Tuesday Essay #4: Hope, thy name is Optimism

I once heard it said that “hope has nothing to do with what is going on in the world.”

I wish I could remember who had said it. My wish goes beyond wanting any accuracy or context for that statement, and my wish isn’t so that I can give credit where credit is due (though I would like to do that too).  I’d like to say mahalo, and thank them as best I can, for those words have really stuck to the walls of my brain, my heart, and my gut, giving me all the context I need when I think about the future, and how I go forward.

There are two things I know about that great four letter word HOPE. One has to do with Ka lā hiki ola, our value for the month of June, and another with ‘Imi ola, the value of vision and personal mission:

“Hope has nothing to do with what is going on in the world.”

1. Hope for tomorrow, and for each day after that, has everything to do with Ka lā hiki ola’s certainty there will always be the dawning of a new day and the fresh new start it represents.

“Hope has nothing to do with what is going on in the world.”

2. Hope has everything to do with me, and the way I choose to live in the world. With ‘Imi ola, I choose to create my best possible life proactively; I am not a bystander to my own life.

Said shorter and sweeter (now that you have read and learned our previous Tuesday lessons this month):
1. With Ka lā hiki ola, I live today (Kēia Manawa) with the certainty of tomorrow.

2. With ‘Imi ola, I create my own destiny within that tomorrow.

Put those two things together, and HOPE lives within pure, golden, promising optimism, and Hiki nō: Can do possibility.

What a beautiful thing! As beautiful as the dawning of a new day.

I have been sharing a very visible sign of my personal Ka lā hiki ola with you this month:
Photographs taken within my new learning of photography.

Over the past few weeks, I took the pictures that you see here, incredibly excited about them. At first they look like pretty orange flowers, and newly sprouting leaves… okay, so what? The “so what” is that they have come from the wiliwili trees which are fast disappearing in Hawai‘i, and they come from a tree over 400 years old, transplanted from a construction site in the hope of saving it. Over the past year, it has looked like this:

It has been hard to hold onto the hope that the tree was capable of new growth, and the beautiful orange blossoms that once caused invading warriors to think twice about beaching their canoes on an island they had planned to conquer in bloody battles. For as they approached, from their viewpoints still out at sea, the brilliantly blooming orange wiliwili trees (at that time densely grown and flourishing) caused them to think the people on shore discovered they were coming, and had lit massive fires to keep them away. They feared that any arriving canoe would instantly be set on fire and destroyed, and so the warriors turned away, sailing back to the place from where they had come, leaving the people to live in peace.

So is the legend of the wiliwili.

The life within the tree, had everything to do with the certainty that there would be Ka lā hiki ola, and the dawning of a new, and peaceful day for those who lived here on my island home.

What does this have to do with you, and with Managing with Aloha?

Managers are responsible for the wiliwili life force in the workplace.

Managers create and maintain the organizational culture which is like the orange fire of the wiliwili, steward and protector of the hope within that organization.

Managers get things done through the people they manage, people who thrive within the certainty of Ka lā hiki ola, and people who believe that hiki nō, there is Can do possibility in the cool shade of their workplace wiliwili trees.

We have one final week for Ka lā hiki ola. A week from today will be July 1 and I will present a new value for the month of July. What are your keepers with Ka lā hiki ola?

A strategy behind my new publishing schedule here was to give you better focus within fewer postings. Has it worked better for you? Use the coming week’s time to wrap up Ka lā hiki ola and debrief. Will this be a value you now keep as your own?

If you need yet another suggestion, consider this connection between Ka lā hiki ola and the sustenance of your own organizational culture. What needs to happen so that there is always the existence of HOPE in your workplace, a hope that is within the reaches of your Can do possibility?

Consider this as a new Ka lā hiki ola mantra you can share, in telling of the legend that will one day be the story of your workplace as well:

Hope, thy name is Optimism.

You look to me like the noble life force of the wiliwili tree.

Our June 2008 Recap ~ Value theme: Ka lā hiki ola, “the dawning of a new day.”
The Hawaiian value of hope and promise.

1. Ka lā hiki ola and the New Us
2. Ka lā hiki ola and Ho‘ohiki
3. Ka lā hiki ola and Kēia Manawa
4. Say Ka lā hiki ola to make it yours
   Did you listen to our first VoiceThread there?
5. Hope, thy name is Optimism

Comments

[Joanna Young]

Fabulous Rosa, a very inspiring post, story about the history and current state of the tree, with added value of the photos.

