Juggling the responsibilities of managing your family as well as the demands of your job or business can be tough. But it can get less tiring once you understand how to apply common management principles to your home life.
For instance there are many similarities to the different steps in project management, like clarifying the goals, the do and don’ts, etc. But it requires tons of patience and positive attitude when comes to applying management strategies at home.
Goal-setting
Just as the primary goal for a businesses is to be profitable, while offering some valuable service and demonstrating professional ethics. Similarly, families need to have more income than expenses, work toward a common goal, and demonstrate responsibility and personal ethics. Teamwork is also a common concept across both business and family settings.
Budgeting
As we said in Go Pro as the Family’s Budget Manager, budgeting is an important aspect common to both businesses and families, apart from the differences in scale. “For efficient family financing, one person absolutely must take charge of budget management, computerizing it and keeping track of it. If finances are tight that means tracking every day’s expenditures as they happen. The budget manager must forecast, allocate, monitor, distribute and account for every penny that comes into or goes out of the household.”
While finance functions in commercial operations are handled by expert professionals, handling money in domestic settings can get challenging. Family members, both young and old, should be carefully trained to appreciate the value of money including how to shop wisely, save and invest properly. Teaching children to budget and track their expenses is a great way to avoid costly mistakes later in life.
Planning and Monitoring
With targets set and funds allotted, the next step is to actually plan the operations. This involves deciding how, when, and who will take up what part of a task. If encouraged properly kids enjoy contributing to the family and working on joint projects. Often we as parents leave kids out of the planning process and this is a mistake. Each individual is gifted with certain capabilities or skills and needs to feel that they are a necessary part of the team. Identifying, honing and providing opportunities to apply as well as share their skills encourages family members to do their jobs well.
Encouraging both team and family members to challenge their limitations will help them expand their knowledge in new areas, making the effort useful for the future.
Effective Communications
Communication is the life-blood of an organization, without it all sorts of things go wrong. Communicating is an art and often family lines of communication break down. Just as in business, an efficient mix of patience, kindness, politeness, empathy and self-control really helps to deal with difficult situations.
Sarcasm, gossip and playing the blame-game only serve to worsen any situation, be it family or workplace, calm interactive discussions and brainstorming can help to pool ideas from all involved… promoting understanding while making the process more constructive, efficient and satisfying.
Just as in the workplace it is necessary to get stake holder “buy-in”, if family members are part of the team and help make the rules they are much more likely to feel the rules are fair and are thus more likely to abide by them.
Managing Expectations
Business or family, managing expectations is a key component of getting the most of any situation. For instance, if your family is planning a vacation to Florida and Dad expects a week of relaxation on the beach, Mom wants to see the sights and the kids plan to spend all week with Mickey Mouse it is going to be difficult to make everyone happy. Reaching a consensus in advance on how much time will be spent in each activity is the ideal way to manage the expectations of everyone and ensure that everyone has a good time. Another aspect of managing expectations is to tell the kids how long it will take to get there. If they expect a really, really, really long trip they won’t start asking “when will we get there?” after the first hour. And as a good project manager, you will have provided snacks, videos, audio books and games to make the trip there more enjoyable.
See Also:
- Go Pro as the Family’s Budget Manager
- 5 Helpful Frugal Living Tips for Moms
- Parenting Tips to Lead Your Family in the Right Direction
- Money Potholes on the Marriage Road
- Understanding Your Family’s Spending Behaviors
Resources:
Image courtesy of photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
