Managing with Aloha Coaching

To Rock ‘n Roll in Biz is to Fly in the Face of Convention

“I don’t have to do it that way!”

“That is 1000% correct, you don’t.”

This simple exchange was the magic of a lightbulb moment two nights ago: I wish I could have captured it with a camera! The woman who said that first sentence to me (I said the second one) said it as a statement of dawning realization; it was not a question. She was charged up, excited, and ready to Rock ‘n Roll.

This posting is about Flying in the Face of Convention, something that may initially sound brash and un-humility-like to you. Not at all, and I hope you’ll read on!

Managing with Aloha has given me the most incredible gifts

When people ask me, “Should I write a book?” my instinctive answer, the one I want to blurt out immediately, is “Oh yes, do! Absolutely!” simply because I am drawing on my own experience, and deep down, I sincerely do believe anyone can do what I have done. The answer that does get spoken is more cautious (and is usually in the form of me asking them more questions), because there is a lot of work that goes with that decision, and handling the aftermath, both when it is good and not so good, is a big part of it. The answer depends on why you want to write the book and what part it will play in your life; perhaps we’ll look at that in a future Sunday Mālama. (Sidebar: You already know my punch line to it, I am not keeping you in suspense: Would the work of it be Ho‘ohana work for you?)

This all comes to mind for me because of the immediate ‘afterglow effect’ we experienced after the presentation I gave recently, ‘we’ being both me and my audience. I love speaking, and my perfect audience size is one kept under about 60, for with smaller groups I don’t need a mic or to be on a riser, and I can get right in the middle of the group and get them to interact with me and with each other. The group is also small enough not to be intimidated by each other, and they will seize more opportunities to engage. Just as we bloggers can say the goodness is in the comments, the goodness for all of my presentations is often in the audience.

Now I do have to be the one who gets the show rolling, however give me an audience of small business people ready to break some rules and fly unfettered in the face of convention, and I am truly in my element. These are among the special gifts that Managing with Aloha has given me: My book has turned out to be the best business card I could have for getting me invitations to speak, but with the right groups of people; I’m not for everyone, and I realize that. What MWA does, is give me opportunities to meet people who are ready to rock and roll their world.

Rock and roll music gets played by the small and independent

Working Beyond Their Means

Ho‘ohanohano
“begin to think of
yourself as the loyal steward
of something much greater”
—from Steve Sherlock of our Ho‘ohana Community

Initially I had one of those routine, end-of-month bloggy type postings queued up and ready to go for today, but when I clicked in for a final check last night it seemed so trivial in light of the day’s “late breaking” news. I had just finished listening to the local Evening News coverage about the decision by Aloha Airlines to shut down their passenger operations and lay off 1,900 employees after their shift ended Monday, March 31st.

That’s today.

A 61-year old company, one which is an icon of interisland travel here in the islands, also connecting Hawaiian islanders to their Pacific neighbors, gives nearly two thousand employees less than 48 hours notice that they will be out of a job.

“In a news release Sunday, airline president and chief executive officer David Banmiller said the company did everything it could to find a buyer or financing, but ran out of time… Aloha filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy March 20, the second time in three years. Aloha blamed what it termed unfair competition from go! airlines, a subsidiary of Arizona-based Mesa Air Group Inc., and Banmiller stood by that on Sunday.

“Aloha Airlines was founded in 1946 to give Hawaii's people a choice in inter-island air transportation,” he said. “Unfortunately, unfair competition has succeeded in driving us out of business, bringing to an end a 61-year-old company with a proud legacy of serving millions of travelers in the true spirit of Aloha.” —Pacific Business News

What is wrong with this picture?

If you have been in Hawai‘i over the last week, this is episode number two of tragic job loss.

This past Monday, the 24th, Molokai Properties Ltd. said Monday it will shut down Molokai Ranch by the end of March. The closure will result in the laying off of 120 staff over the next two months. Operations being closed include the Molokai Lodge, Kaluakoi Golf Course, Kaupoa Beach Village, Maunaloa Tri-Plex theater and gas station, and cattle-rearing and maintenance. Read back over that list of operations, and think about Molokai as an island of only about 260 square miles. Molokai Ranch has said access to its 60,000 acre property, more than a third of the island, will be closed indefinitely. Maunaloa only has about 230 people, 50% of them under the age of 18 (2000 census figures); it is a town and a community which will cease to exist.

