ChangeThis: Revisiting the manifesto

Our Value Immersion for May & Jun... We’re Only Broken When We Stop Believing

ChangeThis: Revisiting the manifesto

Digging into our Ho‘okipa-inspired value immersion, I couldn’t help but think about the manifesto I wrote for the ChangeThis initiative about 9 months after Managing with Aloha was initially released:

In presenting my case on ‘why’ manage with Aloha in that manifesto, my focus was on my 2nd target in writing the book in the first place: broken business models. (My 1st target: The Calling, and Kuleana of Managers.)

You can still read the 28-page manifesto here; it downloads as a PDF. ChangeThis is now powered by 800-CEO-READ, and Issue 152 was just published last month.

Yes! I’ve read Rosa’s manifesto on “Managing with Aloha” and I heartily agree with it. It’s a people-first approach to management, one that probably goes against the bottom-line ideology of corporations today, but makes so much sense when you just apply a bit of common sense.

If businesses started looking at people as the biggest investment made rather than the biggest cost incurred, they’d start to experience balanced growth. This is the kind of approach Say is advocating, using aloha – far more than just a Hawaiian greeting – to provide a positive, productive atmosphere at work, wherever that is.

—Simon Young, on Leadership

Your business model affects everything.

It affects your assumptions of what you can, and cannot do. It affects the level of your influence, and your consequential learning. It affects how readily people are willing to share their ideas, which are all worthy of voicing, both good and bad. It affects how connected you are to your industry and community, and how disconnected you are.

What our Ho‘okipa immersion these two months is intended to do, is laser focus on the service you deliver, because you believe you should, and feel you can.

In Ho‘okipa is a Game Changer in Service, our Aloha Intentions address the basic business model question, of what that model will allow us to do, because we feel we can afford to do it.

Here’s an excerpt from the ChangeThis manifesto:

“Before I got a job in the ‘executive suite’ myself, I never thought too much about overall business plans. Looking back, I’m now pretty mortified that I worked for companies with such blind faith and trust that they had a good plan, and knew what they were doing. I wasn’t that involved in company strategy, and what’s more, I didn’t even think about it. I just did my job description plus some, striving to be an exceptional employee, and I assumed my bosses had paid their dues enough to have some credibility.

I found out that as an employee you need to be better informed than that. I found out the hard way — when I got promoted to a position where I had to be the one to fix it. The people at the top are not always right, and they often get mired in too much ‘other stuff’ to even notice any signs that they may be wrong. I like to believe that most of the time they do have good intent; I’ve learned that I just shouldn’t assume they have all the answers just by virtue of being in charge.

When you manage with Aloha, you don’t have employees who are followers; you work with like-minded people who are business partners.

In the aha! moment I realized this, I had more than three hundred employees reporting to me, working hard within a business model that was seriously flawed: When I crunched the numbers I knew there was no way the business could succeed and sustain everyone working within it. The changes we had to make were painful, and that kind of crisis management is something I never want to go through again.”

Do we take our How-to for granted more than we should?

When I wrote the manifesto, I was referring to the hotel business, however, working with several different industries these past 13 years via Say Leadership Coaching, I have learned how universal to business the problem of ‘business model ignorance and illiteracy’ can be. Case in point, the airlines:

Congress is right to be upset with America’s airlines:

“But its focus is too narrow:

a lack of competition, not bag charges, is the problem.”

—The Economist

There are many who whittled at their business model during the Great Recession which hit us in 2008, and their whittling was done in survival mode; reactionary at best, with band-aids stuck on here and there, and without the further intentional revisions which should have been no-brainers.

It’s time to correct course. In fact, it’s long overdue.

Engage, and do your revisions in the camaraderie of our Ho‘ohana Community.

1. Read the full Managing with Aloha manifesto here.

2. Then, return to your own Aloha Intentions for our Ho‘okipa-inspired value immersion, as you had first drafted on May Day, to work with it a second time, and narrow in on your specific targets.

We Ho‘ohana Kākou!

~ Rosa

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