you, for if I am to deliver on your expectations, I need to learn what they are.

I always arrive to teach and coach at least a half hour before the workshop is to start, for I am hoping to make some conversation in which I can learn more about all of you informally. Sometimes people come early enough for that to happen (especially when there’s food!) however usually they aren’t let off shift early enough. That tells me they won’t be sticking around afterwards either.

You’ve been there to greet me and to make sure I have everything I will need, and most of the time (not always) you will introduce me, with something shared with your staff about why I am there.

Then, to my great dismay, which I have gotten very good at hiding, you quietly slip out as I get started.

What I will hear from your staff at some point during the workshop, and sometimes with alarming repetition as they take turns saying it, is this:

“I wish my boss were here too.”

So do I.

What in the world were you thinking, hiring me for a training that will now be impossible for you to follow-up on with any sensibility or credibility whatsoever?

You cannot follow up with teaching that you never hear in the first place

No matter how inspirational they are, no hired trainer or motivational speaker will ever be able to give you a return on the investment you have made, greater than that you can secure on your own.

Training has to be talked about, and agreements have to be made on what follow-up will happen in the workplace, and what will not, and why.

Your people need to hear from you directly as to whether or not you agree with a trainer, why or why not, and what your new expectations are now that the workshop has been presented.

Even if you have heard me speak before, you are missing out on the fabulous questions your staff will ask, and the discussions which create learning excitement for them. You miss seeing the opportunities you will have to turn learning into action which makes a difference in your workplace or with someone who has gotten thoroughly engaged with something we have talked about.

Your absence speaks with a loud voice

To me, yes. Frankly, I do think less of you. I am so disappointed.

However it speaks in greater volumes to your people.

When you are not there, you send your staff a message that you are not interested, or that you think you are better than they are and above it all, or worse, that you hired someone to whip them into shape and fix them for you.

Next time, show up and STAY. Learn WITH your staff. ENGAGE with your people. Make a commitment to convert learning into action.

Then I can help you with the follow-up which grows you into the leader you are supposed to be.

If workplace training is considered the new flavor of the month, unlikely to last and get integrated into the workplace culture, chances are you didn’t sit long enough to partake of the meal. Leadership never even made it to the table.

From the archives:

• How to Capture an Expert’s Value: 12 Tips (at Talking Story)
• Homework for the Workplace (at Managing with Aloha)
• Be Fiercely Selfish With Your Time to Learn (at Joyful Jubilant Learning)
• Managers: Are You Teaching? Know Can Do!
• The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With
• Coaching Debrief: Do with, not for, not instead

Managers: Are You Teaching? Know Can Do!

I spent most of my day yesterday newly creating a class that I have now given dozens of times since MWA was published. The task could have been done in less than a half hour versus the six it took me, but my goodness I loved those six hours!

Within a half hour I could have pulled all the lesson pages and resource pages I usually use from their time-tested digital files, compiled the workshop binder I normally give everyone, and further personalize it for the group I am presenting to tomorrow.

So what did I do with the other five and a half hours?

Plan the class using what I have newly learned from our Know Can Do! study on how learning is best retained – do you remember those MWAC lessons?

One of my biggest take-aways from doing that study with you, was that we who teach normally spend most of our time on the design, organization and delivery of curriculum, and very little on the follow-up after the actual teaching. However if true retention and the habit building of lessons-learned is to happen, our efforts should be the other way around: We should be concentrating on the follow-up, and in particular, planning for future instances of ‘spaced repetition,’ teaching important concepts over and over again, until they have become ingrained in the way people think and behave.

Your repetitive advantage in the workplace

Now in my case, I have one shot spending time with most of the people I will be teaching tomorrow: I will not personally be with them in the future to provide that ‘spaced repetition’ they will need to best retain what they will be learning from me. I will not be there for the repeat classes (if they are held at all), future edits and integration that should occur.

