Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Leading at Home - A Focused Family
"Did he really just say that?" my wife leaned over and whispered. We were at a marriage conference at Focus on the Family several years ago and Francis Chan was speaking. The question he had just posed hung over the audience: "Are you focused on your family? Or is your family focused?" [video].
His challenge was clear. It isn't enough to simply focus attention on our activities, status, and comfort; rather, there is a deep need to set intentional direction for our families.
Life in the American family today is like warp speed from the science fiction films of the 80's and 90's. The control operator hits a button and the space craft lurches forward with blurry white lines whizzing past, until suddenly the craft lurches again and you've arrived in deep space. For many, deep space is graduation day or the day you give your little princess away in marriage and wonder, "where did the time go?" But for some, deep space isn't so joyous. It could be that somewhere our lives and families careened off course - and when the white lines stop, we look around and ask, "How did I get here? What went wrong?"
We get in trouble because we aren't focused. But the culprit isn't just busyness. There is a foe lurking in the shadows that strikes our minds with cries of "urgency," the need to do everything, and do it now. In so doing, weariness weighs down our best intentions.
Vexed by this challenge in his own home and through an unfortunate passing comment made to his wife, Patrick Lencioni, one of my favorite authors on organizational health, took on the challenge to translate business principles into family management practices. From his own journey, he wrote The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family, a fable about a frantic family that got focused.
Recently, this book caused me to stop and look around. It was a hectic time for our family: soccer, homeschool, piano, church, ministry, and seemingly every other activity under the sun was continually vying for our energies and attentions. We were exhausted, running at warp speed. Agreeing that something needed to change, we sat down and went through Lencioni's exercises. Though still busy, and intentionally so, we now have focus. We have a simple framework to make choices clearer and then to evaluate performance against. Here's how it works:
Step 1: Identify what makes your family unique. What things make your family different from those around you? These can be your particular traits (timely, organized, athletic), or your core values (honesty, service, gratitude) or your strategy (life is centered around the family, the poor, or politics). The key is that they are true of your family; sometimes others might even think you take them too far or possibly even find them annoying.
Step 2: Determine your family's top priority, or "rallying cry," right now. What is most important for your family to focus on for the next 2 to 5 months? Maybe it is getting somebody healthy (spiritually, psychologically, physically, etc.). Maybe it is adopting a child or moving to a new home. For some, it might be getting out of debt or making more time for the family. The point is that you have a singular focus. If you were to achieve just one thing during that time, what is the most impactful thing you could do?
Step 3: Create supporting activities. The 3 to 5 things that must happen for you to achieve your rallying cry. Basically, they are the trackable actions that, if accomplished, will assure you of accomplishing your top priority. Let's say your top priority is to spend more time as a family. Your supporting activities might be dad traveling less, reducing non-family activities, intentionally scheduling family dates and outings.
Step 4: Set Basic Health Gauges. Even focused families have to make sure all cylinders are running properly, even while you focus on your main priority. These are the typical warning lights to alert you to trouble. They are the basic components of family life that we typically keep our eyes on: finances, health, marriage, etc. So, if your rallying cry is "remodel the basement," you may see your finance light turning red if you pass on carpet and opt for an imported wood floor. Or the marriage light, if your spouse is a bit overconfident in his ability to save costs by doing the electrical work himself. Oops.
The keys to success for this effort are simple. First, set aside time to take through each of the four steps. Second, write them down. Third, review them on a weekly basis and quickly evaluate performance using a green (good), yellow (ok), red (needs attention) scale. The idea is not precision (sorry engineers), rather a quick subjective way to remind ourselves of what's important, where we're at and what changes we need to make for the next week.
It seems only fair that I share ours (and I'd love to see yours as well!). It's important to note, Autumn is always an extra busy period for our family with sports, school and other activities. As a result, we can get very outward focused. So our rallying cry for the winter is a reminder to make sure our foundation as a family stays strong.
Francis Chan is right; are our families focused? Are we intentional about redeeming the days?
Here's to a focused family.