Photo of Aloha’s current in-flight magazine; seems it will be their last issue. [photo found at  www.spiritofaloha.com]

While the two stories differ quite a bit, both have something in common: Business models that just didn’t work. As I see it, broken business models are about as irresponsible and unethical as being in business can get.

In the case of Aloha Airlines, though I understand the extraordinary pressure exerted on all the airlines by rising fuel prices, Banmiller’s blame game on those fuel prices and “unfair competition” irks me to no end. He also stated;

“This is an incredibly dark day for Hawaii... Despite the groundswell of support from the community and our elected officials, we simply ran out of time to find a qualified buyer or secure continued financing for our passenger business. We had no choice but to take this action.”

I’m sorry; to say that you just “ran out of time” doesn’t cut it. This IS “an incredibly dark day for Hawai‘i” and a dark day for the credibility of smart, moral business practices.

My personal experience flying Aloha Airlines is a large part of my feelings; service levels on ‘Aloha’ Airlines were horrible. I fly interisland often enough to be in the highest level of frequent flyer clubs in both Aloha and Hawaiian Airlines; I would fly Aloha if, and only if, it was not possible for me to get a seat on Hawaiian – any seat, not a good one, or cheaper one. At a certain point of comparison between good service and inferior service, price gets irrelevant. As for go! Airlines, I have never flown with them; not once.

Broken business models, inferior customer service, and management which does little to nothing about both of those things is what causes businesses to fail. Tough competition and rising costs may accelerate your demise, but you can’t blame those two things for everything. It’s been tough for Hawaiian Airlines too, but their story has proceeded differently:

“Hawaiian, which had survived bankruptcy in the early 1990s, again sought bankruptcy protection in 2003 and emerged after trimming costs and reorganizing its debts in 2005. Since then, Hawaiian has been the stronger of the two, putting new planes into service, announcing plans to expand service to the Mainland and Asia and, most important, turning a profit even as fuel prices increased.” —Pacific Business News

Every year at about this time, fiscal seasonality in business (and the fact that the tax man cometh each April if you are a U.S. citizen) causes me to get on my Managing with Aloha soapbox about financial literacy. Because of my own experience with having to fix a badly broken business model, I can’t help thinking about Kuleana, the responsibility I feel businesses have to audit their business models, ensuring their financials are healthy enough for all the stakeholders of those businesses to thrive.

Survival is never quite enough. Asking your business partners and stakeholders to keep plugging away, working beyond their means, is inexcusable. Aloha claims they have been losing $5 million per month; perhaps their throwing in the towel should have happened much sooner. At the very least, saving the last few months of that operating cost may have taken care of more creditors, and made for a decent severance for those employees given less than 48 hours to say aloha to their jobs. For 1,900 employees, plus the many likely affected by the domino effect this causes (imagine half of the interisland terminals on every one of the major Hawaiian islands now being unstaffed and nearly vacant) this is an extremely tough lesson to learn about the wisdom of working for profit versus a paycheck.

Today, just one day from our MWAC April 1 shift to Mālama, the value of caring and stewardship, our local business news saddens me greatly. My heart goes out to the employees who have lost their jobs, and to their families. I feel for the ripple effects there will surely be: A company of 3,500+ employees operating over six decades to connect all the Hawaiian islands with each other and their neighbors over the Pacific makes an impact and leaves quite a mark on our business, civic, and social landscape.

It is a sad day indeed. I would have loved to see Aloha Airlines live up to its name fully, working and managing with aloha, and all the intellectual honesty aloha demands.

From our January Archives: Get Pono Integrity for your Business Model.

See a short video clip on Aloha Airlines History, and more local news coverage, at KGMB9

 

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From Pacific Business News:
(Image of 1956 logo from Wikipedia)

Founded as Trans-Pacific Airlines, the company started with a war-surplus DC-3 that offered charter flights from Honolulu to Maui and Hilo. Nicknamed "the Aloha Airline," Trans-Pacific officially changed its name to Aloha Airlines in 1958.

The airline was started out of frustration by Honolulu businessman Ruddy Tongg, a Chinese-American who was tired of seeing Hawaii residents treated as second-class citizens while tourists -- mostly white -- were given favored status. Tongg made a point to hire local residents and to promote it as the friendliest for inter-island travel.