Therefore, what I charged myself with accomplishing yesterday, was delivering the same MWA-proven content to them in a better way, one that would better enable them to create their own instances of ‘spaced repetition’ of the content-learning individually, either without me, or with resources that I point them to.

For example, I gave them a listing of addresses to specific web pages here at MWAC that precisely align with the course content we are covering.

If you are a manager, you should be within your own continual learning process in regard to the way you create work-related curriculum for your people too. Sometimes you will hold a classroom session, just like I do. Most times they will be mini modules for you within meetings, or on the job itself as it occurs. [For more on this, see Coaching Debrief: Do with, not for, not instead.]

And who knows? One day, when your time is done in the current workplace and management role you have, you may have found that you love it so much you start doing it all the time as part of your calling, with your own experience-lived evolution of living, working, managing, and leading with aloha —just like I do! It is a very good, very rewarding life!

No open-ended questions for you with this particular article...

Instead, choose to teach!

I will be offline for today through Friday teaching four different MWA classes – quite excited about it! This article will remain here, top of page at MWAC while I am gone. Time for our ‘spaced repetition’ too!

Use the time to review those Know Can Do! articles (listed for you below), and choose something you want to teach anew in your workplace. Follow the rule of thumb to spend twice as much time thinking about the follow-up you will do in the months which follow your actual teaching, and you will discover, just as I did, that you will get several aha! moments about a better way to deliver the teaching itself. For example, another thing I did was change my in-class exercises so they are doing them the first time with my facilitation and coaching, and then could repeat them either with a different team of people, or with the peers they’ll have in class with me, and with a twist of some kind to change things up and enliven the exercise.

Have fun with your curriculum building – I did! I will be back for Sunday Mālama.
Enjoy the rest of your week,
~ Rosa

1. Sunday Mālama Book Review: Know Can Do! ~ Part One
2. Sunday Mālama: Know Can Do! ~ Part Two
3. More on ‘spaced repetition’ and Coaching Your Beginners (at Talking Story)
4. Another article you may want to review is this one:
   The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With for it is all about follow-up.

*Our Know Can Do, Less is More Language of Intention ~ ~ ~ Know Can Do! ~ is a parable book written for every learner who wants to improve with converting the knowledge they gain into better usefulness in their lives. Less is More ~ is the short version of the Know Can Do! coaching that "People should learn Less More, and Not More Less" Spaced Repetition ~ is the "missing link" with learning retention: it is a learning technique where you don't learn something in just one sitting. You're exposed to the information periodically over time, so that it sinks in. Trading Up! ~ is a book which teaches us to Shift the Context from which we think, behave, and interact with others. It asks the question, "How good are you willing to let your life be?" Green Light Thinking ~ is possibility thinking with positive expectancy. When ideas come up, the call for a time of green light thinking explores all the positive possibilities before the yellow (cautionary filtering) and red (negative filtering) lights come on (and into the discussion.) Contextual Leadership ~ "Once a person connects with her passion and recognizes that it cannot be created in isolation, that person becomes a true leader, connecting with and helping to transform others, drawing the like-minded to her cause."—Rayona Sharpnack

There’s Mellow Mālama Maintenance in Math

Simple math, like in sums of numbers adding up correctly, and in being able to balance your checkbook.

Being able to then balance your work accounts—all of ‘em. As in having your CFO out for a few months looong vacation and not having it matter (no disrespect intended to the savvy CFOs out there—just making a point!)

When I first took algebra —what was it, maybe the 5th or 6th grade? Can’t remember— I probably would have bet you a million bucks that I would never, ever write an article headline like this... Mālama — the value of caring and stewardship, in math!

Well, if you’d have taken the bet I’d be figuring out how to pay up, ‘cause there is.

When the financial stuff is healthy because you did apply some Mellow Mālama Maintenance to it, everything else feels a lot healthier too. Even if you could use better cash flow (can’t we all?) you just see those big-picture views AND those “20 that gets you the 80” views so much more clearly.

