March 2004: On Aloha - Part 2

Aloha mai kakou,

We talked about Aloha last month, and making this Hawaiian value of unconditional love our theme for the month of February. I must say mahalo, thank you, to those of you who wrote me with your thoughts and stories of how aloha lived up to its promise for you. Keep it alive: from what you've shared with me you've had a magnificent beginning!

• I'd like to continue our discussion on Aloha this month if I may, for there were two questions in particular that struck me from a few of your messages:
• What about stirring up some Aloha at work, any ideas?
• If I haven't used the word up to now, don't you think people are gonna feel it's strange or out of character for me to start now?

Figure out the most natural way to start incorporating the word Aloha in your vocabulary, and allow it to become part of your language slowly - it needn't be an overnight transformation. Put it on your voicemail, and call yourself so the sound of your voice starts to embrace the word for you, and bring it into your comfort zone. Start to use it with the new people you meet. I'm a morning runner, and I used to say "Good Morning" to those I passed by. Now I say "Aloha" and more often than not the next time we cross paths they will say it back to me, or wave from across the street.

Or try writing it first: all my letters and emails started and ended with "Aloha" before I began saying it more regularly myself. "Dear" and "sincerely" have since become exclusively adjectives for me, not salutations. I've returned to writing thank you notes as often as possible, for both small favors and the big ones, choosing sentences that will capture my Aloha within the envelope in spirit and not just within the word itself. One person wrote me that she started writing the word Aloha somewhere on every single thing she mails-she even wrote it with a high-lighter across the remittance slips of all her February bills! You've got to believe that good intent will somehow come back to her.

Actions can speak louder than words, however this is what happens when Aloha is incorporated into your language: When you speak the word you will find you need to "walk the talk" and learn to embody it. It'll surprise you how easy it will start to become. The possibilities will open up for you, seemingly multiplying on their own, and you'll begin to cultivate your own habits of aloha, ones that feel personal, natural, honest and right. You will find a new presence and focus in your conversations, you will be on time for appointments, you will keep your promises, and you will make decisions that seek win-win agreements versus compromise. You will find that your reach extends farther, and others seek you out. As the saying goes, "Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the best fruit is?" The arms of Aloha will be there to catch you.

Aloha magically creates abundance: the more you share it, the more you have in your life. And when it comes to work, in many ways I think the business environment is the biggest playground of all, for Aloha boils down to managing and working with good intent.

Think of Aloha as an attitude - a good attitude. The Aloha spirit is positive, inclusive, and healthy. In the business environment, Aloha is the feeling of good service, given with genuine sincerity for the pure love of it. Aloha is a feeling you have because you believe in what you do and in what your business stands for, you feel your work is worthwhile and you are needed to deliver it.

Aloha will permeate your company when all your employees and all your peers feel the same way: they will treat each other with openness, honesty, trust, dignity, and respect. They freely share the caring and love of Aloha with each other, and so naturally, they treat customers in kind. And because those customers don't experience it too often, they come back to you time and time again to get another fix, confident that you will deliver. The actual service or product they pay for becomes icing on the cake, for if Aloha is the color of your company, they are equally confident your product will be infused with value and quality and worth: they trust you will not give your customers anything less. They may not be able to specifically give it a name, but they perceive Aloha in your character, and it is a discovery that excites them. Aloha has made you and your company very "remarkable" (to use Seth Godin's Purple Cow word).

There's more! Not only do you keep loyal customers, your staff retention soars. Your peers and your employees stick around because they want to preserve the Aloha in their own lives as well. They tell their family and friends they have Aloha at work, and you find that recruitment is no longer an issue for you. Everyone wants your business to thrive so it will continue to sustain them, and you find that your staff takes better care of all your assets, same as they have your customers. As a manager you have more freedom to learn and to innovate, for with so many invested in the success of your business you no longer need to spend time babysitting. You can work on your business rather than getting stuck in it. Because of Aloha, you have become an 'Ohana in business. All of you are learning by osmosis that Aloha, 'Ohana and community become synonymous. Both you and your staff develop a strong belief that it is meant to be that way.

When these types of things begin to happen in business, your using the word "Aloha" won't sound strange because everyone else uses it too, mostly because there isn't a better word to describe it ... it has become the most natural thing in the world ... its Aloha.

Am I a dreamer? I don't think so .... I've seen it work. Is it easy? Easier than you think. Will it happen overnight? Probably not, but it has to start somewhere, sometime, so the contagious quality of Aloha can begin-why not with you? I know you have it in you.

May your month be filled with Aloha so you can enjoy its abundance.

Rosa

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