Mahalo for your Mana‘o on Pono

Mahalo, thank you so much, to those in our Ho‘ohana Community who added their Mana‘o (thoughts, beliefs, convictions) and Aloha conversation with comments and trackbacks this month!

Our study on Pono has been all the richer because of you.

Reg Adkins, of Elemental Truths

Dean Boyer, of Teaching with Aloha

David Zinger, of Employee Engagement: Results That Matter

Jonathan Bailey, of Plagiarism Today

Joanna Young, of Confident Writing

Jay Ehret, of The Marketing Spot: Small Business Marketing

April Groves, of My Beautiful Chaos

Rocky Noe, of Hillbilly PhD

Jason Haley, of JasonHaley.com

balanced stones at the Lake Constance in Germany on Flickr by hickoree

Pono in a 5-Beat Rhythm

Wow, just writing the title for this month's 5-Beat Rhythm recap gives me pause: To have a habitual rhythm based on the balance, rightness, integrity and contentment of Pono would be such a profound gift.

Yes, would be. I am still working on Pono too!

However the wonderful thing is that the more you work on it, the closer you get to it.

It is time to debrief your month: How did Pono translate into balance-conducive, right-making actions for you? How are you committing to keeping your Pono rhythm going, sustaining your newfound contentment?

• Perhaps you decided that you will Say No to Resolutions going forward, and start to Choose your Values Instead, using the new Resource Page we created.

• Perhaps you decided to join in with our mantra creators, using Balance + Rightness + Integrity = Contentment as one of our HCers did, when he asked: Is Pono where Integrity goes? I heard back that their talk stories this month have gone really well.

• Perhaps Pono has been more personal for you, and you have embarked on that truth-telling of personal integrity we spoke of as a more diligent self-questioning. That question we proposed, Are these circumstances really are out of my control or not? can be a difficult one to answer, but in the process you can greatly enlarge the circle of influence you felt you had.

The reward is so magnificent: ...in that goodness within us we feed and nurture — we always emerge through that "light at the end of the tunnel." To be content, your heart cannot ache, your mindfulness cannot be dismissed, your gut intuition cannot be dishonored, and your soul cannot be kept restless, all without what we usually refer to as "peace of mind."

•  Perhaps Dean drew you in to Teaching with Aloha, when he commented and told us about the "heart hazard" he calls the Integrity Assault. You would have found the wonderful series he has been doing on Attitude, thoughtfully exploring the obstacles a Pono Attitude can encounter with discouragement, change, and problems.

• Perhaps you were able to notice a few things you hadn't taken notice of before, like how positive thinking is such A Perfect Pono Partner, and how much your own biology helps in such a natural way.

• Will you continue to use this checklist?: Pono is A Value you can See. If so, a suggestion: It works well with another partnership, that of value alignment as described in Pono the Judge.

• Did you come to Pono with your self-fulfilling prophecies with balance? "Putting balance in the proper perspective may be the biggest gift we can give ourselves (and to the people who put up with us)."

• Perhaps Getting Great Attitude stirred some thoughts for you: What actions can you take in shaping a work environment that everyone loves arriving at each day, proud and pleased to be associated with you?

• In Sunday Mālama, we have shared a few stories, and spoken of how it feels Pono - right for people - when they perceive they are not treated differently, and that they are honored for their current status whether insiders or outsiders. You may have seen how getting some of these inequities corrected can be a huge business advantage for you too... have you arrived at some new strategies?

Personally, my Pono keepers for this month (besides these obvious ones) were these three, and I will likely write of them in much more detail as 2008 continues, so briefly for now:

1. I must arrive at Pono-balance-for-me with copyright, and other intellectual property issues. This discussion gave me some very deep thinking this month, and I am so thrilled to have made a new friend in Jonathan Bailey. Coincidentally, shortly after our discussion I was asked to sign a "Proprietary Information Agreement" for a leadership course I will be taking soon, and whereas I wouldn't have given it a second thought before, now I wondered how these kinds of documents are received by people. Much to consider with this for me: Stay tuned!
2. The consulting part of my business has dramatically taken off in a way I had not anticipated, but am truly LOVING: People want help in regard to reinventing their business models. Many once-confident professionals are struggling with making sense of today's generational-shifting workplaces, and as I shared in this posting, Pono is a huge, huge help in making some tough (and creatively exciting) decisions while keeping specific stakeholders in mind: Get Pono Integrity for your Business Model. I so love the world of business, and how it challenges us!
3. And third, to keep my personal Pono balance within Ma‘alahi: I will continue to be "a Good Stopper." Kinda sorta related to this, I continue to study this reframing of Self-Esteem as Self-Mastery too. [That last link is a Joyful Jubilant Learning posting; you didn't miss it here.]

