47: The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni

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1. 00:00:00 I'm excited about today's book. Can I say that? Sure. Okay. I'm excited about today's book.
2. 00:00:04 I feel like we have a lot of ground to cover before we can get to it though.
3. 00:00:07 Yes, yes we do. We have a plethora of follow-up items. You want to go first?
4. 00:00:12 Do I have to? I think so since I already did my five brand words and you were going to do that
5. 00:00:17 for this time and that's one of your items. So that should be number one, in my opinion.
6. 00:00:22 So I didn't do it. Come on, Joe. I know. Want to know what your brand words are.
7. 00:00:28 I know. And here's why. This is not a thing where I forgot about it at all.
8. 00:00:32 This is a situation where I ended up, since our last recording, I've ended up taking part of my
9. 00:00:41 web development business and segmenting it off to where I've technically got two
10. 00:00:45 businesses I'm running. And as a result of that, I don't want to say I'm in a crisis of sorts,
11. 00:00:50 but it has me reevaluating pretty much everything right now. So I'm not really sure. I spent a
12. 00:00:57 lot of time on this trying to figure it out. And I didn't come up with anything that I am ready
13. 00:01:02 to commit to at the moment. So the TLDR is that you were too busy to do the homework from busy.
14. 00:01:09 I think this has to do with, because busy is kind of at fault. Like the book itself is kind of at
15. 00:01:16 fault. Right. Between that and the gap book that I read between those two, it had me rethinking
16. 00:01:23 how I do things from a web development business stance. So therefore I ended up changing how a
17. 00:01:30 lot of it operates, which means a lot more work right now. But given about a month's time,
18. 00:01:38 the amount of work that I'll have on my plate drops significantly and has, I can already see
19. 00:01:45 that trajectory starting even now. So I'm on the path to be much less busy. So I'm going to blame
20. 00:01:53 busy for a little bit extra busy right now. Okay, I guess I'll allow that. Okay.
21. 00:02:00 Because I think you're hitting the the intention of the book anyways. I think sometimes there are
22. 00:02:04 seasons where you just have to push through some stuff. But as long as you are intentional
23. 00:02:09 moving in the right direction, then it's going to provide the long term gains that you're looking
24. 00:02:12 for. It sounds like you've kind of thought through all that stuff, which is really what the five
25. 00:02:15 brand words exercise was getting at in my opinion, is giving you that clarity. So if you kind of got
26. 00:02:20 that clarity already and it's influencing decisions that you make, I don't think that's a bad thing.
27. 00:02:24 No, I don't think it's bad. I mean, in some of the realm that these brand words are landing on
28. 00:02:31 are things like stability, some white space, you know, family time and quality time with my
29. 00:02:38 not quality time, but quantity time with my girls like it's floating around those concepts.
30. 00:02:45 But I've not been able to fully nail it down because I'm sitting on like 12 to 15 areas that I feel
31. 00:02:54 like I are important, but that's too many. So I'm working towards that narrow down bit, but I'm not
32. 00:03:02 done with that process. Okay. Okay. So over one, what about the next one? What about listing your
33. 00:03:09 15 closest friends? I have 12 down. Okay. I'm gonna run with that one for now. I think
34. 00:03:15 the problem I'm running into is like, trying to get to that 15, I feel like I've met the purpose
35. 00:03:21 of this action item, but I'm not fully to the number that I wrote down. So I'm hesitant to say
36. 00:03:26 check when I'm at 12, because I feel like to go to, I almost feel like I'm going to another
37. 00:03:34 circle of friends like stepping outside that realm of 12, which then means it's not necessarily
38. 00:03:40 three to fill in. It's like another eight to 10 that tend to fall into that circle. So
39. 00:03:46 yes, made progress, but I'm not at that number. If it was up to me, and maybe we need some
40. 00:03:53 arbitrator who is really going to keep score and decide what's allowed and what's not, but if it
41. 00:03:58 was up to me, I'd say that you completed that one because I had the same experience where it's like,
42. 00:04:03 okay, I've got my immediate family, the five people I'm closest to. The next one, next circle, you know,
43. 00:04:08 is these 15 closest friends. And I had the same experience where it's like, you get to 10 or 12,
44. 00:04:14 and it's like, I don't know if I want to put anybody else in here based on the relationship right now,
45. 00:04:19 right, which is why for mine, I got to my 15, but my action item on this was a little bit different.
46. 00:04:25 And I think that gave me the context to complete it was I had the additional question, how can I
47. 00:04:31 give to my 15? So these aren't necessarily people that I'm close to right now that I would put into
48. 00:04:38 the group of 15 right now, there's probably a few people in that second or third circle,
49. 00:04:42 you know, you're talking about the eight to 10 more, that they're kind of like on the fence.
50. 00:04:46 And maybe you want one of those relationships to be a little bit better. And so that question,
51. 00:04:51 then of how can I give to them, that's the thing that can kind of push them up into that
52. 00:04:54 second tier, in my opinion. So I think maybe that additional context for me is what allowed me to
53. 00:05:00 get to that number, just an interesting observation here in you talk about yours.
54. 00:05:04 Yeah, it was an interesting exercise. And it felt really weird. I will say that
55. 00:05:10 here, let me take my friends and borderline rank them. So that's about what it felt like.
56. 00:05:17 And that is not a thing I will share at all. So there we go. I was even hesitant to write it down
57. 00:05:27 at all. I was like, I think I could just memorize this. And then I don't ever have to externalize it
58. 00:05:32 at all. So I did externalize it. However, it is behind like four passwords and encrypted. So,
59. 00:05:39 yes. I wrote mine down, but it's an unencrypted plain text. So anybody wants to hack into my
60. 00:05:45 envy. You can see if you made the cut. I don't really feel bad about that, by the way. Maybe I
61. 00:05:50 should, but I'm getting to the point where it's like, it is what it is. We can either both agree
62. 00:05:56 that maybe it's not where it's supposed to be and we can work to improve it. But I'm not going to
63. 00:06:00 put an effort if you're not going to be there. So that's fair. That's fair point.
64. 00:06:06 The last one you've got here, stop saying I'm busy and say I've decided not to be busy.
65. 00:06:10 Yeah, I've been doing this one. I can't say I'm 100% on it. It's still, I think habit takes over on
66. 00:06:16 this. So I have a number of scenarios where I have simply said I've decided not to be busy.
67. 00:06:24 And I'm learning what that means. I've kind of added to that phrase a little bit because when I
68. 00:06:30 just say I've decided not to be busy, people tend to look at you with this blank look like,
69. 00:06:34 wait, that's not the expected response. What is wrong with you? Almost like, that's not an option.
70. 00:06:39 Yeah, like you're supposed to say I'm good or, you know, busy. Like those are the things you're
71. 00:06:43 supposed to say. If you say anything other than that, you're like an alien with a third eye. Like,
72. 00:06:48 what is wrong with you? So yes, I have been altering that one a little bit. So typically,
73. 00:06:54 it's like, I've decided not to be busy and I'm learning what that means for me. So, you know,
74. 00:06:59 and that usually jump starts a conversation. I'm very aware of the scenarios when I say this
75. 00:07:06 and making sure that I have time to expand on it a little bit because it naturally leads to,
76. 00:07:13 what does that mean? Tell me more, like it immediately begs that question. So folks tend to ask that
77. 00:07:20 question. So you kind of have to be aware of if you have time to expand on it or not.
78. 00:07:25 Yeah, I kind of wish I was a fly on the wall for a couple of these because I kind of think that
79. 00:07:29 as you explain it, you get one of two reactions. Either people are just like in shock and awe that
80. 00:07:34 you're able to achieve that or they're just ticked at you and they want to murder you because
81. 00:07:39 they're jealous. Yes. I've had a couple of the ladders. So, like, okay, Joe, you're doing this thing
82. 00:07:49 again where you're making me feel bad about myself. Like, I don't mean to do that. Like,
83. 00:07:53 that's not my intent, but it's really hard to not come across that way. It's just painful sometimes.
84. 00:08:00 Interesting. All right. So my turn, I guess. Yes. You did your 15. I did my 15. Yep. Okay.
85. 00:08:08 Did you stop saying wait a minute to your kids? Kind of. Turns out this is impossible
86. 00:08:13 because my kids have no filter. So it doesn't matter what I'm doing. There are times when I know
87. 00:08:21 that I don't want to say wait a minute, but I find myself having to say wait a minute because
88. 00:08:25 I'm literally in the middle of something that I can't stop doing. Right. But I am more intentional
89. 00:08:31 about it and I do find myself not doing it because I'm looking at my phone or whatever. Like, if I'm
90. 00:08:37 doing something that's not a high value activity, like, I've decided I should be doing this right now.
91. 00:08:42 For example, I've got my office finished. So I work from home. Like, they'll just
92. 00:08:45 barge in in the middle of me doing something and be like, hey, look at this. Like, immediately.
93. 00:08:49 And I can't right now, guys, like the doors closed. You know that. So I'm in work mode. Like,
94. 00:08:54 in that instance, I'll say, wait a minute. I'll finish up, you know, what I'm working on and then
95. 00:08:59 go see what they've got. But yeah, it's a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.
96. 00:09:04 I am running a table saw. You need to wait a minute. Definitely need to wait a minute.
97. 00:09:07 Exactly. So there are times, you know, when that happens. Next one, make time to help people. I think
98. 00:09:14 I mentioned I was going to try and work this into my schedule. I don't have this explicitly done.
99. 00:09:20 It kind of goes along with write out my own rules of engagement. I have this sort of done.
100. 00:09:25 I don't think it's to the point yet where I'm happy with it. But I do have a document in Ulysses
101. 00:09:32 now, which has the different types of requests that I will get. So like, can we get lunch? Can we get
102. 00:09:38 coffee? Can you come into church for a staff meeting, whatever? And it really occurred to me
103. 00:09:43 that I could use Calendly or something like that to just share my availability. But I would have to
104. 00:09:49 clearly define what my availability is for these things. So for coffee, for example, I've got Mondays
105. 00:09:55 at 7 a.m. or Fridays at two lunch, Tuesdays at 12 p.m. So like, those are my time slots set aside
106. 00:10:00 for those sorts of things. And it's a little bit of trial and error, you know, finding stuff that
107. 00:10:05 is going to work consistently. But I've at least started with that. And I think that a lot of that
108. 00:10:09 stuff overlaps with the make time to help people. But I don't have like, a helping people time block
109. 00:10:15 on my calendar yet. Nice, nice. Did you, so you were talking about your rules of engagement?
110. 00:10:21 Yep. Did you write those out technically? Kind of. So they're not done yet. I would say this one is
111. 00:10:27 probably not completed. I've got the availability. But next I want to put in context of like,
112. 00:10:32 these are the places and the rules around. Okay, so we're going to meet for coffee. Like,
113. 00:10:37 these are the available options. We can go here or here, you know? And what are the expectations?
