Manage Your Home

Don't just work there

By Thomas Sewell

Let's take the example of two people, both of whom have the responsibility for keeping their house neat, clean and orderly. There are billions of people in the world who fit this description.

Let's say that both of our examples are good, hardworking people with a problem. That problem is that their family has a tendancy to disorder their home faster than it can be ordered.

Examine their responses to this problem with me.

Person A:

1. Let's those messes pile up, then periodically (from twice a day to once every few days) goes around and works really hard to clean them up, feeling like it's their job to get things clean.
2. Naturally starts to resent and become frustrated with the people who leave messes around without cleaning them up.

The end result? Person A is frustrated a lot, feels like they work as a domestic employee for the others in the household and their home is only really clean periodically, for a little while just after it's been cleaned.

Person B:

1. Looks for the reasons behind why their house is a mess and decides that it's because the people in the home don't all pick up after themselves.
2. Decides to come up with a plan to help the household members to develop good habits and learn to pickup after themselves.
3. Sits down with the household and discusses their plan and the reasons behind it with them, then talks about how and when it is going to be implemented.
4. Some elements of their plan:
   • Individuals are responsible for picking their own messes, or the messes of their guests or those they are babysitting that are too young to be responsible for themselves.
   • It is clearly defined for everyone when a mess is considered to have been left out, instead of still in use. (Example: If you've left the room for 10 minutes while leaving something out of place in that room.)
   • Everyone understands the punishment associated with leaving out a mess and that punishement is consistently enforced.
   • Everyone has incentives to be involved in pointing out messes to each other.
   • Person B, being in charge, makes sure that everything has a place that it should be and patrols every hour or so to check that no messes have been left behind. This time period grows longer as good habits are formed.
   • Rewards are defined for everyone. Minor group rewards for short time periods (an hour, two hours) without messes being left out, larger group and individual rewards for longer time periods (a day, a week).
5. Implements the plan, understanding that it will require more work invested from them up front, but much less once habits are properly formed.
6. As the plan is implemented, Person B listens for feedback and watches how effective the different plan elements are, then communicates with the household members on a regular basis to make any needed adjustments to the system.
7. Once the household has formed new habits (21-30 days) and reinforced those habits (30-60 days), Person B looks for a different household problem to improve on and starts the process over again.

The end result? The problem is solved as the household works together to form new habits. It's a lot of work initially, but saves even more work over the years to come.

Now, based on my two extreme example people, which one would you say is in charge, responsible and actively managing their home, and which would you say feels like they just work there?

Summary

To actively manage an organization like a household means not just working there in order to get things done, but also identifying goals and needed improvements, then working with the team to implement a plan to accomplish those goals and improvements.

Generalizing a bit, a good manager also works not only to accomplish their own responsibilities, but to create a process and system where those accomplishments can be incrementally improved over time and where the team members are able to learn and grow as they accept greater responsibilities. So be sure to stretch your team's abilities!