When our month had started, I had written,

You can be sure that we will move on to another value of the month in February, however I suspect that Pono will stay with us too, perhaps for this whole year through. There is so much here, and it is time.

There sure is, and indeed, Pono will stay with us. Feels right, doesn't it?

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Mahalo for taking this Pono study with us this month!

We will keep all the articles indexed here for you, so you can quickly grab more encouragement on your Pono journey.

You can revisit The 5-Beat Rhythm here: Managing with Aloha Coaching in A 5-Beat Rhythm.

Another posting that may be a good filter for you when thinking about your The 5-Beat Rhythm is this one: The MWA Action Sequence: Reading, Talking, Doing.

Yoga Girl on Flickr by prashant_zi

A Pono Attitude will Determine a Pono Outcome

Pono is all about attitude, and how attitude always comes before outcome. Good attitude, good prospects, good outcome. As a manager, I know that attitude is a word, a wish, you are very familiar with. Attitude is that seemingly intangible, frustratingly elusive thing we wish to be found safe within all of our employees, or more concisely, a positive attitude, and an eager and optimistic outlook.
~ from Managing with Aloha

Getting Great Attitude

Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.
~Colleen C. Barrett

Those of us who have been charged with hiring others, have very likely been taught to “look for someone with a great attitude; you can train them in all the skills they’ll need.”

Good advice, but just the beginning.

Here’s something pretty straight-forward to consider; attitude is a result of something. If a prospective candidate comes to you with a great attitude, ready to take on the world (and your version of it) they’ve come from a situation which gave them a positive, enthusiastic, optimistic outlook. You are now the lucky recipient of that bountiful result.

However a great attitude is a fragile thing. It’s a mental state that can change quickly and fairly easily. The question now becomes if the job you hire them into will sustain that person’s morale as that great attitude you perceive they have, or not.

• Do you offer them a working situation which will keep them in that sunny disposition they came to you with, or are dark clouds on the horizon?

• Do you offer them a role in which you will employ all the strengths they come to you with, using their talents every day in a manner which unleashes the creativity of personal growth and success?

• Do you offer them an organizational culture where the way of work is fun? Will it fill them with vibrant energy, and will it surround them with people they’ll admire and enjoy being with?

• Do you offer them work which they will always feel is important and worthwhile, and thus working at it makes them feel important and worthy? Will what they do for you count for something meaningful?

• Do you offer them a future-forward vision which will inspire them to learn more and be more, continually striving for what could be, a vision which banishes apathy and complacency?

Great workplace environments are those which are the catalysts of great attitude because they are filled to the brim with hope and promise. They cradle us with a safe place to react as we instinctively or emotionally need to, just to get stuff out and dispensed with, and THEN they provide a framework in which we’ll do the next thing. Is the ‘next thing’ the best possible alternative, one imbued with optimism?

We always have a choice between the positive and negative, and our workplaces can create an abundance of positive choices and a scarcity of negative ones. If most of the choices available to us are overwhelmingly positive they fill us with enthusiasm. We trust that more likely than not, a great result will follow, and we step forward with a great attitude.

You might think it a lot of responsibility to shape those kinds of workplaces, and yes, I’d have to agree that it is. However you’ll be creating something, so why not that?

Great attitude can deliver a lot of good things. I don’t think that’s something I need to prove to you; just count up the examples you’ve experienced first hand. Go for the gusto and create a working environment which makes more good happen.

I do agree that it’s far better to start with someone who already has a great attitude, one they’ve packed up and brought to work with them. They have experienced the happiness it brings to their lives, and they will have a desire to keep that fiery joy burning strong and sure. Just remember this; that attitude is not guaranteed to last forever unless you do what it takes to make sure it does.

“I learned early in life that if you want people to love you, you gotta make sure you love them back.”
~George Foreman

Truer words were never spoken.

