The Business of Family
My wife and I are in the kitchen one Friday evening, planning our weekend activities. I'm standing by sink while she has her calendar pulled up at the table. She lists several suggestions of things/people to connect with. My response went something like "Babe, I'm not sure about the ROI on that time spend". "ROI?" she replied in confusion. "Yea, the return on investment of our time...those options don't seem all that enticing from that standpoint." "Is everything a business decision??" - she asked in mockery.
The playful banter ensued. I was able to expand on my philosophical views for decision making while she poked fun at my line of thinking =). Having a 9 month old at the time, I know there's an avalanche of decision making ahead of us...some of it will be playful while most of it will most likely be very serious.
If you were to remove the cold hearted stereotype of business, there can be a lot of crossover with how you manage family and business. I am not an expert in either. I am only here to share my experiences with both and how they influence each other.
I think about family very similarly to how I think about business. Sure, you're not going to cuddle up on the couch with your admin assistant like you would your children, at least I hope not. Family needs leadership, management, alignment, goals and KPI's to ensure everyone is on the right track and thriving. I'm not suggesting you pull out spreadsheets at the dinner table (although that might be cool in some cases), yet there should be clear pillars that exists to "pulse check" your family. I believe there are some common underpinnings in both domains that exist. Being aware of them is always the first step. Let's explore further.
Emotions
Often times I catch myself being a passenger with my family initiatives. I ask myself "Why does it seem easier to run a business vs. a family in some cases?" My reflections have led me to the emotional-amplification when it comes to family. The stakes are just greater, for everyone. You better believe there are more heart strings getting pulled when your daughter wakes up with a fever vs. a poor financial quarter. I find it's much more challenging to navigate the emotional wave in family vs. business. For me, this shows up in quiet frustration when I'm emotionally unmatched. I shut-down, don't communicate and descend to a catabolic energy level. Our house will go hours, sometimes a whole day, in silence until I can grab the reigns of my emotional responsiveness. Ask me if that's ever happened in business....never...in fact quite the opposite! I thrive on the opportunity of a good-difficult conversation. Most likely because I'm able to respond to my emotions vs. drown in them. There are a thousand vessels to hop in towards emotional responsiveness. The one that's helped me the most is journaling. Coupling the "what" and "why" of my feelings is a great start, but the piece that was jet-fuel for me is journalling on the "what action needs to happen". Identifying what am I going to do next has been the most challenging yet freeing piece. I've noticed improvements with the quality of my communication and the speed at which issues are addressed...(Ashley may say different lol).
In traditional business, the emotional connection isn't as strong as the connection with your spouse/child...shocker. The development of emotional management is still critical for successful organizations. For me, emotional management in business is like lifting a 20lb dumbbell. In family, it can feel like a 100lb dumbbell. Same techniques, just a greater load.
Shared Vision
Rewind to summer of 2022. My wife and I are in Miami for a weekend after the 2022 IHRSA Conference (fitness industry event). We decided to use that weekend to combine business and pleasure. We're poolside at around 5pm, tequila & soda in hand...soda for her as she was pregnant at the time. Coming off the high of a powerful week, I asked her "Babe, what's your ideal vision look like for us"...or something like that. The point is for the next hour, we had untethered dialogue around what we wanted our life to look like without considering the "how's" of getting there. We discussed what was possible. Having a better understanding of our individual visions, we could then forge a path toward co-creating a shared one.
Fast forward to when our daughter was born. We revisited our family vision as the dynamic has changed. Getting Ashley to part time-work was a critical addition to that vision. We're now working together on making that a reality. Both of us fueled by the same objective leads to greater collaboration, understanding and support.
If you think about some of the most unhealthy organizations/cultures, more times than not there is no shared vision. There's no alignment on where we're going and why. Everyone being lost in the woods togethers drastically reduces the chances of them finding a way out.
Beliefs & Values
For those that know me, I'm big on philosophical discussions, the emotional constituents of leadership and a good talk around feelings. Ask anyone, I can go hours on the above topics. That's the main reason I love business. It's a platform to scale beliefs and values for the greater good. "Why haven't I injected that into my family?" I ask myself one morning. "Ashley has depth and meaning, she's not completely foreign to these concepts, why am I hesitating?" I continue to ask myself. The scary part about sharing beliefs/values is the vulnerability that comes along with it.
In business, the organizations DNA (mission, vision, values) acts as a vulnerability-safety net for the individuals belief set. Typically, we start by leading with the organizations belief system to gain buy in from others. When it's safe, we then expose our own. In family, it's sharing and exposing our own first...no safety net. Talk about all the physiological alarm systems going off in your body. This is at least my own reflection of this challenge. After acknowledging, I now have the option to move into the fear or not. Obviously I chose to lean in or I wouldn't be writing this part.
Last story for this blog, I promise. One Saturday afternoon, Ashley and I are on the couch while Gracie is taking her final nap of the day. I've run the idea past Ashley about this whole values thing and how we use it in the organization. I mustered up the courage to ask her: "Hey, do you want to do that values thing for our family?". "Sure!" she exclaimed with surprising intrigue. We then ordered a pizza from Anthony's (incredible pizza in Ann Arbor) and spent the next few hours in discovery mode. We were able to combine our personal values into shared family values. Much like great organizations, these values are meant to lead us in all decision making. Our compass, if you will, towards living a fulfilled life. In an ever-changing and challenging world, it's easy to get steered off course. Having a set of concrete values can mitigate that and keep you pointed true north.
While it's one thing we created our family values, it's an entirely different beast when it comes to putting them in action. We're still trying to figure that out, but we're at least speaking the same language.
Closing Thoughts
I think of LIFE as a giant umbrella. Under that umbrella are all the silos society puts in place for us. To me, the silos look like work/career, family, friends, hobbies, health, spirituality & personal growth. My belief is that if we're able to intermingle as many of those silos as possible, we become more fulfilled. Fusion is the best word to describe it. While it's incredibly challenging, I notice the more I share my dreams/wants/needs with my family, the healthier of a unit we become.