No use fighting it; financially-needy describes the world we live in unless you manage to live a lifestyle where you never, ever will need any cash. And if you do, clue in the rest of us!

I learned algebra.

In fact, I managed to get an A in it, and do remember being darned pleased with myself about it! But at the time it was to prove the point that I could learn it and get the A rather than grasping the concept of how I would really need the knowledge one day.

Even as a manager, I fought the need to completely understand that life-necessary math called financial literacy through nearly my entire career. Looking back, I got by miraculously, but just barely, in the slippery-slope traction of getting by that mostly involves learning a company culture with all its language and gaming, and then playing by the rules. I didn’t learn to love working with financial puzzles, actually enjoying them enough to start designing business models until two things happened:

1) As a corner-office exec I inherited a business model so severely broken it rocked my sense of integrity. Fixed as much as I could, then left the job when I completely understood how little was in my control. Decision-making and management became too convoluted and complex; keeping my personal integrity was more important. I could not work in a place that used people as it just got by;  Situations like that still shoot arrows straight into my heart.

More on that story is here:
Blind Faith is not part of Unconditional Aloha in an ‘Ohana in Business.

2) Then I became self-employed and had no CFO to look up to, depend on, and delegate to anymore. My “a)” above became like a prep-school of hard knocks for the real “b)” of the life that you begin to realize is Brand You Revealed and Raw.

The biggest aha moment in my taking care of those two things (and still taking care of the second one continually) was how much I needed financial literacy in my personal life too. What in the world was I teaching my children? What sense of financial competence and confidence would they be able to achieve?

The flashbacks to what I neglected to teach my employees by a better example over the years past can still wrack me with guilt. It is the reason I get so nuts in my coaching about financial literacy being continually taught in business today. How can employees become fully engaged business partners without the financial literacy they need to become engaged?

What is financial literacy to you?

If we define ‘financial literacy’ as the knowledge of all the financial ‘stuff’ it takes to make a business —or a life— run itself in the right way (‘right’ meaning profitably enough for all stakeholders to thrive), what do you think you still have to learn?

Where do you suspect your Mellow Maintenance Mālama opportunities might lie?

“i have a meeting at my bank tomorrow to chat about my future (selling up and buying somewhere cheaper to live in another city, getting a business loan, all sorts of exciting grown up things). tonight i went through my paperwork so that i can go in knowing my current position at least. the sums proved interesting.”
[Photo credit: “236/365 doing the sums” by obo-bobolina found on Flickr]

1. I think one very timely example is preparing to file your income taxes.

I have hired a CPA to do my income taxes ever since I could afford one —while I was still in college, and before I ever got married. Other than physicians for my health, I am pretty certain that a CPA is the first professional I ever hired. Every March and April, I set a new goal for myself that I will learn something my CPA does for me. Some of those learnings I retain and start doing myself in the whole sordid process of filing my income taxes; with others I turn them right back over to my CPA in a “okay, chapter over, this book closed for me” kind of way, but then I appreciate him a whole lot more for the actual doing of the dirty deed. 

2. At work, your stepping into the role of the teacher can be a good way to keep learning just how complete your financial literacy needs to be. To teach something well, you must know it thoroughly.

What financial stuff do you take care of, that you can teach and delegate to others, empowering and engaging them with the new knowledge you have now shared? What financially-related chore do you now take care of completely that should be shared so it can be taught and learned, and so people can grow — just as you did when you learned it? How can that translate to Mālama Maintenance for each of you?

3. Sharing benefit information is another great opportunity, and one which illustrates that you need not DO everything yourself, just enable it.

Bring those experts in 401k plans, risk management with portfolio investments and the like into your departmental staff meetings, and prep your staff within your workplace huddles first, by brainstorming the questions you will ask them. Milk them for all they are worth.

Those a three examples right off the top of my head, but there are many more. The workplace provides us with a wealth of ways we can invest in learning that will benefit us personally as well.