114. 00:10:42 I mentioned kind of made this mindset shift that like, I'm going to meet somebody for coffee. I'm
115. 00:10:46 just going to buy them coffee. It cost me a couple bucks, build some goodwill. Like, those are the
116. 00:10:50 kinds of things that I want to put in a formal document that don't exist yet. Right now, it's
117. 00:10:54 just the availability. Nice. So it's a step in the right direction, but it's definitely not done.
118. 00:10:59 I feel like that could be really helpful. Like, just to know, if we're going to do x, y, and z,
119. 00:11:04 these are the boundaries I need to put around it. And this is very plain. I use it all the time.
120. 00:11:11 It's borderline protocol. Like, that's, I feel like that would be very freeing in some way or
121. 00:11:16 another. Yeah, I kind of think so as well, which is why I'm doing it. Speaking of boundaries,
122. 00:11:23 my wife found this book and I think she submitted it as a recommendation. It's actually called
123. 00:11:27 Boundaries. And it's one of the books that Dave Ramsey refers to all the time. I don't have it in
124. 00:11:31 front of me, but it came today. I bought it because it looks really interesting. It's basically like,
125. 00:11:36 here's how you set up those boundaries, the firm boundaries around when you can say yes and how
126. 00:11:41 to say no sort of a thing. I have read this book. Have you? Okay. I have. I feel like that will
127. 00:11:46 help a lot. Yeah. So I want to want to read that. Those guys are because I think it's co-authored,
128. 00:11:52 right? There's two authors on it. Yes. They like their lists. So you'll get along with them well.
129. 00:11:57 They have a good framework for helping you identify that and it's something that my
130. 00:12:01 wife and I tend to refer to quite a bit. It's like, I can't change their actions, but I can
131. 00:12:05 change my response to their actions. And that, I think, has been extremely helpful for us
132. 00:12:11 with a handful of family situations that we needed to navigate and still need to navigate.
133. 00:12:16 So I do recommend that book. That's a good one to help you work through some of that.
134. 00:12:22 Cool. All right. The other ones I've got here create a monthly plan template and identify the
135. 00:12:26 four things from my balance scorecard. So I did these and I kind of went overboard.
136. 00:12:31 I sent you a picture of something that I had designed and printed off which combines both of
137. 00:12:41 these. So the monthly plan template, if you go online and you search for either weekly or monthly
138. 00:12:48 templates, planning templates, you'll find a bunch of them. But I didn't really like any of them.
139. 00:12:53 And as I was looking at those and recognizing that I had already designed my daily template
140. 00:12:59 and I'm using that and I really like it, it's helping out a lot, I'm like, well,
141. 00:13:03 maybe I should do the same thing with the monthly template. And then from there, obviously, it's
142. 00:13:08 well, what's going to go on here? And so the idea behind the four things from my balance scorecard,
143. 00:13:14 at least the way I remember it, is that I want to make sure that I'm doing the things that are
144. 00:13:20 moving the needle and helping me achieve the goals that are important to me. So if you think
145. 00:13:25 about that from the 12 week year framework, you've got like your goals for the quarter,
146. 00:13:30 which I'm already writing down every day. And then from there, the idea is that you're
147. 00:13:34 developing habits, you're doing the things consistently that are going to help you achieve
148. 00:13:39 those goals. And so when I'm thinking about what do I want to plan or what do I want to execute on
149. 00:13:46 in a given month, it kind of occurred to me that I should probably incorporate that sort of stuff
150. 00:13:51 into the monthly template. So I've got this like one page thing, which has on the top third, I guess,
151. 00:14:00 like the five, five weeks, and you can fill in the boxes for the days and it's seven days a week,
152. 00:14:06 the weekends are shaded at slightly different color. And I use that to write down the major
153. 00:14:12 deadlines that I have for that particular month. And there's not a lot of space on there because
154. 00:14:17 I don't want to stack a whole bunch of things that I have to deliver at the same time. I want
155. 00:14:21 to be able to see the things I'm committed to, like they're kind of spread out, if that makes
156. 00:14:25 sense. Yep, makes sense to me. Okay. And then at the bottom of every day, there are three small
157. 00:14:30 circles, which you're probably like, what the heck? That's exactly what I was thinking. Like,
158. 00:14:34 what is this? Okay. Are we sharing this in the show notes?
159. 00:14:37 Yeah, I guess you can. At least the picture. I'm not going to share the PDF yet.
160. 00:14:43 Okay, I'm just asking because there's like logos and stuff on this that I don't know.
161. 00:14:47 Yeah, maybe you can wipe that out or something like that. Okay. But I'll share it. If nothing else
162. 00:14:54 to give people some ideas. And then I've got my life theme, which I mentioned, that's actually a
163. 00:14:59 result of one of the books that we've read for Bookworm. I can't remember which one specifically,
164. 00:15:03 because I feel like it was a culmination of a couple different ones. But again, I want to make
165. 00:15:07 sure that everything that I'm planning is in line with what I consider my individual purpose. And then
166. 00:15:14 I've got goal number one, goal number two, goal number three. So these are my up to three quarterly
167. 00:15:20 goals. And underneath that on the left half of each. So you've got goal one that goes like all
168. 00:15:25 the way across the page. And then on the left half of that, you've got progress goals. So one,
169. 00:15:29 two, and three, these are kind of like the major milestones that would happen for this particular
170. 00:15:34 goal. And then to the right of that, tasks and habits one, two, three, and then three small circles
171. 00:15:40 to the right of that. The idea here being that you would identify the habits that you want to
172. 00:15:46 do consistently, and you would color code those. And then when you complete those, you would color
173. 00:15:53 in the dot on the day under the the master your month is the name of it like the on the actual calendar.
174. 00:15:59 So you're not doing, you know, three habits for goal number one, three habits for goal number two,
175. 00:16:03 and three habits for goal number three every day. But you want to make sure that you are moving
176. 00:16:08 things in the right direction. So maybe all of your goals for all of the tasks and habits under
177. 00:16:14 goal number one are shaded red, you know, and then you just want to make sure that you've got enough
178. 00:16:17 red dots on your your month. So it's kind of like planning your month plus a habit tracker at the
179. 00:16:22 same time. Nice. It looks cool. Thanks. I feel like this is something that would work really well
180. 00:16:29 for you. I think this would be overkill for me. Probably. And to be honest, I don't know that
181. 00:16:34 it's going to work really well for me. But it's an experiment based off of the follow up items here.
182. 00:16:40 So as I was thinking about it, I'm like, well, you know, I just got to be a more efficient way to
183. 00:16:45 combine these things. They seem like they're kind of related. And so putting them on this document,
184. 00:16:50 I guess, we can follow up again and see how it goes. The problem being for me anyways, I kind of did
185. 00:16:57 my 12 week year wrong for quite a while. And I have as one of my goals this quarter to run a half
186. 00:17:04 marathon. But I've actually been training for that for the last year. So the half marathon as we
187. 00:17:08 record this is Saturday. So my 12 week year goal then is done at that point. And so all of the
188. 00:17:14 stuff that would have been the habits like the going for a run, like that's no longer going to appear.
189. 00:17:18 I got it. So I guess I should have that as a goal, you know, when I was actually implementing the
190. 00:17:25 habits retro, respectively, I guess like that's that's a mistake that I made. But the other two,
191. 00:17:30 I can definitely track on here. Makes sense. This is very intriguing to me. Like I do a thing
192. 00:17:36 for my week. Like we talked about that a little bit last time. And I know you've got one similar
193. 00:17:41 to this and you mentioned it earlier that it's on a weekly basis. But this is intriguing like to
194. 00:17:45 try to do some form of tracking or overview on a monthly basis. It's borderline like monthly review
195. 00:17:51 sort of thing, but you're using it on a daily basis to keep yourself in alignment. So I think
196. 00:17:56 it's interesting. Yeah, kind of. So this is kind of the sweet spot, I think, with the daily plan that
197. 00:18:03 I do and then just having this also like I know there are a lot of people who will write out their
198. 00:18:07 entire week. But when I was thinking about planning out my month versus planning out my week,
199. 00:18:12 every week, it just seemed like a lot of physical paper. Maybe if I were to combine all these things
200. 00:18:18 into one notebook, like the self journal or something, then that it makes more sense. But I
201. 00:18:22 didn't want to have to keep track of all these different things. And when I do my weekly review,
202. 00:18:26 typically what I'm doing is I'm looking at the calendar and I'm identifying, you know, when am I
203. 00:18:30 going to have a big time block here for focused writing or deep work or whatever, when am I going
204. 00:18:36 to record podcasts, those sorts of things. And those don't change a whole lot. My at least work
205. 00:18:43 schedule is pretty steady, I guess. There's not a whole lot of variation there. Now that I've got my
206. 00:18:49 my home office, that helps a lot. So this was more valuable, I thought, than doing it every single
207. 00:18:56 week. I kind of feel like I can see the benefit of doing it every single day. And I know that I can
208. 00:19:01 look through my calendar for the week ahead on a Sunday, but it felt like I wasn't going to get
209. 00:19:07 as much benefit from physically writing all of that out every single week than it would have been
210. 00:19:11 to just think about the whole month in advance. You're skipping ahead. Kind of, I'm trying to
211. 00:19:16 minimize the amount of manual effort I have to put into this. Yeah, work the plan, don't spend all
212. 00:19:21 your time planning. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I know that there's some people, you know, like the weekly
213. 00:19:26 plan is the thing that's really going to stick for them. So yeah, I think you're right that this is
214. 00:19:30 going to be probably tailored to the way that I work. But I don't know, maybe it'll work for
215. 00:19:36 other people too. Yeah, because I know if I if I try to do something on a monthly basis, and I've
216. 00:19:39 tried this a handful of times, and the problem I have is one week can drastically change what I'm
217. 00:19:45 going to do the following week. And in the tech world, things just move too fast. For example,
218. 00:19:50 I had a client email this morning and led to a phone call early the afternoon. And now I'm possibly
219. 00:20:00 traveling for work, which is not a thing I've done in my web development business at all outside of
220. 00:20:04 like local businesses, this would be out of the country. So that's completely different. But it
221. 00:20:09 would mean like next week would be completely shot if that goes through. So the whole concept of
222. 00:20:15 planning that whole thing ahead of time, like it's going to fall apart every single time. And it ends
223. 00:20:21 up being a, I wouldn't say it's a waste of time, but the amount of value I get out of doing it is
224. 00:20:26 very small in comparison to the effort required to put it into it. But given your work environment
225. 00:20:33 and how you do things, I could see how you know weeks ahead of time when certain projects should
226. 00:20:39 be wrapping up and the work that it takes to get to those points. Like you know that months ahead
227. 00:20:45 of time sometimes. So I could easily see like this being extremely helpful in that scenario.
