Org-Fitness Today!

Wishing you the very best in 2007!!!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to everyone.

There are many traditions in our multi-cultural community. May you find time to spend with those you love, be safe, and celebrate life with those around you. Looking forward to 2007, I hope to see all of you soon.

Aloha,
Bob

NOT Normal Content

OK, the title is your warning. I don't normally comment about things like this however...

As many of you know, I am a runner. Last week I was running down a road that has a fairly wide paved shoulder, in fact, I think it is even labeled a bike lane. ?? Maybe it was my fault, however I am running against traffic when I see a boy, maybe 12 or 13 years old approaching me on his bike. However he doesn't see me, in fact he is not even looking up since because he is talking on his cell phone!!

I yell at him, no response. I slow down. It's a busy road with traffic to my right and a guardrail to my left. I am in the far left, up against the guard rail. I yell again, even louder as I come to a complete stop. He looks up, just in time, barely missing me and rides on. Unbelievable!!

Now yesterday, I see the same thing only it's a kid on a moped. Talking away on his cell phone, totally unaware that his right turn signal is turned on while he rides his moped down the road.

Often times when I run the Lanikai loop, I see the same girl, probably the same age, 12 or 13 years old, chatting away on her cell phone while she rides her bike, weaving in an out of the bike lane.

Now it is clear to me why there are so many bad drivers on the roads, the majority of which are chatting on their cell phones--they've had years of practice, riding their bikes!! I think I will try to stick to running on the trails.

Got Computers?

My Rotary club, the Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu will be assisting with the Hawaii Computers for Kids on November 12 from 9:00 a.m. until Noon at the CompUSA on Ala Moana Blvd.

This is the time to get rid of all those old computers sitting in your back office or garage at home. I think they are accepting any Pentium based computers. Mac's are welcome too. Just drop them off. There will even be help to unload them from your car.

Benefits of Business Coaching

Often times people ask; "What is coaching?"

One of the best ways to answer that is with results. Business coaching can have an impact on many areas of a business. There is increasing evidence that coaching is one of the most powerful ways of developing people. More importantly, coaching can add to bottom line business performance in the following ways:

• An increase in productivity
• Increased customer service
• Reduction in costs
• Increased bottom line profitability
• Increased retention of key people
• Improved relationships with direct reports
• Improved relationships with direct line manager
• Improvement in teamwork
• Reduction in conflict
• Improved working relationships with clients

These are typically areas of concern for all businesses, small or large. Performance improvement in these areas is all possible with the support of a good business coach.

Public Education in Hawaii and Transformation

Randy Moore spoke at my Rotary club (Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu) this past Thursday. His topic, Act 51 and Reinventing Education for Hawaii. Here is a link to the Act.

Randy is the past CEO of Kaneohe Ranch and has a strong business background. He retired from the corporate world a few years ago to become a middle school math teacher in a Hawaii public school. I doubt many CEO's would choose this occupation and he has to be admired for his willingness to do this.

A few months back, State School Superintendent, Pat Hamamoto, tapped Randy to assist in the redesign of Hawaii's public schools. This will be no easy task as anyone familiar with the challenges facing public schools in Hawaii will attest.

As a parent with four children in the public schools I have a vested interest in seeing the schools improve. My daughter serves as the student representative on the newly formed SCC (School Community Council) for her school.

My question to Randy at the end of his talk had to do with the first point of his talk. The school principals are being asked to take on a completely different role from what they have had in the past. Essentially they will be held accountable for their schools progress and be responsible for managing their schools much a like a business manager must manage his or her business. In the old world, principals were told what to do and essentially passed the buck on up and fundamentally, this is what is wrong with the system.

My question had to do with how are these principals going to be trained for this new position? From a business perspective, this is like asking an employee or even a supervisor to now run the business and to be responsible for the performance of all the staff, to create and manage a budget, and to submit a business plan as to how all of this will be done. 

Randy's response was good--he gets it. Essentially he said they have budgeted 500K for training. (click here for the DOE-Hawaii Principals Academy press release) He admitted this was not enough. Most Hawaii principals have grown up in our system where they have never had to do this. He cited a San Diego district who went through a similar process and in five years time, this SD district had a 90% turnover rate of principles. Now that is change!

I heard some comments and discussion among Rotarian's saying that is what will work. I was shocked the first time I heard that Hawaii principals were unionized. Randy did start off his talk by saying principals will get a hefty raise of over 30 percent over the next two years. This is being given to them as a way to justify that principals will now work a 12-month schedule. They'll need the time to make all of this work.

Randy also used as an example how you could break the principals into three groups regarding the transformation. Much like Bridges does in his work. Many of them are in the large middle group of transformation. A smaller group is holding back and resisting these changes, and finally a small group is embracing he change.

