Managing with Aloha Coaching

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.

Providence Radar-Blips our ‘Community Ecosystem’

In the beginning of the month I mentioned “Providence” via a W.H. Murray quote. It’s a quote I like living with in the way that I will nalu it as things come my way. To ‘nalu it’ is to go with the flow as opposed to down a rabbit trail… subtle but distinctive difference.

I usually think of Providence as a kind of filtering versus a real cosmic occurrence, though the cosmic stuff can happen at times! Some call it serendipity; I think it’s the filtering of how your personal radar will pick up and notice certain things, whereas before the filter was in place you wouldn’t have.

Such was this story I read in Hana Hou!, the in-flight magazine of Hawaiian Airlines yesterday; it’s called Little Crop of Horrors, and written by Paul Wood (one of my favorite local journalist/authors) about pitcher plants… “In the wilds of Puna [which is a 2-3 hour drive from where I live] Sam Estes is breeding a carnivorous jungle.”

Paul describes another kind of ecosystem in the most ‘delicious’ way (pun intended, as you will read…) and I offer it just to have some fun with the metaphor, though it might be pretty thought-provoking matched to yesterday’s posting after a beer or two…

“Here’s what it’s like to be a fly in Puna who happens to land on one of Sam Estes’ pitcher plants: You come down onto a circular landing pad —the lid of the pitcher— and you notice a tasty nectar around the edges. Slurping up the nectar, you crawl around the edge of the lid to its underneath, which is juicy and dripping with the stuff. The nectar has a narcotic quality that gets you all loopy. Suddenly you are grooving to Fly and the Family Stone.”

“Then you lose your grip and fall. You land on the pitcher cup’s brim, struggling for footing in a curved valley between steep walls. Your last chance for survival is to get over the brim and get the hell out of there. You scramble. But the brim is coated with gooey wax that eludes your grip and you slip. You clutch onto the inside wall of the cup, but this is lined with a different kind of wax, one that breaks away as you stick to it. Helpless, you fall into the pit.”

“In human scale, this is like falling into a 500-foot-deep well. At the bottom is a lake of peptic enzymes. As you slowly drown, you notice other creatures that have learned to live down here —mosquito larvae, for example, and certain ants that dive into the water to catch those larvae as food for the colony. It’s a bug-eat-bug world down here, an entire ecosystem, and the pitcher plant itself, with its hundreds of individual pitchers strung along its twisting vine, is a kind of god.”
—Paul Wood, Little Crop of Horrors, Hana Hou! Magazine February/March 2008

If you are going, “Huh?” Yesterday’s posting was: Sense of Place on the Internet: A Brand New Community Ecosystem. You might have fun with the metaphor too :)

They are kinda pretty...

Hana Hou! is sold at newsstands and in bookstores, thus the online archives are purposely delayed an issue or two, but this story is already posted! They do an excellent job, and I highly recommend browsing their archives, or getting a subscription for the stunning photography they showcase.

These pitcher plant photos were found on Flickr by robstephaustralia, by terrorchid, and by jennybach.

Sense of Place on the Internet: A Brand New Community Ecosystem

Are you in?

If you feel you belong to an internet community, or have been feeding off the Mea Ho‘okipa there, I think it is time to re-think your old thoughts about lurking and protecting your privacy:

Say thank you by granting some trust,
stepping into the community sandbox,
and acting like you belong there.
Let people know you are reading,
and may be ready to contribute in some way.

Collaboration and social synergy just doesn’t happen all that well with shadows in the dark. A true community ecosystem needs you to be “all in” and not just hanging around in the parking lot.

“There really aren’t many secrets to how things work in social media. There are skills to learn, and then there are human traits to re-learn. And yet, when people jump into this space and try to get results for their efforts, they’re sometimes surprised and frustrated. Sometimes, when we’re rushed, we forget the “nice” parts of things, and yet, in a community ecosystem, that’s what will drive your results.”
—Chris Brogan: The Community Ecosystem

I love what Chris has written.

“There are skills to learn, and then there are human traits to re-learn.”
Niceties that come with being a good guest, and welcomed visitor.

It got me thinking about Sense of Place, and how our cyber community spaces constantly challenge us:

• Can we get as ‘grounded’ and place-connected ONline as we do OFFline?
• Just how close can our emotional connections with people globally, get us to those physical sensory connections we have with the places we actually feel under our feet?

Now we could get all idealistic about this, however an overly-generous inclusivity and profession of love for our fellow man would be kind of a cop-out to the discussion. Lets dig in and really think about this.

Kākou Conversations are about what CAN be done

Kākou

All of us. We are in this together.
Learn to speak the language of we.

Do not for a moment think I have been off on a tangent with my two recent postings here about our stewardship of sense of place, and of the environment.

