Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Not what, or how - but why?

If you read yesterday's post and thought, "Hey, that guiding principles thing sounds good - what's that look like?" I have just the resource for you: Rosa Say's book "Managing With Aloha."Mwacover 

This book is all about guiding principles, and Rosa relates her personal experiences as a manager in the context of Hawaiian values.  She goes through 18 different values, relating personal stories along the way and providing helpful advice on how to manage with integrity, openness, respect, accountability, camaraderie, and love (yes, love is compatible with business).

For me, some of the most valuable stories are those about situations where she missed cues from her employees and made management mistakes.  She then goes on to discuss what she learned from the experience, and how she tried to make it right.

For example, she tells a story about "unintentional neglect" in which she reassigned one of her employees to a new job, with the intent of recognizing her past contributions.  However, the employee was demoralized because they felt they were no longer part of the "inner circle" of Rosa's organization after the reassignment.  In the book, you can clearly feel the turmoil Rosa went through to try to resolve this and repair the relationship.

She also relates a number of stories about employees who made poor or self-destructive choices, and how she dealt with them in a way that respected them, held them accountable for their personal choices, but helped them get through it (like I said, love is compatible with business).

For example, there's a story about how she fired two of her staff for coming to work intoxicated.  However, because she felt a responsibility to help them rather than wash her hands of them, she arranged for both of them to enter rehab programs (and somehow got the company to foot the bill for it!).  You should read the book to find out how that turns out - very interesting.

The bottom line? This is not a management "how to" book - this is a management "why" book.  I recommend it highly to anyone, managers or not, but I think it's a must-have for any leader who wants to create more cohesiveness and sense of purpose within their organizations.

If you want to get a taste of Managing with Aloha before you pick up the book, head on over to Rosa's blog, Talking Story with Say Leadership Consulting.  You'll find that Rosa not only talks a good story - she lives a pretty good story, too. 

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GTD and another meaning for "zero peer pressure"

In a couple of weeks, I'll be at David Allen's seminar "GTD | The RoadMap" in San Jose. I'm really looking forward to it, but I feel a bit like people I know who have maid service, but they always clean up before the maid comes over - so nobody will know how messy they really are.

I have started to brush up on the old "Getting Things Done" techniques (some of which have fallen by the wayside for me). What does brushing up mean? I'm doing things like:

  • Purging my reference files to reduce clutter (makes them fresher, and gets the drawer less squinchy so it's easier to get things in and out)

  • Purging all my context lists and getting brutal with the question: "Is this item really 'someday / maybe', or is it actually 'never, get out of denial,' buster?"

  • Reviewing my lists to make sure my 'next actions' are not 'next inactions' pretending to be actionable

  • Blocking time this weekend to do a real weekly review (I totally blew this in July due to all the chaos in my life, and I am feeling the effects in my stuckness)

  • Doing a mind sweep, complete with the triggers in the Getting Things Done book

  • Listening to "Getting Things Done Fast" again [note: this program is no longer available from Davidco.com, but David tells me there are other helpful tools coming soon, and I should stay tuned]

  • Getting "In" to empty, and my email Inbox to zero

That last one is the one that's been taunting me the most lately, since it's just plain in my face all day every day. Since I've been without internet access quite a bit in the last month, the old Inbox stacked up pretty high. I know what I should be doing - I'm just not doing it.

So, this week, I set my self up for discipline by public shaming - a co-worker of mine is also a GTD practicioner, and we've agreed to ridicule each other if our Inboxes are not empty each night (beginning Monday - gotta get a running start for this one). With this new approach, "zero peer pressure" is taking on a new meaning for me.

If you want less vindictive assistance in getting right with GTD, you might want to check out a special typr of virtual book study Rosa is running on Talking Story, as well - great stuff. She calls it "MWA3P" and it merges powerful concepts from her own book "Managing with Aloha," as well as concepts from David Allen and Stephen Covey.

Note: The terms and concept in "Getting Things Done" (aka "GTD") are the killer mojo of David Allen, and he's got rules to keep people from messin' with his flavor - check them out here.

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Now if I can just find Diagon Alley...

By the time my colleague Chris and I finished our dinner meeting last night in West London, things were beginning to get back to normal again. We took a bus to King's Cross Station, and he snapped a shot of me just before I disappeared through the doorway to Platform 9 3/4 to board the train to Hogwarts.

This was around 11:30 Thursday night, or "half eleven" as they say it around Platform 9 3/4. Click the thumbnail for a full view. Hermione says "Hello."

Oh - and if you look carefully, you can just make out the Purell hanging from the handle of my laptop bag. I posted on the wonders of Purell for frequent travelers a while back.

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Now, discover others' perspectives

A short time ago, I posted my review of the book “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” in which I said I wasn’t all that excited about the book. 

My friend Skip Angel had an entirely different experience with the book, as detailed in his excellent post, “Only the Strong Shall Survive.”  He’s also suggested I go back and read the book’s predecessor, “First, Break All The Rules.”

I then received an email from Dick Richards who offers a different, but complementary, set of tools for determining your strengths, style, etc.  His blog has information on “discovering your genius” and he offers a program for “career clarity” and “leadership clarity” which look intriguing.

To paraphrase a famous saying, “Opinions are like blog posts…everyone has one.” In this case, however, I’m happy to say I do want to look at other people’s.

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Book Review: "Now, Discover Your Strengths"

I just finished reading Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton's book, "Now, Discover Your Strengths."

As the title implies, the book seeks to help you identify your strengths and then spends some time discussing how you can capitalize on those strengths.  It even has an online assessment you can take to identify your top 5 strengths (you need to enter a unique code that is printed on the book jacket to register for the assessment).

All of this sounds really cool but, I must say, the book and quiz really left me wanting more.  There was nothing revolutionary here for me - perhaps because I've read lots of books of this ilk, and I found this one to be rather basic compared to others I've read. 

The analysis of my strength areas seemed fairly on target (in their terms, my strengths are Intellection, Learner, Connectedness, Ideation, and Input).  However, I didn't get a lot of substantive information on how to develop those strengths, what kinds of people I should associate with to counterbalance my strengths, or anything like that.

The book also contained a fair amount of material on how to use this method as an organizational development tool.  With good faciliation, that might be helpful since it would provide a way to play to the various strengths within the team (though I have been through some great team workshops with other tools).

In summary, I felt this book was a good introductory-level book, and if you're just getting into self-analysis and self-improvement, it could be very useful. 

If, on the other hand, you've had experience with things like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, the Birkman Method, or other tools like them, you may not find a lot of additional learning in this book.

By the way - the tools I mention above are not free, and generally require a paid facilitator.  If you're just dabbling, you can get a good (free) approximation of them by taking HumanMetrics' free Jung Typology test. Then, you can read more about the various types online or in the books Please Understand Me II, or Type Talk at Work.

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