What Raising 4 Kids Taught Me About Project Management

“You know… in six months I’ll only have one kid left in my house,” I mused to the CEO, as we talked about the close of 2017 and the New Year, business and personal goals, “It’s kinda weird to be watching what has been a 24 year project wind down… at least the hands on part of it.”

He chuckled, “Yep, that’s a long term project…”

About a decade ago, as our little ship came to rest calmly in the placid waters of middle childhood, the hurricane decade of pregnancy and nursing, toddlers and tantrums, toilet training and learning to read having passed towards the horizon, I looked stood on the deck, took a deep breath, and spoke to my soul about middle things.

Coming up for air with four school aged kids, beginning what would be the decade of great adventure as a family, most of which was still out of sight beyond the curve of my earth, was a palpable moment for me. Anyone who’s done the baby merry-go-round more than a couple of times can relate. I brushed the hair out of my no longer sleepless eyes and reminded myself to pay attention, be present, enjoy the journey, for in another few years, as quickly and uproariously as they had come, they would go. Every other year, for almost another decade.

As the third child squares his shoulders, and prepares for launch, with the fourth one all but elbowing him out of the way, it occurs to me that, among the things I’ve learned from this parenting process, the most valuable is, perhaps, project management.

We were the people who took parenting classes before we had kids. Before we were even pregnant, just because it seemed like a good idea to frame the landscape before we dove in. Mind you, that didn’t stop us from making every mistake we could think of. It just meant that we made most of them on purpose.

We were the people who talked through exactly what our end goal was before we brought the first baby home. We made lists of all of the skills we hoped the kids would learn over the span of their childhoods. It was about 24 pages long. Yes, really.

I read every parenting book I could lay my hands on, from sleep training, to teaching your baby to read and do math. I implemented every system. Automated every household task possible. Organized our days on spreadsheets. Planned our meals by the month and cooked in advance. Planned an entire year’s worth of curriculum for the kids before the first of September.

Of course Tuesday afternoons always threw a monkey wrench in our plans when someone:

• Puked
• Tried to set the deck on fire with a half can of mower gas
• Fell two stories out of a tree
• Released a live frog in the house
• Disassembled the toilet just to see how it worked
• Drank half a cup of poison
• Poked a sister in the eye with a paintbrush
• Broke a water pipe in the basement while stick fighting (INSIDE??? Really??)
• Required stitches, again
• Or threw a cup of grape juice the length of the light carpet in the living room

We won’t talk about the:

• Entire bottle of red wine broken down the spiral staircase of an Airbnb with white walls and white carpet
• Or the nine lemons smuggled into New Zealand by an unnamed son
• Or the hospital visits in foreign countries
• Or the explosive diarrhea on chicken buses

We just won’t. If you’ve got kids, you know. If you don’t, well, there’s no way to help you understand. And that’s okay.

Forging ahead in my conversation with Fred about the various moving targets in marketing and content development it occurred to me that the best education I’ve gotten in agility and project management came from corralling the crazy that was four kids under four. Subsequently moving them through a couple of decades and out the door as self sufficient, adults; who not only believe they can do anything they set their minds to, they have the tools to do so. And they are.

Not everyone chooses to raise kids, but I’ve yet to meet the person without projects to manage, so I thought I’d share the hard won lessons, on the off chance that you can relate.

Frame the Project

Set a clear goal. At the outset. Set the big goal, you know BHAG that scares you. Then set the secondary goals for supporting projects. Tertiary goals that stack neatly like lego within the secondary, and so on.

Trust me when I tell you that this is far simpler in business than it is in childrearing, but you already knew that.

Set Priorities

No project goes to plan. Ever. Why? Why is not a productive question; particularly if there are children involved. Wise project managers set priorities and decide, preferably in advance, which things are most important over the long haul, and which things they’re willing to let go or be flexible about.

“Will and I have been talking about when we have kids… if we have kids…” my daughter shared recently. “We’ve decided that respect is really important… we’re going to focus on that.”

I concur. Respect and community minded thinking are really the only two things we prioritized with our kids. When they were very little, we boiled that down further and if you’d asked any of my three year olds what our two rules were they would have told you, “Kindness, and Love.”

In the business world, mastery of those two concepts: respect for self and others, the company and the project at hand, facilitates communication and group work.

Community minded thinking, consideration for the whole, support of the strengths, needs, weaknesses, etc. of the team and one’s role within that is the essence of successful corporate culture, and family culture too. As a parent those were my priorities. As a project and team manager, those are still my priorities, even within the more specific task related ones.

Reassess Often

It’s easy to get lost in the mire of toddlerhood, or middle childhood, or that damned Issues project that has changed gears four times in the past six months, been put on the back burner, then dusted off, now refocused, the iterated on, only to have a key player inadvertently left out of the loop, now back on track. I get it. These things happen.

My Uncle Dick has given me many gifts, among them is a key tool for reassessment, regardless of life application. He taught me to stop in the middle of the mess, lift my head and look around, and ask three questions.

1. Where am I?
2. What’s going on here?
3. What is the next appropriate course of action?

If you’re stuck, those three questions will sort you out. Even if they take a few days to answer thoroughly. Take your time. There’s rarely a hurry.

Stop. Get perspective. Refocus. Keep going.

Respect Teammates

As the mother of young children, I ran the show. Our house was never a democracy. It was a benevolent dictatorship at best. I was not one of those moms who could wheedle patiently in that sing-songy voice for twenty years, negotiating with a little terrorist about every damned thing. It’s just not me. There was guilt about that, by times. There isn’t now.

As the mother of teens, I run almost none of the show. The goal is to produce capable adults, right? In our house, that means that by the time you’re sixteen you’re expected to spin your own plates. We’ll continue to feed you and keep a roof over your head while you practice out those last two years, but I respect you too much to remind you to tie your shoes, or go to bed, or stay off your device, or eat your vegetables.

In project management, there’s a difference between a baby team, just getting off the ground, where skill sets are still developing and hands on management is required, and teams of A players who know their shit and would rather not explain the minutia to a micro-manager. To do so would be a waste of their time and talent. Know the difference. Respect the difference. Respect the individuals.

My Dad always said, of raising children, “Treat them as much like adults as they can stand.”

Of project management, I would say, “Treat team members as much like A players as they can stand.”

Expect developmentally appropriate competence. Actively build skill sets. Support independent decision making and action.

Be Willing to Change Gears

Marketing is a moving target. So is raising children. The economy is volatile, people are fickle, competition is fierce. So are toddlers and teenagers; just sayin’.

Just because you set one goal doesn’t mean it can’t be adjusted. Secondary and tertiary project goals will almost certainly require a significant change in gears from time to time. Don’t be afraid of that. Try not to be frustrated by it either.

Successful parents know not to take the monkey wrenches thrown into family life personally. Successful project managers know that too. The goal of the project manager is to take the new information, step back from the puzzle pieces, figure out where to factor it in, and then keep going.

Encourage Experimentation

Do things really have to be done 100% your way? I mean, we all know that our way is the RIGHT way, of course, and our ideas are the BEST ideas, without a doubt. Obviously. But COULD it be done another way? Maybe?

If there is one thing I’ve learned from a couple of decades of parenthood it’s the value of experimentation. Mine. The kids’. A team mate’s. It’s easy to lose that in the flow charts, spreadsheets and Asana tasks of project management. Don’t lose it.

Make time for the “I wonder what would happen…” and the “What if’s…” on your team. If necessity is the mother of invention, creativity is your crazy aunt. Don’t project manage that out of your team. Invite it.

Keep Going

Parenthood brought me to my knees inside the first week. I remember reaching the end of my rope for, oh, probably the millionth time, a couple of years into the motherhood gig. I put the baby in the crib and the toddlers on beds with books and walked straight out of the house. They cried. I cried. And I put two closed doors between us so that we couldn’t hear each other.

Knowing I had two full decades of Thursday afternoons left was demoralizing at that moment, when I hadn’t yet reached my own third decade and thus had no perspective on how quickly it would all pass.

Sometimes, it’s just hard. Sometimes we are overwhelmed. Sometimes we don’t have the necessary skills and don’t know where to look to find them. Sometimes a project just seems to big to manage.

Sometimes we need to step away so that we can keep going.

Sometimes it’s okay to put your project in a safe place with some entertainment to keep it distracted and just tap the fuck out for a minute so you can think it through.

Before Christmas, on a frustrated call with teammates it seemed like we had two factions at loggerheads regarding the purpose of the project, with my particular piece wedged uncomfortably in the middle. We agreed to take a break over the holidays and revisit it with the CEO in the New Year. Two weeks later, Lo, and behold, within thirty minutes, with cheerful attitudes, we’d reached consensus and are happily moving forward. Turns out we weren’t at loggerheads after all, just slight stylistic differences at the end of the day, and a communication breakdown. Onward.

Sometimes you have to step back to keep going.

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What has life taught you?