Strategic Teenage Parenting??

Even though I am now on my own as a periodic consultant and should-be-committed-writer, I still very much enjoy my subscriptions to the agency trade and business publications that flicker in my inbox.  Today’s gem was from Inc. Magazine.  Here’s the original opening set-up.

6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers

by Paul J. H. Schoemaker

You’re the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day. Here’s how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it’s time for you to “be strategic.”

Whatever that means.

 

After many years in agency leadership positions, (particularly leading a field office which had entrepreneurial aspects to it) I appreciate Mr. Schoemaker’s guidance.  He’s dead right.  But now I see his ideas as even more important for me to absorb today, as a leader of an increasing number of more troubling constituents:  TEENAGERS.

I couldn’t help having some fun converting Mr. Schoemaker’s excellent strategic leadership habits into parenting advice. As I review them, it’s clear that they could spell life or death to the current and future state of our household.

Ponder with me as I translate the “leader” and “thinker” language into our crazy home life.  Thanks Mr. Schoemaker for allowing me the editing liberty, and though I changed almost nothing in content and selected the top three habits, you can see the entire article here.

Of course we must start with that irresistible opening paragraph.

6 Habits of True Strategic Parents.. modified by me!

In the beginning, there was just you and your mate. You did anything you wanted. You slept in, you met with friends, you emptied the trash (or not) and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have teenagers who do all that instead of you and it’s time for you to “be strategic.”

Whatever that means.

(…)

Adaptive strategic parents — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

Anticipate 

Most of the focus in families is on what’s directly ahead.  Parents lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your family vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your teenagers’ lives. 
• Search beyond the current boundaries of your driveway and your fear
• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better.  Verizon, for one.

Align

Total consensus is rare. A strategic parent must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge.  To pull that off, you need to:

• Understand what drives your teenager’s agenda, including what remains hidden. With Facebook, less is hidden than they think.
• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it’s uncomfortable. Ugh.
• Assess (your own) risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support (other parents sometimes)

Learn

As your family ages and grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by.  Yep. They clam up. You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure–especially failure–are valuable sources of family connection and maturing.  Here’s what you need to do:

• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons. Requires military tactics to get them to share. Keep Going.
• Shift course quickly if you realize you’re off track. Very tough. They’ll likely catch you and use it against you. Keep Going.
• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight. Warning: failures get more expensive and usually can’t be moved into someone else’s budget.

Do you have what it takes?

Obviously, this is a daunting list of tasks, and frankly, no one is born a black belt in all these different skills. But with a good sense of humor, the joys outweigh the trials.

I recommend Date Night and lots of prayer. And the best part is, loving them just as they are.

Thanks for playing!

Mr. Schoemaker’s list expands to include wonderful parallels of interpreting data (see my earlier post on texting!) and making decisions (is it really possible to balance risk?) and of course, the ever-subjective critical thinking.  But for now, we can all smile and remind ourselves that companies rise and fall with various skills in leadership; but families provide our  most important, difficult and rewarding investment opportunities which will affect many generations to come.

We will endure…!