The idea that managers are responsible for the wiliwili life force in their workforce is a very powerful one.

I can see read across associations for leaders anywhere: teaches, coaches, pastors, writers, thinkers. You can make choices that create the conditions for that tree to flourish and grow.

Joanna

PS I love the posting schedule, and weekly does give more time for deliberation and reflection

[Bennet Simonton]

You wrote - "Managers create and maintain the organizational culture which is like the orange fire of the wiliwili, steward and protector of the hope within that organization."

I am unsure what wiliwili is but I do understand managing people. I hope that you are advising managers to eschew the traditional top-dowm command and control approach to managing people while concentrating on leading them. Let me explain.

Leadership applies to people and denotes the sending of value standard messages to people which most of them then follow/use. Thus we say that they have been "led" in the direction of those standards. Leadership is one side of the coin called values, the other side being followership.

Leadership in the workplace consists of the value standards reflected in everything that an employee experiences. Most of what the employee experiences is the support or lack thereof provided by management - such as training, tools, parts, discipline, direction, material, procedures, rules, technical advice, documentation, information, etc.

Leadership is not a process any manager can change. It happens inexorably every minute of every day because of the way people are. The only choice available to a manager is the standard (good, bad, mediocre or in between) which people will follow.

Managing, on the other hand, applies to the effective use of a resource such as money, supply chain, production, people or what-have-you. People are just one of many different resources to manage, each having methods that will succeed, methods that will fail and many in between the extremes.

For instance, the top-down command and control technique is a specific method by which to manage people. Top-down concentrates on producing goals, targets, visions, orders and other directives in order to control the workforce and thereby achieve organizational success. Top-down treats employees like robots in the "shut up and listen, I know better than you" mode, and rarely if ever listens to them.

In this way and others, top-down demeans and disrespects employees sending them very negative value standard messages. The standards reflected in this treatment "lead" the employees to treat their work, their customers, each other and their bosses with the same level of disrespect they received. This is the road to very poor corporate performance as compared to the results that would be achieved using a better approach. Top-down managers are their own worst enemies.

If you want your employees to produce very high performance, get rid of all traces of a top-down approach. Start treating employees with great respect and not like robots by listening to whatever they want to say when they want to say it and responding in a very respectful manner, thus leading them to treat their work, their customers, each other and their bosses with great respect. Everyone wants to do a good job and don't want to be told what to do. They do want to be trained and coached so that they can do their work well.

You will be stunned as I was by the huge amount of creativity, innovation and productivity you have unleashed. Besides, most of them will love to come to work.

I admit that there is a lot to "responding in a very respectful manner", but I hope that I made the intent clear.

Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"

[Rosa Say]

Mahalo Joanna! I love what you added: Much of my joy within the values of Managing with Aloha have come from their universal connections for me in those fields you mention~ teachers, coaches, pastors, writers, thinkers. Parents have responded well too, and I think back to how often, deep in the throes of my own organizational management challenges, I would think, "oh come now, this should be a piece of cake next to parenting - we're all adults!"

Thank you too for your feedback on the new posting schedule~ it does seem to be working! I have a biggie planned for July far as the MWA values go, so I do encourage everyone to use this final week well within our Ka lā hiki ola value study.

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Ben, and you wrote:
"I am unsure what wiliwili is but I do understand managing people."

You ended with:
"I admit that there is a lot to "responding in a very respectful manner", but I hope that I made the intent clear."

Hmmm. You did make your intent clear, just not the intent you probably had hoped we’d read into your comment, for I now have no interest in reading the book you have written and are attempting to promote on my site.

If you take the time to read my posting (or even look at the pictures), you will know what the wiliwili is.

If you take the time to read the header at the very top of this page that you posted your thinly disguised book advertisement on, you will also know that Managing with Aloha is completely about the value-based structuring of an organizational culture, done at the hands (and aloha-filled good intention) of those who are great managers, managers people thrive on working with, not for.

Might I suggest you pick up a copy of Managing with Aloha? I think it might help you do what you say you believe in here. You can also check out www.SayLeadershipCoaching.com for my services if more coaching will help you.

