Parenting and Project Management

Being a parent requires quite a bit of Project Management, especially with young children.  It is a project to get anywhere, and a project to get toddlers to change tasks.  I found two approaches with my kids that are applicable to project management.

When my youngest moved into his first toddler bed, and was finally free to get out of bed and wander the house freely, we got worried that he would fall down the stairs or explore rooms we hadn’t “child proofed.”  We wanted to manage risk (child falling down the stairs), but also wanted him to maintain his ability to wander and explore with structured choices.  We installed a child gate with a lock, a strong barrier to exploring the stairs.  At night, I kept all of the doors along the hallway between his room and mine closed.  He could wander, but only along a path that finally got him to my room, where I could figure out what was appropriate.  Was it early enough to get up and make breakfast?  Or, did I need to escort him back to his bed?

In a similar way, in project management, once the path is defined, you want to manage your risk.  Erecting strong barriers to paths that might cause injury, but leaving the project team with the ability to wander and explore.  Some paths might need more childproofing than others, but keeping the path the project needs to travel the path of least resistance is the project manager’s job.

One of the other meltdowns we generally avoided was the battle we observed other parents having with their kids when it was time to leave the play area at the local mall, playground, or fast food establishment.  We got in the habit of practicing shared listening: articulating a timeline, and asking for acknowledgment.  “Beeman boys we are leaving in 5 minutes.  How many minutes?”  We repeated the countdown each minute, soliciting a response for each child. 

I believe it worked for two reasons: 1) it was a gradual transition rather than abrupt and 2) it was repeated several times.  In project management, periodic status updates provide a similar opportunity; reviewing where the project is going next, in how long, and asking for acknowledgement from each member of the team.