228. 00:20:51 Yeah, and a lot of the projects that I'm balancing, they're kind of like side stuff. Like I'll just
229. 00:20:57 use screencast online as an example. Like I'm not working on screencast online modules every single
230. 00:21:02 day. When I do those, it's extra effort, but I do it because I love it. And it's a lot of fun.
231. 00:21:08 Yeah. And I've got the schedule. I know exactly when my modules are supposed to be delivered for
232. 00:21:15 Don typically does it like in six month increments. So I think through June. And so I've got those
233. 00:21:19 deadlines and I want to know when I'm planning my month when that's going to be because that
234. 00:21:24 means like about a week to two weeks before that, I really have to get serious about trying to carve
235. 00:21:29 out that extra time. And you know, there's other things that I've been working on, which is why
236. 00:21:35 you're gonna have to blot out that logo. But uh, super secret project alert. Yeah. It's basically
237. 00:21:44 the, uh, gets to borrow a term from Eric Fisher and Jim Woods when they wrote one of those books
238. 00:21:51 that I read a long time ago. They talked about hustling in the margins. You know, that really
239. 00:21:54 resonated with me. It's like finding those little pockets of time that you can use to move the needle
240. 00:21:59 on these things, which aren't going to be part of the daily cadence. So I think that's kind of the
241. 00:22:04 sweet spot here is like, I've got certain deadlines that I need to plan around. And then I have certain
242. 00:22:09 habits that I want to establish, which are going to move the needle on those other projects. So
243. 00:22:13 yeah, this, uh, should be anyways, the ideal template for me.
244. 00:22:17 So the theory is that with some of this structure and with some of these outlines,
245. 00:22:24 it makes you less frantic, right? Is that the idea? Which then keeps you from bleeding over the
246. 00:22:29 franticness with your family? You see what I did there? That's a very nice segue, Joe Buellig.
247. 00:22:33 Well done. Yes. So our book today, as I've been itching to kind of get to, I guess,
248. 00:22:39 the three big questions for a frantic family by Patrick Lincioni. And this was my choice of a book.
249. 00:22:46 And I chose it primarily because it was recommended by Mrs. Rachel Schmitz. So
250. 00:22:52 I'm hoping Mike doesn't squirm too much today. And I'm hoping you've done some of this,
251. 00:22:58 given your wife wanted us to go through it. Yeah, this could be an uncomfortable episode.
252. 00:23:05 Okay, sure. I will say, you know, first impressions of this, my initial thought was, number one,
253. 00:23:12 I'm not sure I need this book because I don't feel like our family is frantic. I don't feel like
254. 00:23:18 we're running around a lot. I see a lot of families who, you know, we talked about this last time with
255. 00:23:23 busy, like families have a lot going on in today's world. That's just kind of the cultural norm right
256. 00:23:28 now. And I can't say that our family really fits that mold too well. We are very protective of
257. 00:23:37 spending a lot of time together and making sure that every night of the week is not booked and
258. 00:23:42 that we don't have more than one thing going on on a night. Like we're very protective of that.
259. 00:23:48 So first impression on this was, okay, this will be a fun book. It'll make for some good topics to
260. 00:23:53 talk about, but I don't really see this as something that applies to our family and our lives together.
261. 00:24:02 So having read it, I can tell you that is a wrong assumption. So I did really enjoy this,
262. 00:24:08 but I'm interested. What was your initial take on this, Mike? Well, I really like Patrick
263. 00:24:13 Lencioni. In fact, I'm going to hear him speak when I go to the Entre Leadership Summit as we
264. 00:24:18 record this in a couple of weeks in San Antonio. My initial response to this was it's a business
265. 00:24:26 book that's been repurposed. And I think that's pretty accurate. Yes, which is a little bit
266. 00:24:32 a little bit strange, I guess. But there's lots of good stuff in here. At the very beginning,
267. 00:24:40 when he's talking about part one and the problem, he shares the schedule that these people have.
268. 00:24:45 And it's very close to ours. Okay. So I didn't have the response that you did, like, oh, our
269. 00:24:51 family isn't frantic. Like, I am resigned to the fact that we are a frantic family, but I also
270. 00:24:58 think that unless you were to move to the middle of the woods somewhere, you don't really have an
271. 00:25:02 option. What you can control, though, is what you are frantic about and what you choose to allow in.
272. 00:25:09 And if you aren't intentional about that, then you're going to get other people who are going to
273. 00:25:13 sign you up for all the stuff. You're going to be over committed to all these things that you
274. 00:25:16 don't really want to do. And that's when you feel frantic. But just walking through the schedule
275. 00:25:21 here, and maybe this is because your kids are a little bit younger and you don't have a Monday
276. 00:25:25 swim practice and piano twins. And I will say that our oldest is now going into formal homeschooling.
277. 00:25:33 And there's one or two outside classes and lessons per week that we're talking about. So I feel like,
278. 00:25:42 although right now we don't fit that mold, I think that's purely a factor of the age of our
279. 00:25:49 children. Yeah, you're on the precipice. So yeah, my Mondays, for example, we've had to figure this
280. 00:25:55 out. And that's the thing is like, you can solve it. You can figure it out. But like, our Mondays,
281. 00:26:00 I've got a couple different meetings. We record the productivity show live on Monday afternoons. And
282. 00:26:06 so we've got three kids in piano on Monday afternoons. So my wife will typically bring them to the
283. 00:26:12 music. It's a music store that does lessons like in the second floor. So, and it happens to be like
284. 00:26:18 a couple blocks from the co-working space. So she'll take them there. I will meet her there when I'm
285. 00:26:24 done recording the podcast. And then she will leave and I will stay. And then I'll bring her left home.
286. 00:26:29 Like, that's just the kind of thing where if you've never done it before, you're like, oh my gosh,
287. 00:26:34 this is way too much work. But then after you get in the rhythm, it's just like, but it is what it
288. 00:26:38 is. Like, it's not that bad. We can plan around that. And then you mentioned in the book, you know,
289. 00:26:42 Tuesday's soccer practice for all the girls, one of the parents coaches on Wednesdays, swimming
290. 00:26:47 in Girl Scouts. The wife has a Bible study Thursday. She volunteers in the classroom. They're soccer,
291. 00:26:53 Friday. There's usually a sleepover, a birthday party, Saturday, swim meets. We just got done with
292. 00:26:58 soccer at the Y. We were at the Y from like 8.30 in the morning till one in the afternoon because we had
293. 00:27:03 so many kids in soccer, one right after the other. So like, I feel, I feel their pain, I guess.
294. 00:27:09 But if you view it through the lens of we've chosen to do all these things, it's completely
295. 00:27:13 different than like, oh my gosh, look at all these things that we have to do. And I resent every
296. 00:27:17 single thing because I haven't taken the time to identify the ones that we really want to do.
297. 00:27:21 It kind of sounds like a nightmare to me, but okay.
298. 00:27:24 It's not that bad. I mean, and I don't want to just make an excuse for being busy with a family.
299. 00:27:31 Like you don't have to even have a family. You can be busy with a whole bunch of things.
300. 00:27:35 And you can be in the same situation and feeling the exact same thing is like, oh my gosh,
301. 00:27:40 how do I escape this? I just want to move somewhere where no one knows me. And I don't have any
302. 00:27:46 commitments and I can just live in my cabin by the woods, you know. And some people do that.
303. 00:27:51 Some people will just pick up and move and get a fresh start, whether they have a family or not.
304. 00:27:56 So I understand the process there. But really, like if you recognize that what you have right now
305. 00:28:02 is the result of the choices that you've made previously, you're in complete control.
306. 00:28:06 Like we've talked about the whole idea of responsibility. Like take responsibility for your
307. 00:28:10 own schedule and recognize that you have the power to change it. You're not going to just snap
308. 00:28:14 your fingers and all the stuff is going to be gone tomorrow. But you can start making decisions
309. 00:28:18 right away, which are going to move you in the direction that you want. If you're rallying cry,
310. 00:28:21 which we'll get to in a little bit is I want to be less busy. I want a more minimalist schedule.
311. 00:28:28 Like you have the ability to craft the life that you want. But if you don't craft the life,
312. 00:28:33 if you don't, if you're not intentional about crafting the life that you want, then you'll get
313. 00:28:37 stuck just doing what everybody else wants you to do. I want to share this quote. So Patrick
314. 00:28:42 Lencioni, when he writes a book, he writes a fable. And it's usually three-fourths of the book,
315. 00:28:48 where he's telling a story. Like it's a fiction story to portray the concepts and the ideas that
316. 00:28:54 he is trying to get across. And that's one of the reasons I think we love his books, at least I do.
317. 00:29:00 And I've read this is the third book of his that I've been through now. And I've loved all of them.
318. 00:29:06 Like I just love him as an author. He does a great job trying to get those things across. I will
319. 00:29:11 say though, he is a corporate guy. So he's using terms and phrases.
320. 00:29:15 That comes across. Yeah, it's like, okay, dude, like sure, rallying cry. Yeah, I've heard that in
321. 00:29:21 corporate terms quite a bit. Basically, what's the most important thing we should be doing the
322. 00:29:26 next few months like that? Okay, great. Let's let's bring it down to real world terminology. Like,
323. 00:29:32 I have a thing against that, but that aside, I really like the way he writes. And within this
324. 00:29:38 story, he's chronicling the journey of a husband and wife, primarily the wife, who is just overwhelmed
325. 00:29:47 with all the stuff that's going on in life. And the rest of the story is the process that they go
326. 00:29:53 through to help her get to the point where she's not overwhelmed. And the family is able to set a
327. 00:29:59 path to move forward. And the whole journey starts when the husband in the mix makes a comment,
328. 00:30:07 because he's a consultant, and he consults companies on how to run their businesses and how to achieve
329. 00:30:14 the goals and the missions of their company. And he makes the statement, if my clients ran
330. 00:30:20 their companies the way we run this family, they'd be out of business. I may or may not have said
331. 00:30:25 something similar in the past. Okay, nice. Did it go over well? No, it went over about as well as
332. 00:30:32 it did in this book. Yes, it didn't go well, obviously. It's just a fascinating journey that
333. 00:30:40 that whole quote goes through throughout the book. Yeah, I have a couple of issues with the framing
334. 00:30:48 with this question. And Patrick Glencione tries to be very careful to make the husband appear
335. 00:30:55 sympathetic. Like he's trying to justify I didn't say you I said we, you know, but the thing that
336. 00:31:00 really bothered me about this is the the flippancy with the way that he he said it. And his whole
337. 00:31:08 attitude is like, why can control what happens at work? But I can't control what happens with my
338. 00:31:13 family. And I guess this is just me personally, because I've been there, and I've gotten that
339. 00:31:19 revelation that like you can control what happens in your family. And I personally believe that as
340. 00:31:25 the the father here, like you're responsible for this. Like it's, if I if you were to rephrase this,
341. 00:31:33 you should say, if my clients ran their companies the way that I have allowed this family to operate,
342. 00:31:40 they'd be out of business. And I know it's not just it's not just the man's responsibility. The
343. 00:31:45 husband and wife, like you are a team. But like everything we've talked about in terms of
344. 00:31:50 responsibility, you can't control what the other person is going to do. You can only control what
345. 00:31:56 you do. And you can take responsibility for the outcome. And you can try to improve it. And by
346. 00:32:03 phrasing it this way, it's kind of like the way I read it anyways is is well, it is what it is.