Good luck to you: You have the right ideas here, I think you need to be much more careful with promoting them, and explore the concept of matching your values with the people you pitch your ideas to.
A hui hou,
Rosa

[Bennet Simonton]

Rosa,

Sorry to have offended your sensibilities and I apologize for that.

You have noticed that I am not a marketeer. I only know how to manage people to cause them to unleash their full potential. At this point in life I try to work gratis. Promoting my book is of no real interest to me, but helping people is. I only want to help managers learn how to treat their people in outstanding fashion, mainly in order to benefit their people.

I did not miss your pictures. I was unsure of the meaning embodied in a wiliwili.

Best regards, Ben

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Ben, good morning,
Yes, you did offend me, for I am offended by spammers who treat websites that others have worked diligently on as something akin to random telephone poles they staple gun their Xeroxed flyers on. Unfortunately, that is the impression you gave me, and you did indeed seem to be a drive-by ‘marketeer,’ for while I actually do agree with much of what you wrote, it didn’t appear that you had bothered to read much of my article or more of MWAC at all. At best, you were preaching to the choir with the comment you left for me.

However Ben, this is a situation where I am eager to be wrong, so thank you for coming back. Before I logged off late last night, I read through both your original comment one more time, and my response, and I had planned to email you privately this morning within the possibility you had not written that at all, for I’d started to wonder if the comment had been done for you by some eager publicist or their interns given a social media/blog-assignment. In either event, your ideas didn’t go the distance with me.

Ben, I teach and coach value-alignment. Thus I also responded as I did because I have learned that “sounds good” ideas can be purely the result of smartly calculated word-smithing. That’s how we elect the “wrong people” to political office. That’s how the “wrong people” get to hold high-ranking management and leadership positions and we end up with the top-down messes you alluded to.

Passionate good intention with even great ideas requires value-alignment with the core beliefs those ideas are founded on. Yet even that is not enough, for stop there, and you are a broadcaster or evangelist, falling on deaf ears. A core belief for me is that great managers (not wrong or run-of-the-mill ones) and great leaders must be teachers, mentors and coaches, and that requires value-alignment between them and those they seek to manage and lead, at minimum with the idea and whatever it will take to execute it. In reading your original comment again Ben, I think you agree. For another concept we seem to agree on, is that great managers have a calling for teaching, mentoring, and coaching, for they are more concerned with their people than with their own ideas; they prefer an idea collaboratively built on a value-aligned foundation. Would that be correct to say?

You had some great stuff sandwiched in between those two sentences I quoted back at you yesterday. We disconnected because those two sentences created a context for me of value-disconnect between us, similar to a first and last impression someone in management for the wrong reasons will leave with their staff. You also disconnected with my readers Ben; before I read your comment myself, one of them called me thinking I might be traveling, leaving me a voicemail: “Hey Rosa, heads up, you have some spam on MWAC.”

However Ben, as I said before, I am eager to be wrong if you would like to have more dialog here with me. That is why I have devoted this time to my lengthy responses.

I also offer you my Talking Story blog as a place we can get to know each other a bit better on other dissections of management and leadership concepts, for this site is expressly written for those who have already read Managing with Aloha, and I say that top of every page: “You’ve read the book, now what’s next?” I don’t expect Talking Story readers to have read MWA first (or know me and my coaching fairly well), as I do here.

Talking Story is at this next link: I hope you will consider a visit?
http://www.sayleadershipcoaching.com/talkingstory

Thank you for coming back Ben. My aloha to you.
Rosa

[uphilldowndale]

I just wanted to say, what a simply beautiful tree

[Bennet Simonton]

Rosa,

Thanks for your thanks.

You wrote - "Before I logged off late last night, I read through both your original comment one more time, and my response, and I had planned to email you privately this morning within the possibility you had not written that at all, for I’d started to wonder if the comment had been done for you by some eager publicist or their interns given a social media/blog-assignment. In either event, your ideas didn’t go the distance with me."

I am guilty because I did write it. I don't have a publicist or intern or anyone else, only myself, a one person band.

I wrote it because in reading your post, I found lots of words about a beautiful tree and a very few words about managing people, but they were important words. I did not read other things on your website and I have not read your book.

Reading your words on managing people, I decided to impart some knowledge and see if it aroused any interest on the chance that I might find someone who needs help and wants to manage people better. Not wanting to impose too much, I decided to provide what I consider to be the most important kernel of wisdom about managing people, that of eschewing the top-down command and control approach to managing people. Trying for brevity, I provided only brief reasons why that is the right thing to do.

