Let’s define “values.”

This is the first sentence you’ll see on the inside jacket flap of Managing with Aloha:

“Values” may be the most frequently spoken word in business today.

Try to Google “values” and you’ll see for yourself just how frequently it comes up. Last time I checked, the number was at 45,900,000 entries.

The recent surge of course, has to do with the election. As Ellen Goodman points out, writing for the Washington Post,

“These are the stories spilling over the media transom: “Faith, Values Fuel Win”; “Values Trumped War, Terror”; and “Moral Values Drove Bush Victory.”

And it’s not a tired subject yet despite the flurry. Just this morning I saw these two headlines: “A victory for ‘values,’ but whose?” and “Moral Values Malarkey.”

Well, Managing with Aloha will be in our island bookstores within a dozen days, and with the byline of Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business I feel I should let you know what I mean by values. Values are the personal way your soul talks to you, urging you to take action. The values you possess light your path; they give you nourishment and strength.

Values are an inseparable part of the fabric of the human race. We have all grown up being shaped by values that are woven into our culture, for values drive the quality of our experiences. These values are layered with the nuances of our parents’ life experiences, and those of their parents. I believe we inherit them as surely as we inherit the color of our eyes and the curl in our hair. You learn about them more explicitly when you misbehave, for parents universally have this innate certainty that values = goodness = better behavior.

Short and sweet, the values you possess will determine the way you behave.

That being said, when it comes to our behavior, we all have the power to choose. The “universal” values I have written about in Managing with Aloha are universally discernable ones: by “discernable” I mean “perceptible by the senses or intellect.” They are concrete enough, tangible enough, to be real, and they help us choose our behavior.

Our values drive our beliefs—in Hawaii we call this our mana‘o—and our beliefs give our thoughts clarity. When we are true to what we believe in, the decisions we make come to us easily and naturally, especially when we have a cause, an objective, or a mission in mind.

There are more values within the Hawaiian culture than there are within the pages of Managing with Aloha; mine is not an all-inclusive listing. The values I have written of, are specifically aimed at exploring and improving management practices, the Ho‘ohana of those of us in business, and our working lives as a whole.  In my book, I present them to you as modern everyday applications for what I have experienced and still see as today’s challenges in business.

Therefore, I hope all this “moral values” noise will not make you cringe at the word. Values-centered management is still desperately needed in business enterprise. We need action, and we need to act with confidence, with hope for what is better.  And action taken, true to clear beliefs that have been borne from good values, give us our integrity.  Acting with integrity makes things right for us; it feeds our hunger to be intelligent, ethical and morally just.

Hawaii is optimally suited to lead the world in modeling values-centered, profitable business, for we in Hawaii live with something good and right by its very nature: Aloha and all it embraces. The values of Managing with Aloha are uniquely alive in the culture we work in. When we bring our good values to a business environment, we position them as tools we can use to bring tangible benefits to those we manage and work with, and to the health of our businesses’ bottom line. Managing with Aloha shares stories where it has happened.

Let’s grab our responsibility for leadership. And let’s be worthy leaders, by managing ourselves well first and foremost. We all have good values to draw from.

Update: Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business, is now available online via Amazon.com, Island Heritage, and Native Books Hawaii.