347. 00:32:08 And there's nothing I can do about it. Did you have the same reaction? Or am I just overthinking this?
348. 00:32:13 I didn't go down this path at all with this. Okay. Well, I found myself getting a little bit
349. 00:32:18 mad at you, the guy. All right. And Teresa, like the whole story is about how she's doing all this
350. 00:32:24 research and she's understanding this like this guy knows this. He teaches this system to his
351. 00:32:29 clients every day when he never bothered to explain it to his wife like, Hey, we should try to do
352. 00:32:33 this. And I know like there's different scenarios when you can do that when you can't do that. But
353. 00:32:38 I mean, if you've got the answer, then you should look for ways to cast that vision. You
354. 00:32:46 shouldn't just be resigned to the fact that like, well, I can't control my wife. I can't control my
355. 00:32:50 kids. My family's out of control that we're frantic. Like there's nothing we can do until they change.
356. 00:32:54 That's kind of the narrative that isn't explicitly told. But kind of what I got is like the wife,
357. 00:33:00 Teresa, she's the one who's seeking out and trying to understand all this and she's getting excited
358. 00:33:04 about it and telling everybody. And Jude's just like sitting on his hands and he's along for the
359. 00:33:08 ride. You know, she figures this stuff out. She has some questions and he does it every day. So
360. 00:33:13 she's like, Hey, can you kind of help me clarify this? And I just like, dude, if you had taken
361. 00:33:18 responsibility for this, I never would have gotten here. I also don't know like there may be a part
362. 00:33:24 of Teresa's personality that he's aware of that we're not to. And I hesitate to get onto him
363. 00:33:30 for this because, and this is partly because my wife and I somewhat operate in the same way,
364. 00:33:38 in that if I came out and said, you know, here's the way this should work. And this is the way
365. 00:33:42 this should operate. I'm going to get some resistance right away. And it's because she hasn't had time
366. 00:33:47 to process the whole situation. And one of the action items that I'm going to talk about a little
367. 00:33:52 bit later in more detail is that I wanted to go through these three questions, which we'll get to
368. 00:33:57 also later. And my wife did not read this. So she doesn't have the background on it. But at the same
369. 00:34:05 time, I know that the best way that she's going to process this is if I let her know,
370. 00:34:11 this is a crazy idea that I want to work through. And these are the questions I want to try to
371. 00:34:16 answer as a couple and for our family and letting her know that one or two days before the actual
372. 00:34:22 conversation is going to happen. Like I have to do that for her sake. And whenever I see like what
373. 00:34:30 Jude is doing in the story with Teresa, there's a lot of this where he knows how things operate in
374. 00:34:37 the companies that he works with. He tries to share that from time to time. And yet Teresa does
375. 00:34:44 continue to stay up all night to work through this, even though he had already explained how the
376. 00:34:51 process works, or you know, in this case, his business partner ended up doing some of it too.
377. 00:34:56 So there's there's a lot of this where he's helping. But I don't know if he is restraining himself
378. 00:35:05 because he's tired of talking about this and just can't do it anymore because he's been doing it all
379. 00:35:10 day. Or if he understands how his wife operates and is trying to meet her where she is and trying
380. 00:35:17 to let her work through it in her own ways, because that's the better way for her to learn
381. 00:35:21 in that process. I get that. But I just think it's an example of not this story specifically,
382. 00:35:28 but where the story starts is an example of failed leadership. I mean, the story starts with her
383. 00:35:34 being ticked at him because of something he said. In the words of Julius, remember the Titans,
384. 00:35:40 attitude reflect leadership, Captain. Yes. So regardless of where you locate yourself in terms
385. 00:35:48 of roles and responsibilities within the marriage, and I don't really care. I don't think it's really
386. 00:35:54 relevant. What is relevant, I guess, is my perspective on like personal leadership and how I always want
387. 00:36:02 to be working on myself and become a better leader. And I just look at Jude and I'm like,
388. 00:36:07 he doesn't have it. Yeah. At least not right now and made me a little bit mad because it's not
389. 00:36:13 just him. It affects his wife and it affects his kids. And fortunately, the wife steps up.
390. 00:36:19 Otherwise, like, how long do they have to deal with this? Yes. And I don't want to
391. 00:36:24 come across as saying Jude's not in the wrong here because I would agree with you that it does
392. 00:36:30 start off with failed leadership for sure. And I would also pin that on him as well. So don't get
393. 00:36:37 me wrong. I'm not saying he's correct in the way he handled it. I'm just asking the question because
394. 00:36:42 I'm not sure that I want to be one that says he did this incorrectly when he obviously is going to
395. 00:36:49 know his wife better than we do just from reading this short story about her and her journey through
396. 00:36:55 this. So I don't want to say that he's wrong, but at the same time, I don't want to say that he's
397. 00:36:59 completely right either because obviously there's a problem. And you and I would say that he is the
398. 00:37:05 leader of that family and their marriage. So obviously it is his responsibility to do something
399. 00:37:12 about this. And even after the situation has come up and he is aware of the problem, even then
400. 00:37:20 it's borderline on whether or not you can say that he took the leadership on that or not. And in most
401. 00:37:26 cases, the answer is he didn't. He didn't fully step up to that situation. So again, like I have
402. 00:37:32 kind of conflicting interests on this one simply because I feel like he's going to know how to help
403. 00:37:37 his wife understand this to a better degree than we will. And at the same time, given what we know,
404. 00:37:44 I would hope that he would get more involved in the process to be more of a help to his wife in
405. 00:37:51 that situation. Yeah, well, I'll go out on the limb and say he messed up. But I don't think it has
406. 00:37:57 anything to do with the traditional view of like the man is leader of the family either. I just think
407. 00:38:02 that in this scenario, you see the growth mindset displayed by the wife, but not the husband. And
408. 00:38:08 that just kind of ticks me off. Yeah. The next section in part two business school, I wrote down,
409. 00:38:14 I don't know if this was a question that they actually posed, or if this was just my own musing,
410. 00:38:19 but why is a family not viewed as an organization? It really is. And if you think about it, for
411. 00:38:24 marriages that end in divorce, you know, that the marriage has failed, the family has failed.
412. 00:38:30 And in that sense, like the CEO is getting fired regardless of who you define as the CEO or co-CEOs
413. 00:38:37 or whatever. But you see this everywhere. I mean, professional sports, if a team doesn't meet
414. 00:38:43 expectations, the head coach gets fired. Now, that's the place that everybody wants to get to.
415. 00:38:48 Everybody who's coaching, they want to be the head coach because they get paid the most. They
416. 00:38:52 get all the glory, you know, but you have to qualify yourself. And the way you do that is by taking
417. 00:38:58 responsibility for the outcome, not by sitting on the fringes and letting the other person
418. 00:39:04 figure it out. And so I think that for me, you know, this book, the three big questions for a
419. 00:39:11 frantic family, it's a business book adapted to a family context. And I kind of was like,
420. 00:39:19 why do we have to have a book which shows that you can do that? I feel like I've done that with
421. 00:39:25 several of the books that we've read. And it just was like shocking to me in a sense that, well,
422. 00:39:30 wait, people don't view a family as an organization? Like, there's a lot of parallels here. It's
423. 00:39:35 pretty plain to me to see the connections here in the, and a lot of the similarities. But obviously,
424. 00:39:42 I'm unique, I guess, in that view because he mentioned at the outro of this book, I think that
425. 00:39:47 that's one of the things he got asked all the time was, well, how do I apply this to a family
426. 00:39:52 context? So I understand it from that perspective. Yeah, I think you're weird. I guess.
427. 00:39:57 Well, you know, this is the way it's phrased. Why is a family not viewed as an organization?
428. 00:40:04 I think that is possibly a new concept to a lot of people. I'm hesitant to say most,
429. 00:40:10 just because I feel like this is something that does come up a lot. But I don't know where,
430. 00:40:15 like, I have no reference points to say percentage wise, like 73% of people are going to think,
431. 00:40:21 like, I don't, I don't have anything like that. But this is a question that was brought up in the
432. 00:40:25 book, by the way. So I do recall this question being asked when Teresa asked Jude, well, why don't
433. 00:40:31 people view families as an organization? He didn't have an answer for that. I was like, well, I suppose
434. 00:40:36 it works. Like, you know, he's trying to translate it. But that's exactly what I'm talking about.
435. 00:40:40 Yeah. Really buddy? You can't connect these dots.
436. 00:40:44 I can say that I could probably resonate with folks who don't always see it that way,
437. 00:40:53 simply because like, I know that there are some of these things you should do as a family, like,
438. 00:40:57 you should be putting together a family mission statement and working on goals together as a
439. 00:41:01 family. But making that jump from that point to saying my family is like an organization or a
440. 00:41:07 company and some sorts and it needs to operate that way, like, that's almost too far to me.
441. 00:41:12 Company, I'd agree. That is too far. Yeah, like, that's, that's, and I, that was the impression I
442. 00:41:16 got whenever this question came up in the book. Like, okay, you want me to, to think of this as the
443. 00:41:20 way that I run my business, like, that's way different. Like, that's not, that doesn't work. But
444. 00:41:26 at the same time, like, a business or company that's more formal than what they're referring to when
445. 00:41:32 they say organization. So I just wanted to clarify that a little bit. So I don't think that viewing
446. 00:41:38 your family as an organization is bad or wrong and it's probably a good thing. It's just not something
447. 00:41:44 I have explicitly considered or thought through in the past. Yeah. I mean, really, what it comes
448. 00:41:50 down to is what is a family? Like, how do you answer that question? And you have to answer it at some
449. 00:41:57 point, I feel. And if you do answer it, you'll be able, it's not too much of a stretch to say that,
450. 00:42:03 well, yeah, it's basically an organization. The company analogy, I don't like because I feel like
451. 00:42:09 with companies specifically with the work culture today, like you don't work for the same company
452. 00:42:14 for the rest of your life. You have a job until you find a better job or, you know, there really
453. 00:42:21 isn't that that loyalty built in anymore in a freelance sense. Like, if you're working on a
454. 00:42:26 projection, it's not profitable, you kill the project. Well, you're not going to axe your kids
455. 00:42:30 well, pins. So there's, there's definitely limits to that analogy. But an organization, I feel like
456. 00:42:39 that's broad enough that it makes sense. And yeah, maybe we should get into the six questions here
457. 00:42:46 for the organizational clarity. Because I think that this kind of, it illustrates my point of like,
458. 00:42:51 how you can apply these to a family context without needing an interpreter to dumb it down
459. 00:42:58 into three specific questions. And this right here, this is a great example of how
460. 00:43:03 Patrick Lencioni is the business mind. And he's trying to adapt this to a family context.