You said that "your ideas didn’t go the distance with me" and in view of that I would love to know why you believe that top-down is an acceptable approach to managing people. Of course, you also said "You had some great stuff sandwiched in between those two sentences I quoted back at you yesterday." so the might be the answer to my question.

So I'll apologize for my first and last sentences. The first was only an admission of my own ignorance about the main thrust of your blog and the last only an attempt to leave the door open to anyone who might want to know what "responding in a very respectful manner" really means, how precisely to do that. I will try to do better in the future.

You also said - "Ben, I teach and coach value-alignment. Thus I also responded as I did because I have learned that “sounds good” ideas can be purely the result of smartly calculated word-smithing." I agree, but I put emphasis on "can be" since I don't want to miss that rare occasion when "sounds good" has real substance underneath it if only I took the time to look. I am not saying to trust "sounds good" or in any way rely on it until proof is provided. Obama is certainly our latest example of "sounds good".

I agree whole-heartedly that values are the key to a very highly productive, creative, innovative and healthy workplace environment. But I believe that "alignment" was already done for us by our Creator and all that a manager need do is listen to and respond respectfully to employees to learn the truth of that and to team up with employees to make everything in the workplace meet the highest standard of every value.

I believe we all believe in the same good values (our Creator did this) and that their opposites are bad, but that we all have different standards based on our personal experiences. For example, if you have experienced a lot of love you may have a standard of 9 (10 being the highest) while I have a standard of 2 for love since I experienced very little love in my life. And so on for all values. That means that if we both view an example of love at a standard of 6, you disrespect it and I greatly respect it. It also means that my treatment of customers might not be up to par while yours is far better.

In view of that, I view the manager's job being more of teaming up with subordinates to help them be the very best they can be. That can only occur if employees become self-directed and self-controlled in accordance with high standards of all values. So the manager helps them to practice deciding what to do and how to do it using values realizing that this is not their normal approach to doing their work. Every manager's best people (rarely more than 5%) are self-directed and self-controlled so this is an approach to make everyone like the 5%.

Coach and mentor? I much prefer servant if we must put a name on it because coach/mentor has an authoritative ring to it. I prefer servant because the boss does not do the work that the company can sell to customers, only supports it. So I see the pyramid as being inverted.

The boss' responsibility is to provide support to employees in way of training, tools, discipline, direction (the best direction being almost none), parts, material, information, technical advice, documentation, planning, and others. And the quality of this support pretty well dictates the quality of workforce performance. The only accurate way to make the support be of the highest possible quality is to ask the people who live with it everyday, the boss' customers, how it can be improved and really listen/respond respectfully to what they say. This is exactly what must be done with any customer and if the boss does this well with the correct tone, then and only then will employees know how to treat their work, their customers, each other and their bosses.

I best shut up now. I will respect that your site is only meant for people who have read your book and I have not done that. If you would like to exchange books electronically, I would enjoy that. I have to warn you that mine is a bit cumbersome, a bit too much for most since it covers managing people from soup to nuts.

Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"

[Rosa Say]

Aloha uphilldowndale, thank you for coming by. Yes, the wiliwili is leafy and green when it is young, but as it grows older (as in the pictures here) it ages with a gnarled look to it. Looks are somewhat deceiving, for the branches and trunks of the trees are unbelievably light, even as it ages - more cork-like, and thus prized by canoe-makers for the 'ama (floaters) of the outrigger.

I have a wilwili photo set on Flickr that I continually am adding too if you would like to see it, for instance you might want to compare this to how the younger trees look: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosasay/sets/72157605113766258/

Again, mahalo nui for your visit.

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Ben, good morning.

No, I emphatically do NOT believe that top-down is an acceptable approach to managing people. On that we agree, and I had further offered: “great managers have a calling for teaching, mentoring, and coaching, for they are more concerned with their people than with their own ideas; they prefer an idea collaboratively built on a value-aligned foundation.”

We seem to have a different context (and thus connotations) for teaching, coaching and mentoring, and if I may, I’d like to put that loaded topic aside for now.

My own online version of “taking the time to look” for possibly hidden “real substance underneath” is what Talking Story is all about! Talking to the people you work with (all of them, those you manage, peers, partners, vendors, customers) and listening well for that collaboratively built organizational culture that will thrive —as will all the people within it, AND affected by it. I think of that as the responsibility of leadership.

