Book Review: The 3 BIG Questions For a Frantic Family
Book Reviews May 6th, 2010A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life
Author: Patrick Lencioni
Lencioni is one of my favorite business authors and his fables make his message interesting to read as a story and easy to learn from. This fable resonated for me since it looks to apply business skills and strategy to your home life, which I’m often finding myself striving to do anyway. This book is based on the premise that even successful business people with well structured knowledge and strategy business practice typically lack the application of any such strategy or even goals for managing their own families. As a result, we have frantic families with nothing more than organized chaos and no clear direction or strategy for being operated. This story explores that from the point of view of a stay at home mom, Theresa, of one of these successful business strategists.
The family of Theresa and husband, Jude, is introduced showing all the classic signs of family overload with the Jude having a busy work life and some travel away form home while the 3 kids in the family consume enormous effort with all their programs, volunteering and sports they are involved in which of course, create a hectic daily schedule.  As day to day life seems to get in the way of what Theresa and Jude wish their family to be like, an argument erupts and Jude makes the statement, “if my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they’d be out of business.” This sets Theresa off on a mission to discover what really is it then that Jude’s strategy consulting firm gives clients and she looks to apply that to their own family. She discovers and applies a set of questions from the strategy consulting to the family model and uses these to shape a new found purpose, control and direction for her family. This is all shaped into 3 big questions.
Question #1: What makes your family unique?
This section looks at core values that really define your family to be unique. Not just any values you want or aspire to, but actual core values that clearly define your family. The book through both the story and through the model outline at the end give many examples of how to then turn this into a short paragraph that defines the family, its purpose and the values that it adheres to in accomplishing its purpose.
Question #2: What is your family’s top priority rallying cry right now?
Evey family has an area to work on, solve or stress to relief at any time and this section is to define that focus area and get the family working together to make that rallying call happen. This could be anything from spending more quality time together, to finishing a renovation to getting a kid to college. Whatever it is, the family should be focused to achieve it and working together consistently to make it happen. It can also be used to align short term decision making with what is priority for the family, especially when a new activity or event could get in the way of that rallying cry!
Question #3: How are we going to talk about and use the answers to these questions?
This last question is a way to plan the family strategy and make commitments around them. Setting up some kind of review of progress, communication towards the goals on a regular basis and fixed times to talk or share important events and decisions as they come up. This should include how to talk about areas as parents as well as with any children in the family or extended family that are directly involved. Planning the communication strategy to answer questions about priorities and if the family is making progress towards those only helps to bring the family together to achieve the rallying cry.
So, there is lots to learn from all of Lencioni’s books and this book is no exception. It’s an engaging story that teaches the ideas well and the examples and struggles are easy to relate to and apply in your own life and family. I definitely recommend it!
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May 6th, 2010 at 6:51 AM
I think most family’s are frantic these days, when I was growing up the mothers stayed home, now they are out working and the kids are left to day cares after school study groups or whatever. I find when you plan well enough in advance and make a calendar where anyone in the family can put requests in, then a dinner talk about it, things tend to run a little smoother.
May 6th, 2010 at 7:01 AM
its no surprise that communication and helping to fit in everyone’s requests is good advice and you will certainly see many examples of that in this book. There is a lot more to it though in this which uses a framework of strategy and applied questions to help focus a family on the things that actually matter to it.
May 6th, 2010 at 11:06 AM
#1) My wife and I value patience, time and understanding.
These 3 qualities are on the top of our list even more so now because of our little baby girl needing us each and every day.
#2) Our main focus now is to keep the baby healthy and plan for her future like funding, schooling, artistic interests.
#3) We have a “family day” on Sunday, which means we focus on family goals and spend all day together. We usually try to keep topics of work and politics outside of Sunday.
This post resonates to our current family dynamic a lot.
May 6th, 2010 at 5:13 PM
@Vincent. Nicely done! You definitely seem to have a good grasp and shared understanding of priorities. You’d love this book as there is a lot more to it and would likely add some tools for you to use to take that model further and set more specific rally call among other things. Great response though, thanks for your comment!
May 9th, 2010 at 4:47 AM
I definitely agree that the pace of life today compared to the yesteryears is taking its toll on families. Not only do both parents in the household have full-time jobs, the duration and demands of their jobs are higher than ever, and the competition makes them stay sucked up in the rat race 99% of the time. This surely takes its toll on family bonding time and has an overall effect in the outcome of the children’s future. Of course, not all families are like this, but more and more are becoming like that every day.
Till then,
Jean
May 25th, 2010 at 3:46 AM
Tramwork is the only way to effectively manage your family these days. The old misnomer of the husband being the breadwinner has gone right out the window, with both partners contributing in to the pot in most families, and hence the parenting duties need to get distributed more evenly too.
Mothers will always be mothers, but expecting them to hold down a full time job or career, while having to hold a family together by themselves is just not on any more. The man must help too, period.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:48 AM
Tramwork = Teamwork
I do apologise for any confusion jy spelling error might have caused 😉