I want to make business speak the official language of my home. I think it would be great to be able to converse with my children and wife using the words we take for granted in the office everyday; and see their reactions as I crush their dreams with nonsense.
Sorry kiddo, I'll not be able to attend your basketball game tonight because I don't have the "bandwidth" to handle both your game and your brothers hockey tryout. You're asking me to "multitask" and I'm going to have move one of your events because someone "double-booked" my calendar and I'm "slammed."
I can't wait till my wife suggests we go out to dinner on a Friday night and I respond by saying, "that sounds fine; check my calendar, it's up to date, and send me an invite." Or showing up to the family room while my kids are watching TV and standing there staring at them until one looks up and I say, "sorry to do this, but I have the family roomed booked at 9 but I saw that the kitchen TV is unused right now, do you mind moving?"
My daughter is now required to enter all of her homework assignments; now referred to as "tasks" into a home version of Salesforce.com. I told her that if it's not on Salesforce, it did not happen. Each day she sends me a "Daily Flash" report and on Friday's an APA report. I no longer give her money for her discretionary spending, but rather she submits an expense report that requires receipts. To be fair I issued the family an "employee manual" so there is no excuse for unauthorized expenses and we are on the same page regarding cell phone expenses and any entertainment costs that don't involve something that is positive for the family.
I understand this hard for my daughter and when she gets upset and wants to discuss it at our family dinners I firmly look her in the eye and say, "let's take this offline." I explain to her that we want to "stay on point" during the family dinner and that we can certainly review this EOD/EOM/SOB whichever works best for her. She sent me an IM on Skype suggesting we meet "offsite" and do this at the SOS (school).
Not sure this new way of speaking at home will take off but I thought it would be worth the test. In fact, my family and I are going to do a "POC" on this over the weekend and I'll let everyone know how it played out. I've developed some KPI's for the program and I'm excited to see how the "metrics" fall into place. If it fails miserably I'll hope that my wife doesn't have a RIF and downsize me out of the house.
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