OPINION - Parenting like a (real) boss: should we apply workplace tactics in the home?

I’ve long believed that keeping family and business separate is a golden rule in life. I am baffled by couples who co-work, and when I hear about people who join their parents’ business, I’m perplexed: how do meetings not descend into a big sulking match?

Just take a quick glance at the Windsors. Case in point.

But I’m seeing a fascinating new trend that suggests families can work together, and that tools we use in business can apply to family life, and vice versa. I’ve seen musings on LinkedIn, heard discussions on podcasts, and, recently, a work colleague casually mentioned that her week was particularly busy because “she had a lot of action points from her family meeting”.

More and more people are taking things that they do at the office and adding them to their home lives. Whether it’s annual planning, objective setting, holding all hands meetings or using data-driven decision making, the behaviour of the office is being adopted in the home.

Christine Armstrong, a researcher, author and expert on workplace culture, recently went away with her husband to conduct an “annual life planning workshop”. While she admits it did feel awkward at first, she said it was a hugely helpful experience. Crucially putting time aside and being away from the kids, she said, gave the couple space to think about what they wanted out of the year ahead.

The idea here is that you set an agenda and agree targets for the year. Top items include holidays, relationship milestones, and budgets. It all sounds sensible.

I couldn’t help but feel a little bit cringey about the whole thing, but, given the chaotic nature of my own homelife, I thought there’d be no harm in giving this apparently modern approach a go. I started on a smaller scale, and inspired by my colleagues “family status meetings”, I convened my brood around the kitchen table. And when I say convened, I mean bribed with snacks.

I’d hope to be able to use the time like I use my Monday meetings at work: review any recent challenges and discuss what was going on and what we wanted to achieve in the week ahead. My first mistake was to kick-off with the difficult questions, at which point my seven-year-old started screaming at my four-year-old about her disgusting eating habits, and my nine-year-old decided that she’d rather read her Kindle.

I tried hard to move the conversation along. But my usual meeting room tactic of silence doesn’t really translate when your children start singing festive songs.

I suppose my experiment wasn’t hugely fruitful. Initially I sought to persevere. Our first go at this business-minded family dynamic also reminded me of the economist Emily Oster, who has driven the trend of “data-driven parenting”. Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University and she approaches the world of parenting in the same way as she approaches every other topic: by looking into the numbers. Given how alarmist or schmaltzy the world of parenting can be, I thought it might be a refreshing, no-nonsense perspective.

Oster prefers peer-reviewed evidence over Mumsnet forums. I work in a data driven business so this very much makes sense to me, but when I reached for her latest work, The Family Firm, I wanted to run a mile. Worksheets, family mission statements and weighing up the data to decide my kids’ extracurricular activities appeals to lots of parents, but I’m afraid it was a step too far for me.

Really, I think the best thing about families is that they are inherently messy. We like to remain in tight control of our work lives; at home we should embrace the unpredictable and the brilliantly bonkers world of kids. Becoming a mum or dad is an act of relinquishing control and the very nemesis of modern parenting is the perfect Instagram shots of tidy and smiley children.

From my experience, most families will struggle to operate as a business. In fact, most barely manage to operate as a family most of the time. I love the idea that you can learn from other areas of your life, but to be honest I’d rather keep boss me and mum me as two very different people.