461. 00:43:08 Yes. I think honestly, if the fable had been changed, and it was just these six questions,
462. 00:43:14 I would have liked the book more. Because I want to figure it out how to apply it to my family.
463. 00:43:20 I appreciate the fable and the model that he puts forth for people who need a little bit
464. 00:43:25 more, more support in that. And maybe that's also just to clarify partly based on my position right
465. 00:43:32 now. We talked about the syntopical reading in episode 42, how to read a book, how you balance
466. 00:43:39 what you're reading now against everything else that you've ever read. Well, I've got a lot more
467. 00:43:42 context now when I'm going through this book, then I would have had I read this two years earlier,
468. 00:43:47 for example. But the six clarifying questions, what is the ultimate reason you are in business,
469. 00:43:52 which is your core purpose? Number two, what are the essential characteristics inherent in
470. 00:43:56 your organization that you could never knowingly violate? These are your core values. Number three,
471. 00:44:02 what specifically does your company do and for whom, which is your business definition? Number four,
472. 00:44:07 how do you go about doing what you do in a way that differentiates you from your competitors
473. 00:44:12 and gives you an advantage? That's your strategy. Number five, what is your biggest priority and
474. 00:44:17 what do you need to accomplish it? Those are your goals. And number six, I wrote this down wrong.
475. 00:44:21 Maybe you can help me out. I have what has to do and what to achieve your goal. What do you have
476. 00:44:25 to do? What has to happen? What has to happen to achieve your goals, which is your roles and
477. 00:44:29 responsibilities? Where do you want to go with this? Because these, I appreciate the dumb down
478. 00:44:34 version that we get to later. Because to me, these six questions, like Teresa in the book tries to
479. 00:44:40 answer all of these for their family and she goes through it. She feels like it's a great thing
480. 00:44:44 that she's able to answer these and gets so excited about it that she invites some friends
481. 00:44:49 over and takes them through it. And then what was it? Like two weeks go by and she hasn't really
482. 00:44:54 heard anything from her friends at all, like good or bad. So she reaches out to them and no one has
483. 00:45:01 done the six questions. Like they're like, oh, it's too much work. It's too much to do. So like,
484. 00:45:06 I can resonate with the friends like, are you kidding me? Like this is a lot of work to work through.
485. 00:45:10 Like this is a lot to do. Yeah, and I can understand that as well. And I think that a couple of things
486. 00:45:18 that I wrote down here, which is kind of like the 80/20 of this. So I naturally did, I guess, what
487. 00:45:24 he does in the rest of the fable when I read these. Like number four, how do you go about doing what
488. 00:45:30 you do in a way that differentiates you from your competitors and gives you an advantage? So what
489. 00:45:34 makes you different? I think that's a lot easier to answer than the question that he put forth. But
490. 00:45:40 ultimately, that's what it's asking. And that's something that you can apply on so many levels. You
491. 00:45:46 know, it's not just the organization and it's not just the family context. You could do this on an
492. 00:45:52 individual basis as well. And I guess maybe that comes back to my life theme. You know, I want to
493. 00:45:59 help people discover their purpose. I want to help them connect to their calling, to do what they
494. 00:46:06 were created to do. And so maybe I just am coming to this with the pump already primed, so to speak.
495. 00:46:13 But it wasn't much of a leap for me to reword that, I guess. Does that make sense?
496. 00:46:19 Yes, but you're one of these weird people that can do that really easily.
497. 00:46:22 Okay. Well, another example, what specifically does your company do and for whom? There's only
498. 00:46:29 one word you need to change there. Yeah. So what specifically does your family do and for whom?
499. 00:46:36 And then really, if you were to boil that down, make it even simpler, it's like a one-sentence
500. 00:46:41 definition of what it is that you do. To be honest, like a lot of these questions,
501. 00:46:47 the real value is just in asking the question. There's not a right or wrong answer, so to speak.
502. 00:46:53 It's just that most people will never sit down and ask themselves that question. I mentioned
503. 00:46:58 I've got my life theme. I don't have a one-sentence definition for my family yet. We'll get to action
504. 00:47:03 items in a little bit here. So that's that one. And then there's another section here on the
505. 00:47:08 core values. And again, I hate the way he phrases because it's so much more complicated than it
506. 00:47:13 needs to be, even in a business context. This is ridiculous. What are the essential characteristics
507. 00:47:18 inherent in your organization that you could never knowingly violate? How about just something
508. 00:47:23 like, what makes you you? What are your core values? And he does define a couple different
509. 00:47:30 types of core values here. So do you want to go through these real quick?
510. 00:47:33 Sure. That'll help set the stage for some of the stuff I want to talk about later.
511. 00:47:36 Yeah. And to be honest, I don't really like all these different categories. I think it makes it
512. 00:47:42 too complicated. But I understand them. So there's aspirational values. These are values that you
513. 00:47:47 want to be known for. There's permission to play values. So these are like the table stakes. If
514. 00:47:51 you're going to be a part of this family, we're going to do this thing, you know, or part of this
515. 00:47:55 company, part of this organization, this is what we're going to do. And then there's the accidental
516. 00:47:59 values, the ones that kind of happen by default because, you know, fill in the blank, there's a
517. 00:48:04 lot of different reasons. But I kind of think that core values is fine. And it could encompass all
518. 00:48:09 of these. The core values that we have written down for our family, we know that those are
519. 00:48:15 aspirational. And just the fact that we've written them down and put them, I mentioned on the podcast
520. 00:48:21 before, and I'm, I could add an image if you want to see it again. But got our Schmitt's family core
521. 00:48:26 values that a friend of mine did a manifesto type graphic. And it's hanging on our living room wall.
522. 00:48:32 Those are aspirational values, but they're we don't live up to them 100% of the time. But just the
523. 00:48:38 fact that they are printed out and they're up on the wall, we're much more likely to walk those out.
524. 00:48:44 And so it kind of takes care of the accidental values and the permission to play values in my
525. 00:48:48 experience. And just having to identify three different categories instead of, you know, what
526. 00:48:52 are your five core values makes this much less likely that it's going to happen. We have like a
527. 00:48:58 what previously we've called like a family mission statement. And I would, I would argue that that
528. 00:49:03 is probably like an aspirational value in one statement. And I think that's helpful. But the trick
529. 00:49:12 there is like, you got to do something with these. And I think that was the problem in the book was
530. 00:49:18 these six questions. Once you get these answered, it's just going to die unless you do something
531. 00:49:22 with it. Like, unless you have some form of like a weekly meeting or something like you've talked
532. 00:49:26 about this before, Mike, with your family having this weekly get together where you talk about the
533. 00:49:31 stuff. And that that sort of thing, like on a company level is very important. So that's that's
534. 00:49:36 a thing that you have to do. But if you have like an aspirational mission statement or vision,
535. 00:49:41 it's going to die unless you have it front and center and you talk about it a lot and make
536. 00:49:46 decisions based on it. And that's something I think that aspect is probably the more important
537. 00:49:52 piece, but it's the least applied piece in that process.
538. 00:49:57 Yeah, I agree. Kind of jumping around here, but in the very end of the book, he's got some different
539. 00:50:03 examples of families that have implemented this. And there's a quote on page 203, which really
540. 00:50:08 encapsulates, think what you're talking about says we're finally tackling these things now,
541. 00:50:13 because they're part of our focus state of priorities. When something is part of a bigger goal,
542. 00:50:17 but I know we are going to be talking about it every week, it's harder for me to let it get
543. 00:50:20 pushed aside by those pesky tactical and artificially urgent things that distract us from what really
544. 00:50:25 matters. Now I can let some things go that I would have felt guilty about ignoring in the past
545. 00:50:30 when everything was equally important. Now our family has real clarity. And I think you can
546. 00:50:35 achieve that clarity by simply throwing out where you want to go and then talking about it regularly.
547. 00:50:41 I don't think you need a big complicated scorecard and you don't need automated software,
548. 00:50:46 which is going to update all the things. You don't need to make it super complicated.
549. 00:50:52 I think what you hit on having the aspirational values, setting the vision for where we're going,
550. 00:50:59 and then checking in consistently. And yes, there's value in tracking that you're doing the right
551. 00:51:04 things. I mean, I talked at the beginning about how I have created this ridiculous template to
552. 00:51:08 track my habits. So I get it, there's value in doing that. But for a family, I think if you are
553. 00:51:15 coming to this new, the 80/20 here is just identify your aspirational values, your vision of where you
554. 00:51:23 want to go. And then once a week, talk about it. And if you do that, you'll make a lot of progress
555. 00:51:30 whether you implement the rest of it or not. That's fair point. I think the weekly meeting bit is
556. 00:51:34 the primary focus of that whole bit there though. Yep, let's go into part three, which is titled
557. 00:51:42 trial and error. But the big section here is the thematic goal. So that's exactly what we were
558. 00:51:47 just talking about. This is the rallying cry. Now, in the book, he talks about the rallying cry
559. 00:51:54 being surrounded by defining objectives and then standard objectives. There is no way I'm getting
560. 00:52:00 my wife to identify defining objectives and standard objectives by using those terms in our
561. 00:52:06 family meeting. It makes no sense. And these got the visual so you can implement it, you know,
562. 00:52:11 just call the boxes something else if you want. Right. Yeah. This was this was one of my big complaints
563. 00:52:16 in the book is like, okay, the purpose of this section is to take the corporate speak we just
564. 00:52:22 heard in those six questions and redefine it as three questions that we're getting ready to get to.
565. 00:52:31 But to do that in a way that is applicable directly and targeted at a family, like that is your goal
566. 00:52:37 here is to take the six corporate speak questions and redefine them in a way that applies to
567. 00:52:45 the suburban life, I guess, you know, they're in suburban areas. But he doesn't do that. He
568. 00:52:51 continues to use some of the same terminology. Like, sure, great. Let's put together a rallying
569. 00:52:57 cry. But that's a corporate term. Like, let's talk about the most important thing to do in the
570. 00:53:02 next two to six months. And let's not talk about, you know, core objectives or standard objectives.