Photo: Day One on Flickr by petite corneille

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Thank you for reading! Click that orange RSS button to the left to subscribe.

If you have recently joined us on Managing with Aloha Coaching, you may want to skim a few of our indexes which cover these Key Concepts within an Aloha-managed workplace:

• The 'Ohana in Business, best form for a business model.
• Sense of Place, for both personal grounding and community connection.
• Strengths Management, to capitalize on what you are good at, and minimize where you may falter.
• The Unlimited Capacity of Palena ‘ole, helping us to dwell in abundance and not scarcity.
• Value Alignment, which is the core discipline of our Value your Month, Value your Life monthly study and habit-building.
• and our MWA3P Productivity Coaching, where we strive to be accomplished, and not merely ‘busy.’
• Also, do take a look at The Role of the Manager, found here, and where we believe the workplace reconstruction must begin.

Sunday Mālama: Do you have a Stop Doing List?

Life is full isn't it.

Living a life is full of all sorts of stuff, and we human beings are great collectors of that stuff, carrying so many inconsequential quirks, habits, and to-do listings around with us. We collect, and we create busyness with such predictable repetition. How much of what is on our lists do we really need to attend to? How much information gluttony do we truly need to plump our security blankets of just-in-case with?

Probably way less than we are accustomed to dealing with.

However checking things off our lists feels terrific, doesn't it, even when those things we check off are minor and don't really count for much. Those little check marks make us feel good, smart, diligent, and worthy, and they color our efforts as valuable work. We sure love our rose-colored glasses.

Balance is on my mind for this, our final Sunday Mālama for January, the month we have dedicated to the value of Pono, rightness and balance. When I think of balance these days, self-inflicted busyness is what I hunt for most within my own habits: What am I patting myself on the back for finishing, when I really should have been giving my attention to something else in the first place?

When I think back on all I have learned recently, most of which has been faithfully chronicled in our Rapid Fire Learning feature each month on Joyful Jubilant Learning, there is one simple learning that I am most grateful for. I also feel a bit foolish that I didn't learn to do it years and years ago, however I dismiss those feelings quickly because I am so thankful that I know it now. My simple learning was to start a Stop Doing List, first giving it to myself on my birthday last year.

I will give myself the congratulatory check mark when I finish something that really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. No harm done. However now it will also go on my Stop Doing List too.

When I began my list last April I had 7 items on my list. Now there are 62! What a reality check of inconsequential busyness.

Ironically I don't feel bad about wasting any effort on those 62 things though; they have come to have a "been there, done that" quality to them, sort of like closing a book on chapters you have already read. My entries have gotten pretty short too: I just write down what I am stopping and don't bother writing down why. When I look back over the list I will usually remember why, or just trust that I had a good reason at the time, and shouldn't second-guess myself now. It's a kind of Pono contentment.

There is one entry that sums up all 62 in a way, and it's this one:

I will stop telling people I am busy: Busyness is a self-inflicted situation I can learn to control better. Instead, I will tell them life is good, for it is.

I have heard the productivity advice with stopping that which isn't really important before; way back to Stephen Covey, those What Matters Most quadrants, and his Put First Things First coaching in the early 1990s:

"Good scheduling creates high-leverage activities - activities that create maximum value for our effort."

However it was always about making the right choices versus the physical discarding of the wrong ones: Writing down my discards seems to be where the magic has been. The simple logging of what I will no longer do is a triumphant decision with making a good choice too. Funny how it works, and I'm loving that it does.

Becoming a "Good Stopper" has been a great goal for me.

Try it: Liberate yourself from the busyness which may be dragging you down, and take a few minutes with Sunday Mālama to write down a few things you will simply stop doing. I can't remember where I read this, but it made me smile then, and now as I recall it:

"I decided I would stop making my bed every single morning, and only do it when I needed to use my bed as that temporary tabletop that can come in handy sometimes... when you really think about it, making the bed you sleep in every night is sort of like tying your shoes after you take them off..."

Flickr photo by shwe

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Mahalo for reading.

If you are new to MWAC, Sunday Mālama is when we mix it up here. I may offer a tangent to our current value of the month (for January: Pono and the Why of Right), or write about something completely different.

My very first Sunday Mālama was this one: A Beginning.

