If I’m Not a Princess, Why Do I Need So Much Rescuing (and Is That a Bad Thing?)

I have never thought of myself as a princess. I like to joke that I’m the least jappy girl in America, (though the girl who also has wet hair and no makeup, but is willing to go camping may have me beat). In fact, I pride myself on being just the opposite. I have always:

1. Prided myself on being independent, so proud of doing it “myself.” (I wonder where my 5-year old gets that idea)
2. Always so proud and drawn to things that require strength, smarts and endurance (shocking that I’m a distance runner)
3.  Happy to roll up my sleeves and help get things done

And yet I’m surprised that all too often that “Sure I can do that too” attitude leaves me buried under more than I can handle and that in the least independent way possible, I have to be rescued either through coaching of my close friends or husband, who are used to this routine, or by co-workers who bring their shovels to help dig me out.

So, if I’m not a princess, why do I need so much rescuing (and is that a bad thing?)

Around the time that I graduated high school, my younger cousin was about 4 years old and her (also fiercely independent) mother/my aunt had bought her this book called “The Paperbag Princess.” My own mother loved this book so much that she gave it to many of my friends as high school graduation presents.

The jist of it was there was a princess and her prince gets into trouble so she sets out to rescue him. She cleverly saves the day but in the process she gets into it with a dragon and messes up her hair and her clothes. When she finally rescues her prince, she is in a paperbag and her snoody prince is not impressed. The princess then has second thoughts on her prince for his not-so-nice attitude and she goes on her merry way.

And there’s no sequel that I’m aware of. But what if there was? What if that awesome princess who fought the dragon and dumped the snoody prince got into trouble in the sequel and needed help to get onto her next adventure? Would she be any less cool? Would she be any less clever or any less strong? Absolutely not.

So maybe my independence, strength and smarts are not erased by the chapter where I need someone to toss me the rope to get out of the quick sand?

I went to a parent teacher conference this week. There’s a new methodology they are rolling out called the “growth mindset.” The deal is that we are not supposed to complement our kids on what they are but on the effort that they apply. So, instead of “Great job! You’re so smart” you are supposed to say “Great job! You must have worked really hard on this.” We are also supposed to encourage mistakes and help our kids learn from them.

I can work with that. I’m not screwing up. I’m growing. I think the catch here is that you have to do something different for that to work, though. So here’s what I’m going to try (nothing like public accountability), before quickly picking something up and running with it.

1.  Slow down. Not so slow that it is ineffective but just long enough to actually think about the problem at hand.
2. Short term mitigation, long term solution. Having worked with customers for most of my career, this is old hat when it comes to an aggravated customer but easy to forget when it comes to, well, myself.
3. Rightful owner. Who is the best person for this long term? At home and at work, I have a bad habit of picking up all sorts of tasks like I’m collecting them. I’ll try to be a better sharer

So maybe being rescued from time to time is not such a bad thing. Even Superman had to rescued. Han Solo and Princess Leya too.

Speaking of which, there’s a pretty awesome, tough lady that could use our help this week, so don’t forget to vote!

Thanks for reading!

Art vs. Science

I tend to be a pretty analytical person. I love a good spreadsheet as previously discussed. A product person at heart. I love to gather requirements evaluate the options against the requirements , investigate/test the candidates and make a call, doing my best to stay on time and on budget. And that process applied both at work (which vendor should we use) and at home (which 5-year old dance lessons) generally works except for the visceral x factor that rears its head from time to time.

Professionally, for the first time in my career, I am trying to understand more about consumer decision making and what worked in a functional and critical business to business product – science, is really different in consumer, art. Because when deciding which marketing automation software to use, I don’t care if my “friends” are using it. Certainly references are important but not the same as the tentative voice of five-year-old making sure that there will be someone she knows in her class. All those careful requirements about when it is, and what the class is like, and level of intensity (or lack thereof) and how much go right out the window in favor of “your friends are in the class, I think you’ll have fun.”

And then I realized, business is more like the decisions I make for myself.  I love barre classes. I get to pretend I’m some combo of a ballerina and a fancy lady (both of which are a quite a bit of a stretch) while someone tells me what to do and I leave tired and with full credit for working out and there’s the added bonus that it helps my achy knees. But, I can’t cope with the idea that an hour of exercise (no matter how fancy) should cost more than $20 and so I’m always looking for a deal and a special. And I evaluate it:

Should I buy these classes? Well, do I have time to go?

When/where are they held? Will it fit my schedule?

Does it match my expectations about what I think these classes are worth?

Do I know the studio? Do I like the studio?

When do they expire?

And I make a call. This sounds like a lot of work but it’s fast – automatic, made from my phone when the groupon email comes in.