Part of me is a bit skeptical in all of this. Looking at my fellow Rotarian's, while many have good ideas and strong opinions on how to improve the public schools, very, very few of them have sent, or are sending their kids to public schools. My own opinion is that the fact that Hawaii has so many private schools, and people have so many options besides the public schools, exasperates the problem. Take away the private schools, and believe me, change would come extremely fast to the public schools.

Ah, this is could be the topic of another post, back to finish this one.

I really get that Randy is working hard on this and his business perspective is good for the system. However, I just can't help but wonder how many principals will shake their heads, yes, yes, yes, all the time while looking at their nice fat State of Hawaii retirement benefits, and be counting down the days to take advantage of them.

Think Blogs are Big? See BusinessWeek for the latest!

My techno-friend, Pete, called me today from his car at the Post Office parking lot to let me know that I needed to check out the May 2 issue of BusinessWeek magazine. The reason: the cover story was all about blogs.

Here's the headline from the cover:

Blogs Will Change Your Business: Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later.

Pretty strong statement for a business magazine to put on their cover stating how they see the world of blogs.

The story mentions there are 9 million blogs today and 40,000 new blogs are created each day. Another wow!

There are some other interesting facts and tidbits. I encourage you to check it out. Click here for the story.

Just to stay up on the blogging world, check out BW's new blog at www.blogspotting.net

Click here for a table showing how blog readership has increased for the U.S.

This other table (click here), shows how blog growth rivals e-mail growth from the 90's.

BW also included a list of terms related to blogging too. Click here.

Look around the BW site, there are some other stores related to blogging including a story about a New Yorker who blogs about real estate in the city and a list of do's and don'ts for corporate bloggers.

Looks like this blogging thing is here to stay awhile.

GLO's: Good for Business Too?

The State of Hawaii has introduced something called General Learning Outcomes (GLO's) for public schools throughout the state. The GLO's are being introduced at the elementary, middle, and high school level. Early discussions seem to report that these will be used in place of the typical grading scale of A through F.

Here is the list of GLO's:

1. Self-Directed Learner: The ability to be responsible for one's own learning.
2. Community Contributor: The understanding that it is essential for human beings to work together.
3. Complex Thinker: The ability to demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving.
4. Quality Producer: The ability to recognize and produce quality performances and quality products.
5. Effective Communicator: The ability to communicate effectively.
6. Effective and Ethical Users of Technology: The ability to use a variety of technologies effectively and ethically.

At my daughter's elementary school, in addition to the standardized GLO's used throughout the school system, they have created or identified three to five behaviors put in language elementary aged kids can understand. These behaviors or norms help the students, teachers, and administrators take the GLO's and put them to use every day. At our house, we've put the GLO's on the refrigerator as a way to use them in the home too.

When I first read these GLO's my initial reaction was, "Oh boy, here we go again, another DOE initiative." However as I reflect on the General Learning Outcomes, from an employer's perspective these look pretty good. If organizations had people entering the workforce with these behaviors, that would be a very good thing. Based on past and current experience, one or more of these is often times missing from applicants. As I thought a little more, even managers sometimes are missing one or more of these outcomes.

Hmmm, these GLO's look pretty good after all! I hope the schools are successful in the implementation and teaching of them to our children. It can only help all of us in the long run.

Are We Really a Team?

How many times have we heard managers drone on about the expectations and qualities around a work group in relationship to teams and teamwork?

Since the idea of teams and teamwork have become so popular in the workplace over the last 20 years, organizations large and small have tried to align themselves around teams. Sometimes it has been successful and other times not.

Why doesn't every work group function as a high performance team?

• Lack of trust
• No common goals
• Lack of interdependence: in other words, survival of the strongest, smartest, and sometimes least ethical or moral individuals
• Poor communication
• Independent performance expectations or measures

The list can go on and on. Sometimes I think it would be best for managers to climb off the team soapbox and just admit the work group is not a team.

Patrick Lencione, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team was recently interviewed by Kim George, VP of Connectivity for CoachVille. In this interview, Patrick expresses some of his thoughts along a similar thread. I highly recommend his book. You can click on the above graphic of it and go straight to Amazon if you are interested in purchasing it.

For more information on CoachVille, click here.

To read the interview, click here.

NASA Transformation and Leadership Development

NASA has released a white paper report that describes the transformational changes that are required since the Columbia accident in February, 2003 within the agency.

The transformation is based on three areas:

1. Technical Excellence
2. Organizational Excellence
3. People Excellence

These are not unlike what many corporate organizations undertake around major change or transformation. The Columbia tragedy and the 1980's Challenger tragedy are much visible, therefore create a bigger impact on society highlighting the need for change.

You can read the report by clicking here.