Get Pono Integrity for your Business Model

When people ask me how I like my work I answer, "I love it; I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet. It is the greatest thing that people pay me for who I am and what I do in sharing the MWA mission, where essentially, I pay my bills and finance my life with joy."

My Pono contentment explains a lot of why I can say that now, for while I have always figured out a way to enjoy the work I did, up until I had my own business I didn't have the complete freedom to create my business model as the most Pono way (i.e. the most right way) to achieve a Business Plan.

One of the business concepts I teach managers is the difference I see between a business PLAN and a business MODEL. We use Language of Intention: Thereafter, our vocabulary gets more specific, and we choose the right word when talking about them.

Consider the different stakeholders a company can have: Owners, trustees or stockholders, board members, angel investors, partners, employees, customers, vendors, contractors, and the community, and then consider what they are most interested in because of their relationship to that company.

• The Business PLAN usually ends up to be more about strategy and numbers, and is written for banks, owners, and board members - think Pro Forma and all the research and trend analysis that leads to the business plan of what a company will be about. In Say Leadership Coaching, we leave business planning to our clients and their particular industry expertise, though we strongly encourage giving staff the financial literacy they need to read the Business Plan and understand it.

• The Business MODEL is what your employees, your customers, and the community is usually much more interested in - the vision/ mission/ values part of how you make that Business Plan happen. The business model is about execution and delivery, and the choices you make along the way. There is still a lot of strategy and decision-making involved, and there is much more emotion: Your business model makes room for individual work passions, or it ends their possibility. Company morale, spirit, and reputation will make it or break it on the wisdom of the Business Model.

The Managing with Aloha work philosophy is a business model proven to work exceptionally well for every business plan I have encountered, because it can influence the business plan as well. As I wrote in my book five years ago, while at the Hualalai Resort I felt I had gotten as close as I could ever get to working for another employer where business plan and business model matched up. However the day did come where the business plan and business model no longer were completely aligned within my viewpoint, and understanding it was no longer to be (and that I would not be able to bring certain decisions into my circle of influence), I moved on. Pono had started to slip away for me.

However, having had that sweet taste of Pono integrity in business, I wanted to get it back, and my own company was born. At SLC, we refer to Ho'ohana, one's passion for worthwhile work as the North Star of the business model, and so I started with mine at the time:

~ page 32 ~ I love to teach, and in particular I love coaching managers. I love the science of business and the democracy of free enterprise, where ultimately the customer rules. I love reading, I love the written word and I love the study of how language can influence relationships between people. I love the new global possibilities of networking. I love the notion that we can choose our own destiny and create it. I get passionate about all these things, and by indulging my passions I gave life to Managing with Aloha.

In my own value system, ignorance is not bliss in business. I have a passion for learning about all of it. Once I do, the business plan and the business model have to match up - the business model has to be realistic, and it can't wring the blood, sweat and tears out of people because it is incomplete, unachievable, or just plan insensitive to the human element. I believe that business models create movers and shakers who can make better results happen; they can make better lives happen.

I love teaching managers how to construct great business models. It is in those workshops that I see the light of hope turn on for them, and that light is a Pono beacon of possibility getting born.

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If this discussion intrigued you, you may also want to review:

• Is Pono where Integrity goes?
• How good do you feel about working in business today?
• 4 Things Managers Can Do to Bring Managing with Aloha to their Company Culture.

Pono the Judge

"Pono, in comparison is demanding. Expectant. Pono is the ultimate test of value alignment. Brutally black and white at times, and without compromise. That's the way integrity and rightness is."
~ Pono and the Why of Right

How do you know when something is right to you or not?

You just know, don't you.

I think that sense of just knowing is your value sense of Pono. Pono is our personal judge and jury, ever wise, and never hesitating to pass judgment on us pretty quickly - and very decisively.

When you contemplate different courses of action, and if you ask yourself, "Will this be the Pono choice?" the voice of your values collectively answer you. That rallying together of all your values into a decision that is right for you, is potent stuff. It strikes a match that seems to fire up all your other senses.

~ Aloha, your sense unconditional love for others, will assure you have not dismissed anyone in selfishness.

~ 'Ike loa, your sense which gathers knowledge and wisdom, will speak into any lack of your options.

~ Kuleana, your sense of personal responsibility, will speak into what you fulfill, and what you shirk.

~ Ha'aha'a, your sense of pride and humility, will speak into your integrity with the decision you choose.