But, when it comes to my kids, logic goes right out the window. We are doing our best to keep our kids grounded in a world with too much of everything (and we are only moderately successful) but we are trying. But I also feel this guilt/responsibility. I put them in this community, in this world with 25 activities all weekend long, and options for everything, every day and I picked the ballet class so how am I now going to say no to the $31 (“optional” but only permitted option if it is cold) sweater? I mean, it’s not a $310 sweater right?

But how do you plan for visceral? How to engineer the “I just want it” feeling? How do you help people look past the logic of thoughtful requirements and just click.

1. Price Point

Some of it  is definitely price point. As I said, it was a $31 sweater (on top of the $40 leotard, $30 shoes and $10 leggings). But that’s not change your life money. That’s not even change the afternoon money.

2. “Just three easy payments of $99”

Which I guess brings to point 2, break it down into smaller digestible amounts. I signed up for a subscription for skin products about a year ago. Really like them and I totally flinched at the first $170 purchase for 3 months but said – I’ll give it a go. I have then spent about $60 per month – each month – that’s $720 on soap in the past year. If you tried to sell me $720 in soap a year ago for something I hadn’t even tried, I would have laughed and walked away.

3.  “The first one is free.”

And maybe that’s point three. Like the afterschool specials portrayal of drug dealers – “The first one is free.” Let me find out how much I like it before asking me to spend a lot of money on it. Let me see for myself why (or if) “I just want it.”

4. “It’s pretty.”

And this is the one that is so different then the business world I’m used to – it’s pretty. It’s aspirational – it matches who I am or who I want to be. (I get to pretend for 60 minutes that following this indulgent exercise, I will have this very calm relaxed indulgent day, floating from one relaxing and pampering activity to the next rather than the mad dash out the door to quickly shower, wake my children, catch my train and start our day.) Therein lies the art that no spreadsheet can capture.

5. “It will make them happy”

And as a parent, the one that knocks me down every time and sucks nearly every logic point out of my head, is when the notion that “it will make them happy,”  “they will love it” or the gleeful feeling that “I get to do this for them! This special thing that I get to make possible for them.” Logic doesn’t apply when it is for someone else.

Damn – makes you miss a good spreadsheet right? Where simple and straightforward logic could just be applied?  Despite our best efforts, there’s so little logic in parenting – it is so visceral, so emotional so much more “I think” vs. “I know.” So much more art than science.

Thanks for reading.

The Way We Do Things Around Here

People are watching. Not in a creepy way, well, most of the time. But your kids, your co-workers, your friends, notice the day to day, your schedule, your routine, your demeanor and it impacts the kinds of places we live and work. For better or for worse. We all know this, of course, but that change can be slow. Those realizations can be subtle, until they aren't.

The Change

Something so strange has happened in our house this week. It's Passover. When my kids were very little, it just felt it was too hard to try and get an infant or even a two year old to keep Passover, so we took out the chametz out of our house except for what they needed and went on our way. Then, they got older. We have made the decision to send them to public school and/or daycare programs without a religious affiliation. So, while we cleared all the chametz out of our house, we accepted that when they were out of the house, they would eat what was served to them and that was totally fine. But this year, something changed. My son is in Hebrew school so he has more of an understanding of Passover. He was interested in and worried about it, so then his me-too sister was also very worried about it.

We would discuss dinner and they both would ask if what we were proposing was keeping Passover. I kept trying to explain that anything that was in the house was a-okay for Passover, but they kept checking. They even asked for extra snacks so that when they were served snacks at their after school program, they could have something that was Kosher. Even for a birthday party, my son was struggling with whether he should eat cake and how that would feel. He had internalized Passover. That switch, that "the way we do things" had flipped from something subtle to something powerful and he was self policing.

My husband and I just keep looking at each other a little confused. We keep reminding them that they are kids and whatever they do is great but they keep checking in on the restrictions to make sure they are in line. Though to be fair, my 5 year old did melt down because despite her best pleas, nummies (a household name for macaroni and cheese) were not available this week.

The Norm

And work is like that too. Are people in early or late? Are they passionate or checked out? Is there a buzz or an energy or is it flat? So how come some offices have that and some don't? It's the same paradigm. We are all reacting to the situation around us and either pulling things up or down and that change can be so subtle that we don't even notice it has happened. Until we do.

I started this blog about a year ago. A whim on my commute into work. I loved writing and thinking about my kids and work. I loved the support from friends and family. I remembered what it felt like to feel so excited about what I was working on. To compulsively be writing down ideas, eager to work them through, excited to talk about it, think about it.  And while I hadn't been unhappy at my day job, I didn't feel that way. I suddenly remembered what it felt like to be excited rather than just not-unhappy. Uh oh! There are things that you can't unsee.

