Running Your Family’s December Like You Run Your Business, Minus the Status Meetings
Most business owners will spend more time planning next year’s budget than planning the next six weeks at home. That’s backwards. Family holiday planning doesn’t need a Gantt chart, but it does need the same thing your company needs every December: a short conversation about what matters, who’s doing what, and what you’re going to say no to.
Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, most owners’ calendars fill up with client parties, year-end deadlines, travel, school events and relatives. At work you’d never let a quarter run that way. At home, a lot of us do exactly that, then wonder why January feels like we got run over.
Why owners plan the business and wing the family
I’ve been guilty of this. In Family 2.0 I wrote about how entrepreneurs plan their companies with care and almost never do the same for the family they’re working so hard for. That gap is widest in December, because the business is screaming for attention at the same moment the family calendar gets crowded.
Families can tell when you bring the office home. Mine could. (I’ve written before about the night my wife caught me answering emails in bed.) So borrow the few habits that make a company run well and leave the rest at work.
What to borrow from the business
Start with what matters most this year
Every good planning session starts with priorities. At home that sounds like one question at dinner: what would make this December feel good to you?
You’ll get different answers depending on the season your family is in. When our daughters were younger, the holidays were loud and a little chaotic, and that was part of the fun. Now they’re young adults and the house is quieter. I wrote about that shift in What Thanksgiving Taught Me This Year. The traditions that matter now may be different from the ones that mattered ten years ago, and the only way to find out is to ask.
When we built our own family values years ago, we landed on three words: support, integrity and adventure. Those still make a decent filter for December. If an event doesn’t fit any of them, it’s a candidate for the no pile.
Decide who owns what
At work, nothing gets done until someone owns it. Families are no different. Someone has to book the flights, plan the meal, buy the gifts for the in-laws and figure out who’s driving whom.
In a lot of households one person ends up carrying most of it. Put the list on the table and split it up. Kids can own more than you think. Owners are great at delegating at the office and terrible at it at home, mostly because nobody ever made a list.
Hold one short check-in a week
In our house we started weekly Sunday check-ins. The agenda was simple: what’s going well, what needs adjusting, meal plans for the week and what’s coming up next week. I wrote about how that worked in Parenting as a Startup.
December is the month that kind of check-in earns its keep. Fifteen minutes on Sunday night catches the double-booked Saturday, the forgotten school concert and the trip nobody confirmed. It’s the closest thing to a status meeting your family should ever have, and it should be short and include snacks.
What to leave at the office
Skip the status meetings and the scorekeeping
Nobody wants a progress report on the gift list. Nobody wants a KPI for family togetherness. If you catch yourself asking your spouse for an update the same way you’d ask a project manager, stop.
The point of planning is to clear space so you can actually be there. Planning that turns the family into another team you manage defeats the purpose.
Protect the time you planned for
The hardest part for most owners is staying off the phone once the plan is set. I wrote recently about the Thanksgiving Test: whether your business can run without you for a week. If the answer is no, December will expose it, and your family will feel it before you do.
Block the days that matter on your work calendar first, the same way you’d block a board meeting. Tell your team which days you’re actually unreachable. Then mean it.
Where to start this week
You don’t need a retreat to do this, though that’s how it started for us. In 2015 I took the planning habits from my companies and turned them into a four-day retreat for my own family, where we looked back at the year, talked about how we treat each other and set goals together. That became Family 2.0.
For December, a smaller version works fine. Pick a night this week. Ask everyone what would make the holidays feel good. Write down the events, the trips and the jobs that need an owner. Cross a few things off. Put a Sunday check-in on the calendar through New Year’s.
If you want a head start, the free eBook 10 Business Lessons That Can Improve Your Home Life walks through more of the habits that carry over from the office. Take the ones that fit your family and skip the rest.
In our house the turkey still goes on the Big Green Egg, same as every year. Most of the rest is fair game at Sunday’s check-in.