What are some other Mellow Maintenance Mālama opportunities in this area of financial literacy you can think of? What could you be asking your CFO (or CPA) to help you learn, or point you toward as a core curriculum choice in that best-possible picture of your financial health?

I would love to hear of your ideas,
~ Rosa

---

Mahalo, thank you for reading today!
Click that orange RSS button to the left to subscribe.

The links above point to these articles in the archives:

1. Mellow Maintenance Mālama is our value study this month.
2. Get Pono Integrity for your Business Model also covers the difference in my definition between a business plan and a business model.
3. Working Beyond Their Means tells the story of a recent business model fiasco very much in the news right now.
4. Coaching Debrief: Do with, not for, not instead

• And a great bonus: Take this link, and enter the word math in the FIND box - you will be amazed at the beauty!
  

[Photo Credit for Finding X: “Who needs Pythagoras' theorem?” by dullhunk on Flickr.]

Sunday Mālama: Internet Privacy and a release in Talking Story

MY MANA‘O ~ ~ ~ If you are new to MWAC, Sunday Mālama is when we mix it up here. I may offer an extreme tangent to our current value of the month (for April: Mellow Maintenance Mālama), or write about something completely different. My very first Sunday Mālama was this one: A Beginning and this click gives you the full index to page through. I call Sunday Mālama my mana‘o meaning that it shares a deeper view of my thoughts, beliefs, and convictions with you, my Ho‘ohana Community. Thus, Sunday Mālama is also an invitation to share your mana‘o if you wish to.

Anyone who has ever watched a reality show on television has surely had the same thought at some point:

“How can these people expose themselves like this to millions of strangers?
What are they thinking?”

Then, that same any-man, or any-woman, fires up their lap top, and hits the publish button with the story of how they just messed up big time at work. Or, they click over to a social media site like Twitter and post a tweet on what they just had for breakfast, with whom, and exactly where.

Photo as on JJL: WHAT IF all your learning inputs were digital?
[Flickr Photo Credit: "Working late" by Delgoff.]

Internet Privacy: An evolution

When I started blogging back in August of 2004 I’d been reading blogs and thinking about it for almost a year before taking the plunge. I had a “static” website, but it was a safe one, and I was very aware of the differences. With a blog there would be less ‘firewalls’ and people I did not know would easily be able to reach out to me. I liked the thought that there were those who would invite me into their lives for my aloha conversation; the thought that others would lurk in my life for unknown reasons terrified me.

What made me take the plunge was not that I came to terms with that; it was publishing my book, and realizing that my contact information would be now public domain anyway… maybe the internet would at least give me a bread crumb trail to knowing who both followers and lurkers were.

Then, decision finally made, it took me all of 6 seconds to know what I would name my new blog: Talking Story was born— online. Why not do what I naturally did offline, when online?

Here I am, still blogging nearly four years later, and at this moment in time I’m sensing another evolution of sorts. I previously tumbled about it in regard to our Brex initiative for 2008: Brex is short for Brave Experiments in Digital Learning:

1. Traditional website (needed to hire a webmaster)
2. Blog platform (could actually do it myself!)
3. Blogging (guess there is more that comes with this… Oh! a community ecosystem!)
4. Group Blogging (Joyful Jubilant Learning is born! Eleven Things, circa October 2006)
5. Tumbling (put the lifestreaming stuff here, and edit your blogs better!)
6. Twitter (what say we change this up a bit and see where else social media takes us, hmm? Care to follow along?)

What is most interesting to me, is the privacy evolution we’ve gone through too. And my word choice is deliberate: Once you blog, “I” becomes “we” and you’ve become the spider drawing others into your world wide web. I think of Kuleana, and the responsibility I accept with that pretty often.

Yet I’ve gotten braver than I ever imagined I would have, and no regrets.

This weekend my Mellow Mālama Maintenance has involved sharing my learning with Twitter, and beyond that, eagerly and joyfully inviting people to follow along. (Equally fascinating to me is how our contextual language changes: What does friending and following mean to you right now?)