Come Gather Round

On Managing With Aloha

I found it challenging to write about Rosa Say’s book Managing With Aloha. The book—actually, the very idea of the book—touches me in so many places that I didn’t know how to begin or where to end. There was no way for me to write about this book without writing about myself as well. So, if you are looking for objectivity, you won’t find it here.

Questions about values have been near the heart of my own work for nearly thirty years, but I have never seen such a beautiful and comprehensive treatment of one person’s lessons and joys within the dance that values and work must do if the work is to be done with integrity. I am also envious because my own traditional values were dimmed by the emigration of my ancestors to the US, by their desire to assimilate, and by my own indifference. This is not to say that I have no values, or that I do not know what they are, but that there is something deep and profound in Rosa’s knowledge that I suspect I can never experience. While paging through this book I was visited by the same sense that often overtakes me while strolling the less populated streets of ancient European cities: Brugge or Bath perhaps, or Pisa. It is a sense of deep rootedness and profound import: a sense that the place (this book) is significant in ways that I cannot appreciate or even fully understand.

The book also resonates with recent work of my own. Not too long ago I interviewed twenty accomplished, recognized leaders to discover how leaders win the commitment of others at different levels: intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. I found that the ability to integrate values with the work of leadership is crucial to winning the highest levels of commitment. I call this ability Enacting Beliefs. A Jewish elder, a Catholic sports mogul, the Buddhist mayor of a town in Arizona, and others, all either spoke of enacting their beliefs or performed the dance of values and work so naturally that they thought it barely deserved comment. Rosa shines light on this ability with detail and clarity that I very much admire.

Then too, Rosa quite rightly insists on the nobility of management as a calling, which is an affirmation of my own insistence that all work can be thought of and done artfully if it is approached by the whole person as an endeavor of the spirit and not merely a job.

I recommended Managing With Aloha to a friend whose business is helping young Jewish leaders bring traditional Jewish values to their leadership roles. I told my friend, “You don’t have to be Hawaiian to appreciate the lessons in this book about how to bring your values to your work.” If you aspire to that kind of integrity, I recommend it to you also.

— Dick Richards

5 Responses to “On Managing With Aloha”

Dave Says:
September 27th, 2005 at 6:39 am
I agree and I differ, Dick.

I think Rosa is out ahead of most of us on the recognizing and living our value path. I think folks like you and I can benefit from the light Rosa sheds on the path - and, as we follow, we do experience that deepness and profoundness - because we combine it with our own learning.

Imported and traditional values - I graciously accept the values imbedded in my genes - whatever they might be. But I am an American and tradition starts with me. When I became old and mature enough to decide, (latter part of my life), I chose to continue with the good values I copped from my parents and jettisoned everything else. In addition, further values began to grow within my own family…sort of microwave tradition, because I can enjoy them now in midlife.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King talks about digging out around the fossil until one discovers a body of work. I have a hunch Dick, that you have worked so hard digging out around other’s fossils, you haven’t put much emphasis on your own. I can feel, just through this one post of yours, there are deep and profound values just waiting inside for your light.
Dick Richards Says:
September 27th, 2005 at 8:55 am
I’m afraid I misled you Dave. Thanks for the jog to be clearer. There are those who know me well who maintain that I have spent far too much time digging around my own fossils! Dig as I might, however, I cannot have what Rosa speaks of when she writes, “For me, everything connected to good life-shaping values was connected to sense of place…the land beneath my feet seemed to talk to me, and my own belief was nurtured.”

A key word in the post is “rootedness”–imprecise writing to indicate values that are connected to the land. For me to experience that I would have to have lived my life on or near the ancestral olive farm along the Appian Way instead of in or around Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Phoenix.

I have also hung out with enough Native Americans to understand how the cosmology that acts as a container for the values in such cultures is quite likely beyond my reach. I can understand it, but not intuit it in the way that they do. I am not complaining or feeling regretful: not wishing it were otherwise, merely acknowledging the difference. The land beneath my feet does not speak to me in that way.

And you are quite right to say that Rosa is out ahead of us in recognizing and living the value path. As a culture, with some rural exceptions, we Americans have yet to fully comprehend how to live that path absent a voice of the land that has been speaking to us for centuries.
Dave Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 4:58 am
Dick - I think we’d both agree that Rosa’s words, the vehicle for our earthly interpretation of her mind and soul, resonate with a connection to “a sense of place.” I also think that Rosa’s mind and soul are permeable. Her sense of place has been formed by the richness of Hawaii’s value-laden ancestors. She lives and breathes it today as if her own ancestors were from Hawaii - but they were not.

The concept of values connected to the land is fascinating! I cannot thank you enough for bringing an awareness to it in my world.

I have learned over the past few years to tap into voices that help me navigate my own spiritual path. For me, it’s a matter of being quiet and listening. I can’t help but to think we could at least tap into a tiny portion of what the land might tell us.
Dick Richards Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 8:13 am
Like you, I find quidance by being quiet and listening. The tendency in modern Western cultures is to look within, or above and at a distance, for spiritual guidance. In the kind of culture that Rosa speaks of, guidance is everywhere and may be very close. The view is 360 degrees, including the earth.

Rosa writes, “We call ourselves keiki o ka aini, children of the land, understanding that our roots are within the land, and we grow shaped by our environment.” (with apologies to Rosa for the missing diacriticals)

I love your closing sentiment above - “we could at least tap into a tiny portion of what the land might tell us.” I hope you are right, but I fear that much of the land will tell us that its spirit is suffering.
Jennifer Blalock Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 1:56 am
HI Dick and Dave,

Your conversation fascinates me. I live in a small French village (Chanay) where history permeates and defines the landscape. I am also American and do not feel a strong connection with my ancestors but my husband, Jean Luc (a very traditional French man) is strongly rooted to the Earth and the village of his ancestors (he’s related to half the occupants in the cemetary).

I feel very blessed that Jean Luc is my husband because he is teaching me how to be connected to the land or how to put two feet on the Earth and walk. “Rootedness” is a key word — first chakra energy, the root chakra, planted on the ground. I live more in my head — floating around in the intellect feeling lost and disconnected at times. I am optimistic that this shift can occur in a meaningful way — that I can feel Earth connected and still dwell and create from my higher chakra energy.

A good starter for me has been gardening. Jean Luc knows how to plant and grow vegetables and I am learning how to harvest, prepare and preserve them. It’s alot of work but it’s divine work. When you feed your body fresh food from the garden, the gifts of the land — the prana and chi — creep into your consciousness and being. Yes, I agree with Dick and feel the Earth’s spirit is suffering on a global level but I honor and give thanks to the little corner of paradise in Chanay.

Connection to land is one thing and a “sense of place” is another. I believe my husband has both. I am just now discovering the “land” thing and haven’t contemplated a “sense of place” but in our more transient lifestyles, the saying “Home is where the heart is,” comes to mind. I need to read Rosa’s book!