571. 00:53:08 Let's talk about, you know, the tactics that we need to go through to actually achieve this goal.
572. 00:53:14 Like the things we need to do with day to day to do this. And let's talk about, you know,
573. 00:53:18 do you get what I'm saying? Like, this is the terminology I wanted to change, but he didn't.
574. 00:53:24 And it's like, okay, you had a chance here and you didn't take it.
575. 00:53:27 I could care less if the defining objectives and standard objectives get updated. I want
576. 00:53:33 the meal plan for the week updated. Things that are more important that are going to make a frantic
577. 00:53:40 family situation a lot smoother, in my opinion. I think there's a lot of value in, like I said,
578. 00:53:45 identifying where we want to go and then having the meeting to talk about these things. But this
579. 00:53:50 just seems like unnecessary tracking if you're having trouble, which, I mean, very started this
580. 00:53:57 book. You know, we're in this situation where we don't want to be. And the husband and wife are
581. 00:54:02 talking about, well, maybe we should just move. Like I've had those conversations before.
582. 00:54:07 Yeah. It'd be great if we could just move, you know, and then we could start over.
583. 00:54:11 But that's not an option. Like you can't just run away from the problem. It's still going to be there.
584. 00:54:16 And so I don't know. I mean, if you put yourself in that situation and ask like, what's the best
585. 00:54:23 thing that I could do right now? Going back to the Matt Perman book, What's Best Next?
586. 00:54:27 It's not defining objectives and standard objectives for our family. If you're in that
587. 00:54:33 situation, there's a lot of things that would provide a greater return before that. But the
588. 00:54:37 thematic goal, the rallying cry, I'm completely behind this idea.
589. 00:54:41 Do you want to go through the three questions? We've been alluding to this for the last hour now.
590. 00:54:44 Yeah. And actually, let me just explain a little bit more about this thematic goal and how you
591. 00:54:50 would implement this according to the book. Because I do think that honestly, where we are right now,
592. 00:54:54 this is a cool idea. And this is one of my action items. I want to implement a simpler version of
593. 00:54:58 this. So the thematic goal, the rallying cry, this is really what is important to your family
594. 00:55:02 right now. It doesn't have to be written in stone. It can change. But what is your rallying cry
595. 00:55:08 right now? And if you're in a frantic situation, then maybe the rallying cry is simplicity or margin
596. 00:55:15 or downtime, fill in the blank with whatever you want to achieve. Then from there, you identify
597. 00:55:22 the defining objectives and the standard objectives. I think the best way to describe this is like
598. 00:55:27 the big, if you apply this from a 12 week year perspective, you've got your rallying cry. That's
599. 00:55:33 like the one goal that you're working towards. And then you've got your progress goals. So these
600. 00:55:39 are the things, the milestones that you can hit that are contributing to the big goal. And then as you
601. 00:55:46 go the next level down, you've got the little things, the tasks and the habits, for example,
602. 00:55:50 that you can do consistently to move in the right direction. And he mentions Patrick
603. 00:55:55 Lincioni does in the book, the scorecard in essence is the big goal on the top, the defining
604. 00:56:02 objectives underneath that standard objectives underneath that. And then you've got these circles
605. 00:56:07 underneath each box, which are going to indicate whether you're doing well or not in that particular
606. 00:56:13 area. And he mentions three colors, red, yellow and green, where green is, we're doing good and
607. 00:56:18 red is we're not. And you can, he mentions like if it's in between yellow and green, feel free to
608. 00:56:23 use light green if you want. I think that's complicating it too much. If you've got five different
609. 00:56:27 levels, for example, for these things, don't do that. That's not an option. This is the
610. 00:56:31 listeners to ignore that. That's not an option. It's red, yellow, green, done.
611. 00:56:35 Yeah. Well, I mean, I've mentioned it just because it's in the book. And immediately when I thought
612. 00:56:39 of when he said that was, okay, so now we have to have clarification for this particular objective,
613. 00:56:46 red, orange, yellow, light green and dark green, and multiply that for all of the objectives.
614. 00:56:52 That's ridiculous. And then it's going to be that no one's going to update that, at least in
615. 00:56:57 my family situation. So I like the idea, but I really want to make it simple. And really,
616. 00:57:04 it's got to be something that's just going to allow us to see at a glance, whether we are moving in
617. 00:57:09 the right direction. That's all I want from this exercise is just to know, are we doing the right
618. 00:57:14 things? Because you can either look at the lead measures or the lag measures going back to,
619. 00:57:20 what was it, 40x? Now, the lead measures, these are the things that we know are going to get us
620. 00:57:24 where we want to go. That's what we want to track. Are we doing the right things? For if your goal
621. 00:57:28 is to lose weight, are you getting to the gym? Are you going for a run? And then the lag measures,
622. 00:57:34 that's the stuff after the fact. Do we have more free time? Or in the weight law or the working
623. 00:57:39 out example, have I lost weight? But looking at the lag measures is just going to tell you
624. 00:57:43 whether what you did previously worked or not. And when it comes to really any situation,
625. 00:57:50 but specifically, as we're talking about here, like a frantic family situation,
626. 00:57:53 if you give any amount of thought to this, you can identify the drivers, which are going to
627. 00:57:59 alleviate whatever pain point you're trying to solve. And I will note that, and we're going to go
628. 00:58:04 through these questions, but there are a handful of examples of these systems, like these whole
629. 00:58:11 outlines on people answering these questions, and what does it actually look like? I think that is
630. 00:58:18 one of the more helpful pieces of this book that we haven't really talked about, and that is
631. 00:58:22 at the back. It's part of the appendices in the back. And I found it helpful to read through these.
632. 00:58:27 I don't know if you did this or not, Mike, but going through the three questions and then trying
633. 00:58:31 to determine, "Okay, well, what are the answers to these for our family?" And using these as a
634. 00:58:36 guide to say, "Okay, so we're not crazy when we say XYZ." So I found those extremely helpful.
635. 00:58:43 Yeah, I agree. And this is kind of the thing that's a little bit weird, because he took the six
636. 00:58:48 questions and brought it down to three questions. So it's simplified. And then looking at these
637. 00:58:53 three questions, there is no way that you need the complicated reporting scorecard that he outlined
638. 00:59:00 earlier. Yeah. Like, literally, you could just follow these three questions to the T and get the
639. 00:59:06 majority of the benefit, in my opinion. And I feel like the additional examples that he gave with the
640. 00:59:12 scoring the thematic goal, that just makes it more complicated. It doesn't need to be that
641. 00:59:17 complicated. And we can talk about, maybe when we get to question number three, what my wife and I do,
642. 00:59:22 because we're constantly iterating our family weekly meetings. And I really am happy with what
643. 00:59:28 we've landed on right now. But it's really simple. It's just asking the right questions.
644. 00:59:32 So jumping into the three questions, the first one, what makes your family unique? Do you want to
645. 00:59:39 do all of them right now and then talk about them or just do them one at a time? Let's go through all
646. 00:59:42 three of them and then come back and work our way back through them. Okay, so number one, what
647. 00:59:46 makes your family unique? Number two, what is your family's rally and cry right now? Question three,
648. 00:59:51 then, is how do you talk about and use the answers to these questions? That's it. Yeah, super simple.
649. 00:59:56 But anybody who reads that should feel like they have enough direction to get started, I would think.
650. 01:00:02 But also not too much structure or detail where they're going to be paralyzed by, oh my gosh,
651. 01:00:07 this is just way too hard. Just leave it, leave it there, Patrick. Just stop right there. Yeah.
652. 01:00:12 Let me tell a story here just for fun, because last night, so as we're recording this last night,
653. 01:00:19 my wife and I booked a babysitter and we went on a date and we answered this stuff and we did this
654. 01:00:24 and I was the one leading it and working our way through it and trying to, I guess,
655. 01:00:31 decorporatize a lot of this even after it's simplified and taking these questions and trying to help
656. 01:00:39 our family and help my wife and I work through, you know, what is the most important thing we
657. 01:00:46 should be working on right now? And this is why I keep using some of these phrases and changing
658. 01:00:50 some of the terms, because whenever I'm conveying this to Becky, like this is not something that
659. 01:00:57 I'm going to use the term, like I'm not going to use the same terms he does, because my wife
660. 01:01:02 and I have a thing against terminology like that. So, you know, when I ask the question, like,
661. 01:01:07 what makes your family unique? Like, what makes us different? And again, remember what I said
662. 01:01:12 earlier, I had to ask these questions at least 24 hours ahead of time, so that whenever we get
663. 01:01:19 on our date and we start to have this conversation, she has had her time to process this sort of
664. 01:01:24 thing, I can do it on the fly, like, I think on my feet a lot of times. So, you know, you ask me a
665. 01:01:29 question like this and I can usually come up with the answer for it that I agree with and in holy,
666. 01:01:35 but she needs that time to process. So, I asked her these questions ahead of time and then we started
667. 01:01:41 to work through those. And with the first one, it's like, what makes your family unique? And if you
668. 01:01:46 read the examples in the back, they're like three and four sentence paragraphs. And that doesn't
669. 01:01:53 really work for us. And we ended up with a one sentence, almost a directive of sorts. And I'll
670. 01:02:00 share these, the answers to this stuff later when it makes more sense. But we ended up doing a single
671. 01:02:05 sentence because for us, that makes more sense. But it was more about what is the guiding direction
672. 01:02:13 that we are on and ended up being different than what I thought it would be. But I didn't see it as
673. 01:02:18 let's put together this paragraph of all these different aspects that make us differently. No,
674. 01:02:24 there's really one, maybe two aspects here that really apply. So, I simplified it quite a bit. So,
675. 01:02:31 I hope that's okay, Mike. I simplified the simplification.
676. 01:02:34 Yeah, and that's exactly it. Like, he talks about in the first part the different values,
677. 01:02:40 the aspirational values, the permission to play values, the accidental values. None of that really
678. 01:02:44 matters. Just pick the one sentence thing and make sure you're moving in the right direction.
679. 01:02:49 Right. From there, you can pick the additional values that are going to support your vision,
680. 01:02:56 but it doesn't need to be a big formal process. Now, he does say that there are two things that
681. 01:03:01 can help you identify your uniqueness. And I agree with these, they are the values and then also
682. 01:03:06 your strategy. Now, I think with the family context, the values are more important than the strategy.