My Kākou focus this month was to be on Kākou Communication, and the reason I feel the “Language of We” is so powerful: Kākou conversations are about what CAN be done. They are NOT about hand-wringing, or any such feelings of helplessness.

Yesterday, I quoted a small snippet of a speech done by James Koshiba, a Hawai‘i “social entrepreneur” I greatly admire. I was able to find a link to the full context of James’ speech, and today I’d like to share another excerpt with you, one which truly illustrates this idea of what a “Kākou Conversation” can be.

Kanu Hawai‘i began over two years ago as an informal conversation among about 50 young professionals in their 20s and 30s. And the conversation really revolved around two questions. One question was, What is it that we love about Hawai‘i? What is it that makes us want to live here, what is it that has led us to decide to put down roots in the islands? And the second was, What are the things that troubles us most about the way the islands are headed? What are the things we worry about for ourselves, for our children, and our children's children?

Those 50 people had a conversation that lasted over the course of several weekends, and developed a short inventory of things that answer those two questions: What do we love, what do we worry about. And as it turns out, those things were very familiar things. We love the environment here, we love the culture, we love the sense of community; we worry about an economy where it's hard to find living-wage careers, we worry about the environment and the culture, which we sensed were under threat in many ways. As it turned out, these were the same things that had been discussed for the last 30 years in Hawai‘i. They showed up repeatedly in community plans, in vision statements and government policies.

So one of the things we had to ask ourselves at the conclusion of this conversation was: Why hasn't more changed? If these are some of the same issues that have repeatedly showed up over the course of the last several decades, why hasn't more happened?

And we scratched our heads and we had no answer to that. As folks, just ordinary folks with not a lot of influence or power, we said, "What can we do a little bit differently to work on these really daunting issues?" What we decided was that in the absence of good answers, we would just go around the room, all 50 of us, and make one small commitment to some action in our personal lives to address these giant issues. We boiled them down to very bite-size pieces. So for instance, the steps might be something as small as taking a two-minute shorter shower at home, or trading in your car for a more fuel-efficient vehicle, or spending your money responsibly at a business that you think does business in an island-style way.

Those seem like really small steps, but shortly after committing to those things, we tallied up the impact of those actions. It turned out that 50 people each deciding to live their lives that way had a significant impact. For 50 people, a two-minute shorter shower ended up saving nearly half a million gallons of water a year. There was nearly a million dollars worth of discretionary purchasing power that we could direct to companies we thought lived by island values. And if we each recycle paper, plastic and glass at home, almost 15 tons of waste will be diverted from the landfill every year.

All things that we worried about, and all things that we could take small steps in our personal life to address. The lesson we took away from this was that small steps can have a significant impact, and if you start with yourself, it puts you in a much better position to start talking to others about the change you think should be made.

Here is a link to James’ speech in full: It is excellent.

Reflect: What conversations have you had lately, that you sense you will be able to look back on as James did with this one?

Imua (Go forward): What conversations can you initiate with the intention of them becoming a Kākou Conversation, creating the power of We?

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Here are three related postings:

• On the power of questions: Ask “Why?” Five Times.

• On revering conversation: Conversation is THE Tool for learning Kākou.

• On the full definition of Kākou: Communicating with the Language of We.

A Side Note: James Koshiba is one who could be called an Echo Boomer (he was born a few years earlier). As Greg Balanko-Dickson recently wrote: Who are Echo Boomers? They are the children of the baby boom and are known as Generation Y, the Echo Boomers, or the Millennials (choose your favorite label). They were born between 1977 and 2002. They are increasingly becoming known more and more as the Entrepreneurial or “E” Generation. ... and boy, do we underestimate them! I think James is one of their stars.

The Environment and Managing with Aloha

Leo Babauta wrote, “When I sat down to write my Blog Action Day post, I tried to figure out what the “environment” has to do with some of the main themes of Zen Habits: simplicity, frugality, health and fitness, happiness. In what way are these ideas related to the environment?”

I thought this was a great idea. 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?

Aloha: Aloha means we look for the beauty in people, seeking to connect with their inner spirit, getting it to come out and play with us, to be with us. How does this help the environment? In so many ways! It keeps us with people, learning to engage with each other with a greater fascination, instead of the more materialistic pursuits which add more clutter and waste, filling our landfills with the temporary diversions we soon tire of. Aloha on the other hand, is timeless and endlessly intriguing.

Aloha keeps giving and giving back: You could say that Aloha is the star recycler.

Values: In Managing with Aloha I offer you nineteen to start with, however you can look to your own heart, mind and soul to come up with the list toppers which create your true convictions (your mana‘o). We have a little of each value which appeals to us, and the entire list would be quite lengthy (there are 42 listed on a worksheet I use in my class exercises).

