Marriage is, and should be, run like a family business.
A business where the husband and wife are co-founders, the extended family members are colleagues and children are trainees.
Fulfillment, sense of accomplishment, financial security and happiness are pursuits of the workplace. They are also as much pursuits of life at home. So why do we approach work in a completely different way than we look at the way our household is run?
Just like at work, at home a successful marriage requires that the couple strategize together — focus on the long-term goals, break things down into short term tasks, and then bring life and management skills to each task.
Marriage, living and functioning 24x7 with another human being, can be challenging — letting it run without deliberate care and planning can only add to the stress.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak, newspapers worldwide have carried articles of increasing separation and divorce rates, break-ups and heart-breaks. Enormous stress, being locked up in an apartment, lack of social interaction, have led to all of us feeling more anxious. Frustration levels have also been at an all-time high, made worse if you children at home, instead of at school.
I do believe that if we approach our marriage differently, we can replenish some of the comfort, stability and rhythm that the pandemic has taken away from us.
How can we do this? Here is my little checklist of what has worked for my husband and I, as we build our life with our three little kids. And they center around running our marriage like we run our business.
1. Have structured meetings
Yes, proper meetings with notes and agendas and to-dos and calendar entries. When we start a new meeting, we first look at our notes from the previous one. Come on, you know how meetings work in the office. You just need to conduct them at home on your dining table. This helps sets expectations and clarifies where you both stand on who will do what task. Agenda items can be anything that’s on your mind from personal feelings to expectations to items needed for the kids.
Here is a sample agenda from my notebook:
- Short term finances
- Health insurance claims
- Friends we’d like to see this month
What to do with kids this weekend
Here is a sample agenda from my husband’s notebook:
- Items I added in the Amazon cart
- Can we work together on some cost calculations for my work
- I have some races coming up so mark your calendar
- I’d like to sign up the kids for soccer
-Dude, we have got to checkout this new show!
2. Build your village — you will need one.
Consider family members as trusted colleagues. Work hard to build a fantastic team. Parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbors, friends love to be involved. If asked respectfully they will open themselves in a way you can’t imagine. So it’s important to lean on them, and ask for their help. Just like we delegate at work, we need to at home. Parents are the soundest, most experienced consultants, siblings are the cool aunts and uncles when you want your kids out of your hair, and cousins can be your pals when you need to blow off some steam.
And just like one person cannot do everything at work, an individual cannot run the house. It’s very important to acknowledge this and hire help or outsource tasks as per your budget and comfort level. We live in a world where food deliveries, cleaning services can be arranged using apps and wonderful, caring, trained nannies can support us with childcare. So be open to using some or all of these tools.
3. Pay yourself first
I mean, pay your wife or the partner who keeps the household, first. All other expenses should be made after that. A sound financial plan allows for enough cash flow to keep a household running for 12 months, if one or both partners lose their income. Ensure that you buy the latest iPhone, TV or car only after you are both aligned in your family’s financial goals. Just like in a business cash is king, financial security is a big area of conflict among couples.
4. Forgive and forget
Families, and family businesses are rife with conflict. They tolerate some level of conflict in order to work together. Its important to not take things too seriously and learn to move on. In fact, conflict can help clear the air in times of heated disputes, thereby allowing people to regain some distance in a relationship in which they feel momentarily overwhelmed. Family love and loyalty can often outweigh individual ego and rivalry. So try not to hold grudges. In Haryanvi we have a saying, “teri meri bane koni, tere bina sare koni.” Cant live with you, but sure can’t exist without you.
5. Focus on the long-term
Family business are often praised for their long-term outlook. Similarly at home, it’s important that you discuss a long term plan. This will make many short-term decisions easier. If down the line you would like to buy a house, discuss it. This will help you talk about a savings plan, start you off on what type of house or the location. Or whether you would like to have kids, and if yes, how many. If you are a single income household, the split of responsibilities can be straight-forward. However, if you are dual-income couple interested in advancing in your careers, you may need to shift focus from one person’s career taking the lead to another, from time to time. What I mean is that alternating this focus can relieve some pressure if the woman wants to take time off to have children or one of the spouse wants to go back to university for a degree. This can also help manage expectations between the couple.
By no means is this an exhaustive list. But it’s a starting point to get you going in the direction of applying business thinking at home.