~ Ho'ohanohano, your sense of respect and dignity, will speak into the way you execute your decision.

~ Ho'ohana, your sense of meaningful work, will speak into your true, honest, pure intention.

I could continue to list them all.

Ironically, this high standard for judge and jury is where your contentment will ultimately come from though, isn't it. Meet those Pono standards and your confusion and questioning, your concerns and worry, your stress and anxiety all melt away like magic.

We learn from Pono, just as we learn from all judges who time after time prove their wisdom. Isn't it comforting to know that you have Pono the Judge living in you too?

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Aloha! If you are just joining us, our value of the month is Pono, the Hawaiian value of balance and rightness. These have been our January discussions so far:

1. Pono and the Why of Right
2. Pono and our 5 Beat Rhythm: A Beat 1 Example on Decision Management
3. Say No to Resolutions: Choose your Values instead
4. Is Pono where Integrity goes?
5. Perfect Pono Partner: Positive Thinking
6. Balance? What Balance?
7. Pono is a Value you can See

Pono is A Value you can See

We think of most values as quite intangible. For the most part, we understand them and can describe them, but it can be difficult to think of them in a very sensory way. Responsibility (Kuleana) and generosity (Lokomaika'i) for example, are not values that we associate with things we see, can touch or taste, though we certainly feel their effects, and can hear them in what people might say.

Pono, the value of balance and rightness, is different for me. I do think I can see it in people quite clearly. It is a relaxed ease and comfort, a serenity that pervades their being. Pono is a balance where you don't really have to work on maintaining it, for it just is. When things are Pono they aren't contrived, they are right.

I have a checklist for Pono in Managing with Aloha, one where you learn to recognize it in other people by looking for the signs of their contentment. In the three years the book has now been in print I have had dozens of managers tell me that it is one of their favorite tools I offer them, for when they read the seems-so-simple list it can trigger them into noticing certain influences which affect their staff, both good and bad, that they might otherwise miss. From Managing with Aloha:

Let me bring you back to the word contentment, and away from self-analysis for a moment. Take notice of your staff, your peers, your leadership team and your family, and ask yourself if Pono and the feeling of contentment is the image you see. It should be familiar and recognizable for you. Do you notice that they:

• Have personal control of their lives, easily accepting responsibility?
• Are involved in something meaningful outside of work?
• Are committed to a goal?
• Live within their passion?
• Are healthy, and their lifestyle contributes to their health?
• Don’t go it alone; they actively seek the company of others?
• Have a sense of humor, especially with their own blunders?
• Have values that nurture their soul and their spirit?
• Can openly share all these things and talk about them?

You will find that those who score high on this checklist have a great attitude about things in general. They are optimists, and very happily so, feeling very hopeful about what may lie ahead. They are realistic but involved, and engage in life as willing and active participants. They want to be right in the middle of it.

That's a great way for others to think about you, don't you think?

I know a little about that book; my name is Rosa.

Two days ago I caught a posting at Leo Babauta's Zen Habits, and posted this question on Ho'ohana Aloha, my tumble log: Is he foolish, or is he brilliant?

“I release my copyright on this content.

From now on, there is no need to email me for permission. Use it however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK. :)”

~ Leo Babauta writes Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal My Content today… fascinating.

Since then, I've continued to follow the discussion at Zen Habits, and also at The Simple Dollar, where Trent Hamm followed suit. I am fascinated by the reactions they are getting.

My first thought was, "I hope they realize exactly what they are doing," for I surely would like to know more fact versus fiction about the differences involved between what Leo calls "open source blogging" and a statement of public domain, in comparison to the copyright protection (which I have for my book), and the Creative Commons Licensing I've opted for on all my online publishing done via Ho'ohana Publishing (including here, at Managing with Aloha Coaching).

As an author, I can tell you that even if you have it, copyright protection still won't stop the pirating and plagiarism and such that happens. Because of how small Hawai'i is, I see it happening all the time right here in my own back yard. My book is much better known than my face is...

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It would be yet another 45-minute plane right for me to O'ahu. On average, I take them two or three times a month, and have done so for the past five years now, so I have a knack for knowing almost exactly how much reading I'll need to bring with me to pass the time.