Similar to Aloha, I would bet that those convictions which ring true to you reveal beauty all around you, for you ‘see’ them with eyes of respect and appreciation. I would also bet that they somehow relate to your sense of place, and your Mālama ‘āina, care for the land. Take gratitude (Mahalo) as but one example, “living in thankfulness for all the elements that make our lives so precious.” What are those environmental elements for you?

Work: There are a myriad of ways that our work leaves a lasting footprint on the environment, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Is this something we are mindful of? Take this day to make your own assessment.

My work mantra is Ho‘ohana, to work with purpose and intention, and thus it has much to do with connecting intention to just about everything; no 9 to 5 attitude, and no sleep-walking through the work day, going through the motions with busy-work versus on-purpose work. On-purpose work leaves a much better ‘footprint on the environment’ for it is the work we choose to do for the good it brings to our lives.

See Celebrate your Work and some old fashioned Values.

Business: We who have chosen the world of business have so many advantages which enable us to be activators who make things happen. Compare the quick decisiveness of free enterprise to the bureaucratic snail’s pace belabored through in government and the public educational process.

And I include non-profits: Ho‘ohana Community member James Koshiba, is co-founder of Kanu Hawai‘i, a nonprofit organization that works to create a more sustainable Hawai‘i, and he speaks of our “island intelligence” being a heightened awareness and understanding that resources are not boundless, that ecosystems are fragile, and that cultural diversity is to be valued and respected. Kanu Hawai‘i exists to be the ambassador of this message, however it is one that can be repeated and internalized in every business.

“If every person in the world lived as Americans do, consuming as Americans do, it would take more than six-and-a-half earths to sustain the human race.” —James Koshiba

Management: How does this internalization of ‘green responsibility’ and care for the environment happen? Through the creation of a work culture which embraces the message and seeks ways to walk the talk, by connecting sustainability initiatives to company values and strategic objectives. This is what great management does: Create corporate cultures which matter, and which feel Pono, good and right to all who work within it.

This is the Role of the Manager as seen through the MWA curriculum:

MY MANA‘O (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~ If I were to reduce it to its essence, I would boil management down to four things. 1. People: Managers concentrate on strengths and make weaknesses irrelevant. 2. Place: Managers create great workplaces where people thrive. 3. Mission: Managers get the work to make perfect sense. 4. Vision: Managers expect and promote the exceptional. 2008 Update: I expand on this here ~ The Role of the Manager in Managing with Aloha: The case for a better way to work.

Leadership: Leaders think bigger. Leaders inspire. Leaders help us see future visions with more clarity, describing it in a compelling way, and tooting their message until we feel we can see it, hear it, and feel it too. Leaders know that just about everything can be done, and it’s just a matter of who will take action to make it happen first. Leaders don’t wait for probability, they charge ahead when they get their earliest glimmers of possibility. And when it comes to our precious environment we no longer can afford to wait.

Again, think deeply about the values of your company and how they are expressed. Think deeply about Kuleana, and your responsibility for Leadership, and ask yourself what you can do, and do best.

See Branding fame, the ability to provoke, and degrees of follow-up: As asked there, What are the values of your company, and what ability do they give you to provoke masterful follow-up?

Read Leo’s posting at Zen Habits for 5 Ways [to] Save the World, While Getting Fitter, Saving Money, Simplifying, and Becoming Happier.

In reading through some other Blog Action Day postings yesterday, I found these to also be good examples of how our very creative writers within the Ho‘ohana Community connected respect for the environment to their Ho‘ohana (the work they do): So clever!

• Tony Clark: 5 Reasons Why Home-Based Entrepreneurship is the Ultimate Eco-Friendly Gig
• Joanna Young: 20 ways to cut your words and help to save the planet and How to recycle your words.
• In addition to her own Ho‘ohana connection of Brain-Based Business, Robyn McMaster also illustrates how leadership matters: Ram Shrivastava, CEO, Walks the Talk of Sustainability!

Here is the Blog Action Day Wrap Up. Truly an illustration of how powerful a single idea can be.

Blog Action Day 2007: Responsibility for your Sense of Place

what this is all about

On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind.

In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

get personal with me

Here in Hawai‘i, windmills like these have been showing up on our mountainsides. They are huge, and they do not go unnoticed.

Some say they are blemishing the natural beauty of our islands. I say they are helping us be more responsible about protecting our Sense of Place for our future. I say that if the land could talk, it would say mahalo; thank you for helping me connect with my brother, the wind.

Place.
It’s a powerful word.
More than that, Sense of Place is a powerful instinct and kind of emotional intelligence.

~ From www.managingwithaloha.com

The windmills are a way we can tap into alternative energy, and personally, I like the thought of energy coming from nature this way, capturing the collective spirit and mana (divine power) we know to be swirling around our islands.