And that said, I do not underestimate or de-value the need for assertive and confident leadership. I do not feel that the workplace can be an entirely democratic place either; then we go to just another extreme of top-down management, and one in which self-directed work teams can dwell when they struggle without good management or leadership. Key with me: Management matters. So does leadership.

Ben, we do agree that there are very humane concerns which caution us against the old top-down management style we inherited from the industrial age, one which unfortunately still proliferates. As a manager, leader, and businesswoman, I heartily agree with you that top-down management will also cause those poor misguided people at the “top” to miss a wealth of better opportunity and possibility that sleeps dormant within their people. A core belief in Managing with Aloha, is that they also miss some of the greatest joys in management, and that is why we hear so many middle managers and supervisors get discouraged, feeling the profession is just a rung on a ladder for them, and much too hard and unrewarding —which it need not be.

Management is a calling that has been extremely rewarding for me, and it has been an expression of my learning to give within that servant’s attitude you had mentioned (I call it the Ho‘ohana for management.)

To understand me a bit better within this context, and without the full merit of my book or much more lengthy reading here, I would point you to this one posting I have on this site that I refer to as “The Role of the Manager Reconstructed:”
http://www.sayleadershipcoaching.com/mwacoaching/2008/02/the-role-of-the.html

The full title is, “The Role of the Manager in Managing with Aloha: The case for a better way to work.” and within the article I assert that “What managers do today must change before anything else will.” It is a cornerstone in my Managing with Aloha philosophy.

As for our values, well, there is a LOT we can discuss and compare in what you have said about that in your last comment in regard to how my feelings align with yours and differ. That is the basis of this entire site, with 190 articles now in the archives. You need not go back to them all, but both our alignment and differences will reveal themselves eventually if you become one of my readers here!

I would say the same about my Talking Story blog Ben; that site is now 939 articles rich, covering many of the subjects we have briefly danced with in this conversation.

Welcome to the Ho‘ohana Community Ben, I look forward to more dialog as we move forward, now having taken “the time to look” with each other :) Ben, may I also ask you, how did you find me, and this posting?

[Bennet Simonton]

Thanks for your response, Rosa.

I found your site through google alerts. I use several keywords to give me daily alerts of sites using words pertaining to managing people and was alerted to your site that way.

I greatly concur that managing people can be personally very rewarding and satisfying. My subordinate managers loved to come to work, as did their employees.

I took a look at your article re the role of the manager.

You wrote - "Managers need to work in a strong partnership with those brilliant technicians, process organizers and operational conductors in the world, however they have their own critically important job to do, and they cannot be expected to do both of them."

I could not disagree more. Having been a practicing nuclear engineer who also managed a fairly large number of people, I and my subordinate managers had to serve both the technical and managerial functions and they are in no way incompatible or mutually exclusive. Those without the technical knowledge could not direct the operation and maintenance of nuclear reactor plants, nor could they do so effectively if they could not manage people extremely well. The same was true when I took responsibility for the operation and maintenance of commercial electric generating units and I cannot imagine that it isn't true for running a grocery store.

You also wrote - "There is this very basic, and very basically WRONG assumption here, that the people you hire already know all the who/ what/ when/ where/ why/ and how to do everything for you and your business before the first day they even started."

Fortunately, even in the very poorly managed places I have been that wasn't true. But where it is true, that belief will be very destructive of people and of results.

Most of your article hits the nail on the head in my humble opinion. People are good and want to do a good job.

As Mencius wrote in 400BC, “You Should Value People Most,
Yourself As Leader The Least.”

I wish you well in spreading the good word knowing that your advice will be valuable to all who avail themselves of it.

Best regards, Ben

[Rosa Say]

Again Ben, if we only look for the extreme in each other’s opinion we will continue to disagree at some level, for perhaps you would have felt better if I added one little word to that sentence you quoted;

“Managers need to work in a strong partnership with those brilliant technicians, process organizers and operational conductors in the world, however they have their own critically important job to do, and they cannot be expected to do both of them WELL.”

My point was that more often than not the emphasis is on the technical expertise versus the human components of great management.

I thank you for your good wishes and confidence in my coaching shared at the end of your last comment Ben, for I do intend to continue with sharing and helping as I can best serve others in doing so. My aloha to you as well,
Rosa