683. 01:03:12 I really can't think of an outcome that we would want to achieve and tactically develop a strategy
684. 01:03:20 to achieve that goal, where we could say like, yes, now we've won sort of a thing. Like, you can do
685. 01:03:25 that in business pretty easy. Like, our goal is to increase revenue, you know, to this point or
686. 01:03:31 launch this product or whatever. I think that those opportunities in a family setting are not
687. 01:03:35 nearly as consistent more so it's just the guiding principles. And we're going to use those to define,
688. 01:03:42 you know, are we moving in the right direction? So yeah, I think that your approach is actually the
689. 01:03:47 better approach. Yes, I win. Question number two, what is your family's rallying cry right now?
690. 01:03:54 Now rallying cry, that's a term I've heard quite a bit in corporate scenarios. And we used it a
691. 01:03:59 lot when I worked corporate. And I knew whenever my wife and I were holding this conversation that
692. 01:04:05 this is not a term she was going to be familiar with. So I didn't ask this question, you know,
693. 01:04:11 verbatim, what I ended up saying was, okay, this summer, what is the most important thing for us to
694. 01:04:17 be working on? It doesn't have to apply to the answer to the first question. But given that this
695. 01:04:23 is the first time we're going through this, I'm going to guess that it probably will just because
696. 01:04:28 we haven't done this process before. So in our case, it did apply. And again, I want to get to
697. 01:04:34 that later because I want to tie it all up with a nice pretty bow and hand it out whenever I'm
698. 01:04:40 done with all this. But you know, this is the thing where, okay, this next summer, what's the most
699. 01:04:44 important thing we need to do? And what ends up happening? There is in the book, he then says,
700. 01:04:50 okay, this is the thing you should be doing. And then you need to break that down into defining
701. 01:04:56 objectives and then have your standard objectives. I think those were the terms he used core objectives.
702. 01:05:01 Yep. I am even getting them wrong now, Mike.
703. 01:05:03 That's because it's way too complicated. It doesn't need to be that complicated. In fact,
704. 01:05:07 I read this book after I had read another book. And I don't know if I mentioned this is a gap
705. 01:05:12 book or not. But I recently read based on a recommendation of Lucas Smith, who's somebody that
706. 01:05:18 I met locally here recently, who has actually done scrum training with Jeff Sutherland,
707. 01:05:22 kind of like the scrum Godfather. So he knows this stuff. And he mentioned this book,
708. 01:05:27 Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Filer-Feeler. And he talks in there, there's a lot to this book.
709. 01:05:34 It's broken down into I think 10 different chapters. Each one tackles a different angle.
710. 01:05:39 The first one is really the reason why I got it. He talks about family scrums. So Bruce also has a
711. 01:05:44 TED talk on Agile programming for your family, which is really interesting. And he talks about,
712. 01:05:49 in the first couple chapters of this book, I can't remember specifically if it's the Agile family
713. 01:05:53 chapter or not, but he uses a lot of, he talked to these families who have figured this out,
714. 01:06:00 and then he shares his experience applying it to his own family. And so they get to this section
715. 01:06:05 about values. And without defining all the different types of different values and the multiple levels
716. 01:06:11 of objectives, he's looking at this family who's defined these values. They've applied values to
717. 01:06:16 their own family. And they realize that, you know, really, these are not resonating with people.
718. 01:06:20 They don't really feel good about them. So they change them a little bit. You know, really,
719. 01:06:23 the secret is they just sit down and talk about it like, okay, so these aren't really working. What
720. 01:06:27 should we change? You don't need to understand all these different definitions, just what really
721. 01:06:32 works for you. And they landed on something that like everybody was super excited about,
722. 01:06:37 and you know, and took one additional meeting for that to happen. And I kind of feel like that's
723. 01:06:42 all that's required. And it's just the consistency of the meeting, like, don't try to figure this
724. 01:06:46 all out ahead of time, because whatever you figure out is going to be wrong, whether it's right
725. 01:06:50 right now, it's going to be wrong in a week or two. So it just adapt and overcome.
726. 01:06:55 Yeah. So I think with these two different sets of objectives, when we did it, you know, we define,
727. 01:07:03 okay, what's the thing that's most important for us to work on this summer? Here it is.
728. 01:07:07 Now, what is it we need to do to hit that, you know, to use some of the David Allen stuff?
729. 01:07:12 Okay, what's the next action? Like, what are the things we have to accomplish
730. 01:07:16 to in order to say that that was a success? And we ended up coming up with three things
731. 01:07:22 that we needed to do. And that's it. Like, stop there. Like, we didn't do this whole
732. 01:07:28 standard objective thing where, you know, these are things we need to keep in mind so that they
733. 01:07:32 don't fall off the radar, like finances in our marriage. And, you know, time with our kids,
734. 01:07:36 like, sure, we could say that stuff. But for us, it doesn't help. Like, that's not a helpful aspect
735. 01:07:43 of this. And I didn't really push this piece at all because I know that it's not like the most
736. 01:07:48 important thing for us is, you know, what is the thing that makes us unique? What's the most
737. 01:07:52 important thing we need to be working on this summer? And how does that actually accomplish
738. 01:07:56 itself? Like, how do we do that? That's it. Like, stop there. Like, don't, don't ever complicate
739. 01:08:01 this. Like, those are the pieces that are, to me, to simplify it again, the simplified version.
740. 01:08:06 Like, that was the piece right there. Like, okay, here's the goal. Here are the three things we need
741. 01:08:11 to do to do that, to accomplish it and say it's done. Go. Like, that's it. Like, that's as far as it
742. 01:08:18 went. Yep. And so one of the notes that I wrote down here regarding question number two and
743. 01:08:23 specifically the standard objectives, because again, a reason that the score card kind of bugs
744. 01:08:29 me is like, oh, we need to do all the things. We need to check all the boxes. No, standard
745. 01:08:33 objectives equals the wheel of life in my opinion. And if you're following the 12 week year concept,
746. 01:08:37 the whole idea is that you'll never check all the boxes. You'll never be able to concentrate on
747. 01:08:42 all the different areas of your life at a time. You're going to pick one or two and you're going
748. 01:08:46 to work on those for the next couple months. And that is going to become your rallying cry for
749. 01:08:50 right now. And you can totally apply that to a family context as well. All right. So question
750. 01:08:54 number three, how do you talk about and use the answers to these questions? And I did not ask
751. 01:09:01 this question last night. That's because you did it. Yes. Like, here's the thing. There's no
752. 01:09:05 definition of done required for this. Correct. Just talk. Correct. Because here's the thing,
753. 01:09:11 you know, my wife and I share breakfast together every morning. We have almost every single meal of
754. 01:09:17 the week together with our girls. And I work from home. She's a stay at home mom. We're around
755. 01:09:24 each other a lot. And if we take the answers to questions one and two and write them down.
756. 01:09:32 And we have a whiteboard at sitting next to our kitchen table because of the homeschooling stuff
757. 01:09:36 we're doing. Like, I can put those two things there on that whiteboard and it immediately becomes a
758. 01:09:42 talking point every time we have a meal or something that's going on. So I don't really need to answer
759. 01:09:48 question number three here. Like, how do you talk about this and use these answers? Well,
760. 01:09:51 it's going to be right in front of us all the time. And we're both excited enough about the goal
761. 01:09:56 that we're working on that it's not it's a non issue. Like, this is not a thing that we're
762. 01:10:01 going to struggle with to talk about. We've already talked about it once today. And this was last
763. 01:10:06 night that this was decided. Yep. So I could break this down into, you know, two questions almost
764. 01:10:12 and then take question two and split it in half. Like, that's I'm going to use one and a half
765. 01:10:18 questions here and accomplish what I think is the most important piece for our family.
766. 01:10:24 Totally agree. And we've got more questions, but they're not related to standard and defining
767. 01:10:30 objectives. We also had our date night last night and we've got a Google Doc that we set up for this
768. 01:10:38 because we want to have a record. But we're not tracking all of this stuff. We're just documenting
769. 01:10:43 it so that we can go back later if we want. If I feel like, feel like we've talked about this
770. 01:10:47 before, then I go back and I see the same thing written down, you know, four or five times,
771. 01:10:51 then, okay, this is now becoming more of a priority. We need to figure out the system to solve this.
772. 01:10:56 But a lot of this is just identifying where things are at right now and going back to the
773. 01:11:01 very beginning of this episode. This is where like Jude totally dropped the ball. So our Google Doc
774. 01:11:08 here, first of all, we've got our check in. So we're both busy, but we want to make sure that we
775. 01:11:15 know how the other person is feeling. We don't want to assume certain things. So, you know, I'll have,
776. 01:11:20 you know, how am I feeling about certain things that have happened in the last week, Rachel will
777. 01:11:26 respond, you know, how she feels about certain things that have happened in the last week. And
778. 01:11:30 that's really valuable, just verbalizing your feelings to the other person because a lot of times,
779. 01:11:35 they don't know unless you explicitly say something. And maybe, you know, I can tell based on her
780. 01:11:41 attitude or facial expressions that she's feeling frustrated, but until she actually says like,
781. 01:11:46 Hey, you're doing this and it's really bugging me like, I don't know how to fix it. So that's
782. 01:11:52 really valuable. And then we've got what we call the retrospective. I think I've shared these questions
783. 01:11:57 before, but we have three questions that we ask and we spend quite a bit of time just thinking
784. 01:12:02 about all the possible responses to these. So number one, what should we start doing? Things that we
785. 01:12:09 know we want to do as a family and there are a lot of like tactical habit style things. And it's not,
786. 01:12:16 not all of these are going to be turned into, you know, we're going to make sure that we complete
787. 01:12:20 these tasks or anything. Again, it's just verbalizing the different options that are available and taking
788. 01:12:24 the time to think about these things. So what should we start doing? What should we stop doing?
789. 01:12:29 And what should we keep doing? I can't tell you how much value we've gotten from asking those
790. 01:12:35 questions, because just in talking through the answers, you get a lot more context than you do
791. 01:12:42 by seeing dots colored in on a whiteboard. We can look at, you know, what should we keep doing? And
792. 01:12:49 some of the things that we had written down here from the one that I'm looking at right now,
793. 01:12:53 we have just given up on doing anything else on Sundays other than church stuff. And I think
794. 01:12:59 that that's the right decision for a lot of different reasons. I think we even talked about
795. 01:13:03 that in the Matt Perman episode. But that's working out really well. I'm not feeling
796. 01:13:09 stressed about trying to get all these other things done. Like we are honoring the Sabbath.
797. 01:13:14 And that's something that we want to continue to do. And another thing that I've mentioned on the
798. 01:13:19 podcast here, and we've been implementing pretty consistently. I think I've only missed one or two,
799. 01:13:25 and we've made them up. These one on one days where once a week I am doing something one on one
800. 01:13:31 with one of my kids. So they rotate, you know, each one has their own week. And typically it happens
801. 01:13:37 on Friday morning. Sometimes it's Saturday afternoon, sometimes, you know, it's earlier.