And then there are the plain, hard facts: Our Hawai‘i of today is not self-sustaining.

“Devoid of indigenous fossil fuels and nuclear installations, Hawaii depends on imported petroleum for about 78% of its energy needs; coal, hydroelectric power, natural gas, windmills, geothermal energy, and sugar cane wastes contribute the rest.”

~ City-data.com on Hawaii Energy and Power

This is a very real way we can harness the lessons we have been learning here on MWAC on Lōkahi (teaming and partnerships) and Kākou (togetherness): We must work together to reduce the dependence Hawai‘i has on imported oil. This is not just an issue for scientists and environmentalists; renewable energy means sustaining the  Hawai‘i we love. It is an issue for all of us, and I believe that getting personally involved is our Kuleana, our responsibility. Ultimately, the quality of our own lives holds us accountable.

I know you are not going to erect a windmill in your back yard (though with our Waikōloa winds I sure would love to! We live in the saddle of two massive mountains.) The windmills work on a much larger scale, and they are but one option.

Believing that “Innovation gives us the power to shape Hawaii’s energy future, integrating new and evolving technologies with the potential to increase the State’s energy self-sufficiency” the Hawaiian Electric Company sponsors a website called Hawaii’s Energy Future that is a great place to start learning all you can. There you can read more on;

• How do we power our future? and Why The Urgency?
• What are Biofuels? What is Biomass? What is Garbage-To-Energy?
• What are our current renewable energy sources, and which are we studying for the future?
• How do you Make a Difference in your community? What is being done at our schools?
• How do you Start at Home? (click on the Energy Tips)

The page I have bookmarked there is the one continuously updated with News & Resources; it is one of the ways I keep tabs on local business initiatives. For instance, I applaud Castle & Cooke’s vision and commitment to use clean, renewable solar power: Read Castle & Cooke to Build Hawai‘i's Largest Solar Farm on Lana‘i.

We cannot live in the past and ignore what innovation can do for us; we cannot afford to. According to Hawaiian Electric, “Hawai‘i has the potential to achieve 500 megawatts of added electricity from renewable sources in the next 5 to 10 years. That’s more than triple the amount we have now.”

Kuleana: Seize personal responsibility for the actions you CAN take with being a steward of the environment.

Mālama: care for our land, and protect your own Sense of Place.

aloha for sense of place:

• Managing with Aloha and Sense of Place
• Places, Feelings and Learning. Learning Serenity
• What's Your Design? A Sense of Place by Dave Rothacker

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Joanna Young of our Ho‘ohana Community has been championing Blog Action Day for us at Joyful Jubilant Learning:

• Learning how to ask great questions
• Learning to make it personal: the environment and you
• and to capture all the postings of our Ho‘ohana Community: How much can we learn in a day?

Blog Action Day is on the 15th October. With the special magic that is Joyful Jubilant Learning we're counting one day not as a 24 hour period - but the time it takes to move from the start of the 15th right through to its close, wherever in the world there's a joyful, jubilant learner. ~ Joanna Young

Blog Action Day 2007: Can we help you Get Involved?

Lōkahi Teams: The ties that bind are your shared values

I am on Maui this week wrapping up my three-month MWA class series, A Ho‘okipa Summer, and it seems fitting for the last week of our Lōkahi study, as I am staying right on the beach.

Huh? The beach? What’s the connection?

From here I am able to look directly out on the ocean and remember a time I had worked with an extraordinary team. Lōkahi memories flood back with every wave that licks at the shoreline.

You have met this team in my book; they are the watermen (and woman) called the Alaka‘i Nalu of Hualalai. I shared their picture here.

Our association started rocky, just like the outcropping of lava that makes the north end of my Maui beach way less desirable for swimming. There was quite a bit of dissention within the group, always causing me to wonder how they could navigate their canoes with so much ugliness surging inside their heads ... surely they would get swamped! But no: They put aside their differences when they were out on the water, respecting the ocean and the canoe more than anything else. Yet once they were back on shore their “ocean spirit” disappeared all too quickly. We had to work hard to attain Lōkahi, making it even more sweet tasting (and long lasting) once we’d taken our bites of it.

THE MANA‘O OF THE ALAKA‘I NALU ~ ~ ~ “We will LEARN from all who offer their teaching, we will COACH each other and all who wish to learn, we will LIVE these roles with honor and humility.” —the commitment of the Alaka‘i Nalu of Hualalai

People who know of the complete story of the Alaka‘i Nalu will often ask me, “Where did you start?”

The answer will not surprise you dear readers; we started with values, identifying the ones we shared so that the ones we differed on could take a back seat and cease to matter as much. I started by asking them this question: