Many Skills Are Transferable Between My Desk Job and Parenting

Photo by: Humphrey Muleba

I have been working as a management consultant for more than 10 years (in case you are wondering, this article is a good overview of what we do all day). At first glance, it appears that the world of spreadsheets, stakeholder engagement, and report writing has little crossover with looking after young children.

However, when I had babies and went on maternity leave to look after them, I was surprised by how many parallels there were between the two worlds. Turns out that many of my management consulting skills translate to keeping babies alive and well. Without further ado, here are some:

1. Long hours, often requiring working around the clock for long periods of time — tick! When my firstborn turned out to be a terrible sleeper who would wake up every hour, I didn’t despair. I knew I can function and do important work on limited sleep.
2. More work than time available. My ruthless prioritising skills came to shine — focusing on first priority of keeping the baby alive, followed by keeping them clean & dry, and cascading down to frivolous tasks like doing the dishes only if there is time and free hands available.
3. Unique and extremely complex problem, with multiple interdependent variables and poor data quality. About three seconds into my parenting journey, I realised how bad the baby data is (what do you mean normal baby poo schedule ranges between 5 times/day and once every 5–10 days?!?) and how little is actually rooted in proper research (thank you, Emily Oster & Cribsheet).
   However, this realisation still didn’t stop me from trying to analyse every single baby-related variable and draw causations between them.
   Most of the time, I did this with the goal of making my baby asleep by recreating the exact conditions from that one day when he slept well — So, if we breastfeed exactly every 2 hours and 24 minutes, have 3 x 43-minute naps and bounce to sleep to the sounds of Wheels On the Bus, he should sleep well. Spoiler alert — he woke up 18 times that night.
4. Unpredictable and often difficult client. Babies are notoriously terrible at communicating, tend to change their minds often, and shout at you when you get it wrong. No worries, I have encountered clients with all of these qualities and have strategies to cope. Even if one of those is closing myself in the bathroom and having a good cry.
5. Navigating uncertainty, adapting & learning quickly — In management consulting, you are expected to be thrown into a new situation, gather important facts about a new client, industry, or problem; and quickly move on to providing valuable and thoughtful advice.
   Enter children — it is a completely new world with so much to learn (bowel movements, introducing solids, and sleep all have their entire professions dedicated to it!); they have a 180 degrees of character change every 2–3 days, problem-to-be solved is unclear and extremely poorly defined. No worries.
   I am trained to gather the most important information from trusted sources (my go-to’s are veteran parents and surprisingly often baby professionals on Instagram!), and quickly move from research to doing, course correcting along the way.
   Much of it boils down to having the courage to act, even when you know you don’t have all the information — terrifying, but so necessary when parenting little ones.
6. Juggling multiple balls and still meeting all of the deadlines. This one came really handy when I had my second baby. Keeping both of my impatient little clients happy requires lots of:
   a) Task-switching: dashing from crying toddler in the kitchen to crying baby in the living room
   b) Multitasking: feeding the baby while putting shoes on my toddler, and
   c) Prioritising your most important (read — angry) clients: sorry baby, you will not remember that time mommy left you crying for 2 mins in your cot to tend to your brother who was screaming louder.

Conclusion

You might not be a management consultant yourself but have another equally seemingly real-life incompatible/impractical job. However, don’t underestimate your skillset going into parenting, and vice-versa — looking after kids is another opportunity to further develop those skills!