I'm not that unusual in the Hawai'i business community, and I'll often be sitting next to another frequent commuter who has similar road-warrior habits. We exchange some pleasantries, and then spend most of the flight in silence, reading whatever we brought with us.

I had the aisle seat on this particular flight, and since I got there first I waited for whoever had the window seat to arrive before pulling the work binder I'd brought out of my carry-on bag. Turns out to be a young man whom I guess to be in his late teens or early twenties, perhaps a college student. Turns out I'm right.

He has a backpack with him, and as soon as he sits down and buckles in, he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a fairly thick sheaf of papers held together with a large binder clip. I can see that he's studying it like you would a textbook: A lot of it is already highlighted, and he goes straight to a section he was obviously reading in the terminal before we boarded, for he then reaches behind his ear for the thin yellow highlighter he'd tucked there, and methodically finishes his review of the paragraph he was on, coloring a few more lines.

He is highlighting a completely xeroxed copy of my book, Managing with Aloha.

I cannot resist, and say, "That's a lot of yellow. Must be kinda interesting."

He looks at me as if he only now realized I was sitting there, and says, "Yeah, it's for school, and it turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be. I like it."

"What's it about?"

"It's a book called Managing with Aloha, about Hawaiian values and learning to use 'em at work. It's required for one of my hospitality management classes, and then my boss suggested we read it for our internship too, so I'm killing two birds with one stone."

"Seems like you went through a lot of trouble copying it like that - is that so you can keep the book clean and not highlight it?"

"No. Since we all had to have it, one of the guys in the same internship program made a bunch of copies for us cause he works graveyard shift right now. He sold it to everyone for just five bucks apiece."

"Oh. Well, looks like you're almost done with it. Do you have to do a report or something?"

"Yeah, an analysis kinda thing, on what values we think apply most to the internships we have now, and which will probably be more useful later."

By this time we're in the air, but still with a good 30 minutes of flight ahead of us, and so I ask him, "You want to practice on me? I know a little about that book; my name is Rosa."

-----

Poor guy went pale at first, but I have to say that he recovered quickly with the biggest, most genuine smile you have ever seen. What else are you going to do trapped in a window seat hundreds of miles up in the air over the Pacific Ocean?

For the next thirty minutes, Alex gave me one of the most honest, complete, in-person reviews I have ever gotten for Managing with Aloha. Guess he figured he owed me. He even showed me what he highlighted as important, and what he felt really wouldn't matter to him at all. You gotta love the confident wisdom of a 21-year old college undergraduate in a part-time hotel internship.

I enjoyed our conversation so much once we got into it, that Alex even got me to draw a visual for him on a back page of his xerox copy, but no, I didn't autograph it (and he had the good sense not to ask me to.)

As we landed, Alex said that he wanted to buy a copy of my book now that he had met and talked to me, but I told him not to bother if it was for the wrong reason.

-----

Though seeing the whole book was definitely a first for me, that wasn't the first time I saw xeroxed pages of my book, and I know it won't be the last. Sadly, I have long lost count of the number of times I have read something on the web, finding it sounded exactly like me (because I wrote it) without any attribution at all.

I'll never bother with hunting down the guy who made Alex the xerox for the five bucks (somehow, I'm pretty sure that Alex has taken care of that for me). But I have emailed people who have misrepresented my work in some screwed-up context, and I will continue to do so.

After thinking about this in the past two days, I have decided that for the most part, I don't agree with Leo and Trent. As a business woman, I believe in much of the good, not-so-common sense that goes with basic economics and free enterprise, similar to this comment offered:

The writers of the U.S. Constitution actually established copyright for a reason: to allow those who create creative work to profit from it, in order to *encourage* the creation of such work. Think about how that works: because I can copyright and thereby exclusively profit from my work (for a period of time), it is more likely that I will be willing and economically able to create.

I stipulate that the abuse of copyright is now frequent, and the system needs correction. But to correct is very different from indiscriminately abandoning the system.
~ Jacque Harper commenting at Zen Habits

However most of all, lessening the dignity of someone's work, stealing and flagrant plagiarism are not included in the Aloha values I prefer to talk about, values like Pono: Rightness, ethical behavior, and integrity.

Open Source Blogging, okay. Stealing, no.

Just because you can do something, and just because good-intentioned guys like Leo and Trent give you permission, it doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean you should.

For me, it's a values thing.

Flickr photo by laihiu