Once you realize that you could feel awesome, amazing, excited (also comes with stressed, frustrated and overwhelmed) and you feel okay, not unhappy, you're done. Okay is just not going to cut it. And so with that realization, I started down the path to find something with that passion, that fire again. Where the "way we do things around here" was passionate (if a bit crazy) rather than just okay.

And so the pace of this blog has slowed because I'm completely wrapped up in my new project which is crazy, but exciting and energizing. But, the way we do things around here, that organizational pulse, is faster and a bit more all consuming and that's what we all hope for in our day job!

Thanks for reading!

Are We Agile Parenting?

I like to run. Scratch that. I love to run. I love the quiet, the time, the thoughtful counsel/group therapy sessions with my running buddy, the challenge, the physical satisfaction. I could go on. 

I also love my kids pretty much more than anything else in this world. They are ever present in my thoughts, my heart, intertwined into my hopes and dreams. So many of my greatest moments of pride are for their accomplishments and the worst most heart wrenching pain is from their pain. 


But the transitive property does not apply to parenting
This morning we ran a 5k for New Years Day. A few weeks back we asked my son if he wanted to run and he excitedly said yes. As the good parents we are always trying to be, we immediately felt guilty. Did we just force our 7 year old to run? He doesn't have to love what we love. We tried every angle to make sure that he in fact wanted to, knew he didn't have to, that it was supposed to be fun but he was consistent. He wanted to. And so our job shifted from giving him the out to helping him show himself that he could do it. 

My husband, the former track star took the technical route, giving him advice on speed, his arms, how to recover without stopping and he chugged along. Ever the distance runner with no speed aspirations, I offered him my approach. We just started talking, about school, about this year, camp and then as we close in on the end, break it into chunks that I can countdown. I've been known to count lampposts on a truly tough run.

And he did it! 
His own style for sure - skipping, walking, jumping on and off the curb but we would expect nothing less and when we were done, I was sure he had hated it. Sure that he would never want to do anything like it again and the next amazing thing happen. I asked him what he thought and he replied, 

"Awesome!"
"Would you want to do it again sometime?"
"Definitely!"

I hope that he loves what I love but I will continue to make sure that we haven't forced something on our little guy. But maybe, either way, at 7 years old he just figured out that you can do more that you thought possible. In the middle of the race, when he seemed so tired and little, he said,

"I just want to finish."

Set out with a goal in mind and close it out. Uh-oh! He may or may not like running but we have hooked him onto that feeling. That notion of setting out to do something, getting it done and the pride and sense of accomplishment that comes after. It is so basic. It is the same principle that everything from checklists to agile was built on. 

So - let's back up a second. We knew how hard it would be to our little guy to set out to do something and not be able to finish. We knew that he can play basketball and tag and pretty much anything with a ball and friends for hours on end. We took him out twice, once for 1.5 miles and once for closer to 2 so we knew he could do this. Maybe slowly but knew that he could. We are always trying to make sure that our kids are set up for success and that they are taking on manageable chunks at a time. Always trying.

Are We Agile Parenting?
So in software, this is typically called Scrum. It is the process of defining a descrete well defined list of tasks that should be able to be completed in a well defined period of time. Tasks are estimated at the beginning, work is attempted and hopefully, but not always completed during a period of time, typically called a sprint. After the designated period of time, the sprint ends whether or not the work is completed. The team takes the learnings from what they were and weren't able to complete and rolls that into how they look at the current tasks and future tasks. 

This process replaced waterfall development - Start Big Giant project - long period of time - Finish Giant Project with little to no output in between. Agile has been widely adopted in software and pulled into everything from hardware to marketing. After having a taste of agile projects, I find myself so frustrated by the waterfall approach. I can't stand the relationships and structures it creates on a team - the walls and silos rather than the continuous evolution together.

But Parenting? I mean we can't very well go from New Baby - long period of time  - Well Adjusted Adult - so yeah, we're going to need to break it down. It is why reports and feedback and assesments from the time kids are just months old came to be. We needed to know how we were doing at each juncture, where we needed to adjust, change, bring in more resources and where things were going pretty well.


See, it's not crazy!
Okay so he doesn't have to love the things I love, but if my little guy can get the hang of setting a goal and finishing it - a feeling that for me comes time and time again from running, then we have done something important. And in a time where everyone is setting New Year's Resolutions, small goals or changes that they can make, if we can help with the hard wiring so that he can set the goals - I'm going to take that as a big victory.  I'm so proud of my monkey today but not for running 3.1 miles. I'm proud of him for becoming a person who takes on a challenge and finishes it.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading!