Sunday Mālama for 11.23.14: Failing Forward Out Loud
This may surprise you a bit after our birthday celebrations and Ho‘omaha scheduling this past week, however today’s post is about failure — mine.
It’s the Sunday after 11.19.14, Managing with Aloha’s 10th birthday, which as you can imagine is humungous for me. Traditionally, Sunday Mālama has been when I will share my off-the-workplace-highway scenic route kind of posts. Not as a normal feature, but whenever they seem to be writing themselves. (The Sunday Mālama Tumblr affirmations are now when I will share good writing by other people.)
Alaka‘i Managers have their ups and downs, and so do I, and my failure was with a big goal I set my sights on accomplishing in 2014, and didn’t. Failing to get it done has been eating at me all month long, and I’ve been looking for the best time to tell you about it, because I had told you I was going to do it, and I owe you the update.
Time to fess up.
Derek Sivers is often quoted with this advice: “Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.” which goes contrary to what we hear about transparency, having accountability partners, invoking the Law of Attraction and such. As he explains it:
“Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen.
Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.
In 1933, W. Mahler found that if a person announced the solution to a problem, and was acknowledged by others, it was now in the brain as a “social reality” even if the solution hadn’t actually been achieved.”
Makes a lot of sense, I suppose. Sucks to be a victim of it when you know you can do better than that.
We do talk story about our intentions.
As you know, ‘intention’ is a pretty sacred word for me, and I use it a lot. I believe in clarifying intention and honoring it, and in saying it out loud as a way we “Speak with Aloha” — the Aloha expression of our self’s spirit-spilling. You may have heard me say this before: One of the best ways to honor your good word, is to speak it, so you’ll be forced to make it so. It’s even in my book, though I can’t find the exact quote and context at the moment.
As an aside, here’s an invention idea for you techies out there: My dream come true as a reader, book marginalia scribbler, non-fiction study mavin and self-talk curator, is to have a printed book (with wide margins to write in of course) that has a search box. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
So anyways… my big goal for 2014 was to do a next edition update of Managing with Aloha, the republishing of which would be released on its’ 10th birthday 5 days ago. Not done. Despite all the time I allocated to the project, I am not sure when it will be done.
‘Allocated to’ is not the same as ‘actually worked on’ with good enough progress. Ugh. Guilty, guilty, guilty. I did work on it quite a bit, but not enough, and not with that sense of urgency I should have had about it.
Recharging the goal with new vision, and fresh energy
Well, guilt is a rather worthless emotion, so I won’t belabor the point. However I’m not writing this as some implicit message that I’ve dropped my goal altogether. I still have to get it done: The practical reality of it, is that our inventory of hardcovers available to sell is dwindling, and I really don’t want to reprint it as is, knowing of the corrections I have in mind. Thank goodness for our ebook option on Kindle!
Reality of course, is that an unaccomplished objective gets bigger past its first missed deadline: My vision of what my next edition can be has grown substantially, and new ideas are keeping me awake at night… I’ve started to think of November’s sleepless nights as my penance! So I’m not going to tell you what my new deadline is, mostly because I’m just not sure… I need to invest more diligent work in the project so I can be realistic about it.
What I can tell you, is that these decisions have been made: It will be a softcover option next edition, with a greatly enhanced index (so even I can find some things better!) and new Resource Pages. If there is a resource page on this site you find you use quite a bit in your managing practice, would you let me know? I would love the feedback. My stats don’t help me much in that regard, for search engines send a lot of traffic to this site for Hawaiian translations and the business specifics we’ll talk about.
To be clear, I am not working on another book. I am working on improving the one we use as our key resource, and turning it into a more comprehensive workbook for you and the managers we coach at Say Leadership Coaching.
Do you know about the Kindle MatchBook program? If you buy a new print edition of MWA (or purchased one in the past), you can buy the Kindle edition for only $2.99 (Save 70%). Easy to search that way!
I feel more intentional and energized already!
As for what Sivers said, he may be right, but there is no way I’m going to stop talking about intention and what it does for us. I still believe that human energy is our single greatest resource. I’m also getting better and better in asking for help and not taking things on by myself.
Thank you for listening, and for being here to Sunday Mālama with me.
Postscript: By the way… I have also had the desire to create a smartphone app for the values of Managing with Aloha. That challenge has been in finding the right developer. I use a lot of different apps, and am very clear on what an app’s utility for our Alaka‘i Managers must be, but I don’t have the expertise required with the design and making it. Please let me know if you can refer someone to me, or have both the interest and expertise yourself. It would be a dream come true to actually work with someone who is studying Managing with Aloha too.
About this post title:
‘Failing Forward’ has been in my personal language of intention ever since I read the book of that title by John C. Maxwell: Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success. It’s very, very good, and I’ve often gifted it and recommended it to Alaka‘i Managers over the years. It’s a terrific conversation starter within the workplace too — you have a company book club, don’t you?
Here is a January 2014 goal I did accomplish this year, and am still thoroughly enjoying:
A Discipline with Reading.