802. 01:13:40 But I've been doing these consistently. And we're seeing a lot of fruit from that intentionality.
803. 01:13:46 So we want to keep doing that. After we answer those three questions, then if there's something
804. 01:13:52 that really we need to make a decision about, those are going to be listed under talking points.
805. 01:13:57 So one of the talking points from this one that I'm looking at right now is toddler ministry for
806. 01:14:02 Rachel question mark because she was asked to do this thing. And we talked about it. We got the
807. 01:14:06 answer. And if we hadn't put it on the list, you know, maybe we would have gone to dinner,
808. 01:14:10 forgot about it. And then she gets asked again. And oh, I guess maybe I should give it a shot,
809. 01:14:15 sort of a thing. Well, we decided because we talked about it that no, this wasn't the right thing.
810. 01:14:19 And that was the right decision, by the way. So I'm really happy that we did talk about that.
811. 01:14:24 She gets asked to do these studies for Kimberly Clark, which is a local company. She's a professional
812. 01:14:30 photographer. So she has to go take pictures for their research studies. And one of the talking
813. 01:14:35 points was the home school workflow when Rachel has these studies, because we want to make sure
814. 01:14:39 that we stay consistent. And especially with with Jonathan, who's the six year old. So again,
815. 01:14:45 we figured out a formula for this because it was on the talking points here. And then I had proposed
816. 01:14:51 this crazy new family meeting format, which really just gets back to the point that I made earlier
817. 01:14:55 that this stuff has to be constant progress. Don't be afraid to iterate. Don't be afraid to say,
818. 01:15:00 well, this didn't work for us. I mean, we're trying this out seems to work really well. But
819. 01:15:04 we talked about what the format should look like. And then at the very end, we've got the gratitude
820. 01:15:09 and happiness. So we specifically asked, and this is totally something I ripped off from Asian
821. 01:15:14 efficiency, what would make you happier this week? And I have to have something specific that I can
822. 01:15:19 put here that Rachel can do to make me happy this week. And she has to have something specific that
823. 01:15:24 I can do this week to make her happy. And just to give you a really ridiculous and maybe kind of
824. 01:15:31 stupid example, I gave her a massage gift card for Christmas. It was a one hour massage, I think,
825. 01:15:36 and then a pedicure or something like that. So it's a pretty big deal. It's like two hours or
826. 01:15:40 something at the at the spa. And she hadn't used it yet. And this was from what I'm looking at
827. 01:15:45 right now. This was in March, I think. And within a week of doing this, we had carved out the time
828. 01:15:52 for her to go to the spa and take advantage of this thing. And this is the, this is, I use this
829. 01:15:57 example, because it's the perfect example for those types of things that you're like, oh, I should
830. 01:16:01 really do that sometime. And you never get around to it. So just creating whatever structure you need
831. 01:16:06 and don't not going overboard, not putting it all on a whiteboard. You know, this is something that
832. 01:16:12 we can just type into on our phones when we're at dinner. And we're not sitting there, like this,
833. 01:16:17 like the typical couple going out to dinner, we have their heads buried in their phones and
834. 01:16:22 they're not talking to each other. We are talking to each other. And we're writing down the outcomes
835. 01:16:26 from this in a Google Doc. And so I've found a ton of value from this. And when I compared this
836. 01:16:33 to the structure that I read about in the three questions for a frantic family, I was just like,
837. 01:16:39 have you even tried this buddy? There's no way this is going to work.
838. 01:16:44 Yeah. Yeah. I want to work through, I'll share the stuff that my wife and I came up with.
839. 01:16:51 Because I think that would be helpful to folks to see an example of what this could look like.
840. 01:16:55 But before I do that, because this is going to transition us into action items and such,
841. 01:17:00 is there anything you want to go through before I do that?
842. 01:17:02 That's basically it. I will mention under the model, and I just wrote this down. I don't know
843. 01:17:08 if this is something he referenced or not, but I put Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. I think
844. 01:17:12 he did write about this. But I think that you should apply that to everything he says.
845. 01:17:17 What is the thing that I can do from this book that will give me 80% of the value for 20% of the
846. 01:17:25 effort? And then also he mentions, don't make perfect the enemy of the good. And that's really
847. 01:17:30 where the scoreboard and stuff, I feel like, at least from my situation, that would be trying to
848. 01:17:37 standardize something. And then as soon as you can't get to it, or you can't do it the way that
849. 01:17:42 you think you should, you're just not going to do it anymore. Figure out the thing that you can do
850. 01:17:46 and do it consistently. Okay, so what my wife and I discovered when we got out of the house,
851. 01:17:53 because we left the house, had a babysitter, went and grabbed some ice cream, and then we went for
852. 01:17:58 a walk through some woods and got outside. It was next to the river in the area. And
853. 01:18:05 just had a good time just going for a walk. And then we went out for dinner afterwards. And
854. 01:18:09 partly because I had forewarned my wife, I was going to bring up a crazy idea and have some
855. 01:18:15 questions to answer. She was able to work through this with me. And what we came up with
856. 01:18:21 for the answer of the first question. So what makes your family unique? We had a
857. 01:18:26 nine word sentence. Our family thrives on white space and the outdoors. And that single
858. 01:18:33 directive sentence, although it does not include a lot of things that we find valuable. Like,
859. 01:18:40 there's some of the paragraphs that are written in the back that have things like we're, we want
860. 01:18:45 to promote hardworking lifestyles for our children. And we want to focus on building our faith. Like,
861. 01:18:52 these are things that I'm not going to disagree with. But whenever we got to talking through this,
862. 01:18:58 like, okay, we thrive when we have white space. And that could mean in a time schedule, it could mean
863. 01:19:04 in our household, we tend to be minimalist of sorts. It could mean my mode of operation when it
864. 01:19:11 comes to how I operate with my clients, like I have a very lean process that I work through on
865. 01:19:15 that and I keep it clean. Like those are all aspects to that. But pieces like our faith,
866. 01:19:22 we like to leave blanks in our schedules so that we can act on our faith, which would mean
867. 01:19:29 time for Bible study in the morning, because we're not rushing out the door. It could mean
868. 01:19:33 stopping to help someone who has a flat tire on the way to who knows where, because we left
869. 01:19:40 ourselves some buffer to get there. Like, things like that can start to come out just because of
870. 01:19:45 that white space bit. Like, there's a lot of aspects where that is important. And we know from
871. 01:19:52 experience that that is something that we have a very high value on and can lead to a lot of the
872. 01:19:59 scenarios that we would want to put in this paragraph, but it's too wordy. Like, we're
873. 01:20:04 minimalist. We like white space. Let's keep it simple. Like, it's, it's a very meta deal there.
874. 01:20:09 The outdoors bit is one that I think my wife and I both grew up being outside a lot. I grew up on
875. 01:20:18 a farm. She grew up with her parents. Her dad was a hunter and was outside a lot. You know, we've
876. 01:20:25 both been outdoors heavily in our past and we want our girls to experience that as well. And we also
877. 01:20:32 know that having white space allows us to be outdoors and we thrive in that scenario. So because
878. 01:20:39 of that and having that in mind, we moved on to the second question of, you know, what's your
879. 01:20:45 family's rallying cry right now, which I didn't ask in that way. It's like, okay, what's the most
880. 01:20:50 important thing we want to do this summer? And one thing, and we've been talking about this a little
881. 01:20:55 bit in that we want to get outside and explore a lot of like the natural woodsy areas in our
882. 01:21:05 general region, because we just haven't. My wife has a thing for foraging for mushrooms or
883. 01:21:12 trying to find wildlife outside to show our girls and such and just exploring. And we haven't been
884. 01:21:18 very good at that. Like, it's not a thing we've succeeded in accomplishing. So we set that as our
885. 01:21:24 goal for the summer. And, you know, it's very easy to just say, well, you don't really have any
886. 01:21:30 action items on that. Well, we're saying that we're going to do this and like, okay, well, how
887. 01:21:37 often and where like those are those are what we end up being the action items off of this is like,
888. 01:21:42 okay, well, we need to make sure that on a weekly basis, we are leaving the house and exploring
889. 01:21:48 either a new place or a new aspect of a place we've already been. So that that would be step one,
890. 01:21:54 too. We have to figure out where these places are, like we're in Minnesota. So there's a bunch of
891. 01:22:00 areas you can go. So we have to make sure we have the time for it. But we on on a weekly basis. And
892. 01:22:06 we also have to make sure that we have the right places that we can go. But it also means that
893. 01:22:11 we don't need to be reliant on weather. Like, we want to make sure that we can get outside. If
894. 01:22:16 it's raining or not, who cares, we're going to go. And we want to make that a thing, which means
895. 01:22:20 there's a fair amount of equipment and like clothing that we don't own that makes this a problem.
896. 01:22:27 So there is a little bit of, I guess, equipment or supplies of sorts that we want to make sure that
897. 01:22:32 we we pick up to enable this. I don't think that my wife and I would have ever reached that conclusion.
898. 01:22:40 Had we not sat down or walked to determine this. So it was very enlightening. And at the same time,
899. 01:22:49 we both came away from this feeling like we had a very solid and energizing plan for our summer.
900. 01:22:56 And we didn't feel like our summer was going to get away from us because we know what it is that
901. 01:23:01 we want to accomplish. And that's exactly what it is that we want to work towards
902. 01:23:06 accomplishing. So for that, I say, thank you, Mr. Lynsey-yoney. And I didn't do all the stuff you
903. 01:23:12 wanted me to do. But I feel like it at least got us on the right path. And we're pretty excited
904. 01:23:17 about where it's going to take us. You mentioned something regarding your one sentence. And I
905. 01:23:22 forget exactly how you set it. But basically the things that allow your family to thrive.
906. 01:23:28 And I think that that's very much in line with that other book that I had mentioned by Bruce F.
907. 01:23:34 I think that that's the talk going back to the 80/20. That's the real value right there
908. 01:23:40 is identifying what are the things that allow your family to thrive. And that's really what the
909. 01:23:44 rally and cry is in my opinion. That's my one of my action items is I want to identify our family
910. 01:23:50 rally and cry. And it's like to put my family in a position to thrive in particular this summer.
911. 01:23:57 So we're wrapping up a lot of the things that we'd committed to in the winter and the spring.
912. 01:24:02 And now it's kind of like a blank slate. But that's opportunity and also a danger or threat because
913. 01:24:09 you can easily fill it with a bunch of things that, oh, we should do this. We should sign up for
914. 01:24:13 swimming lessons and we should do all of these things. And if you're not intentional or careful
915. 01:24:17 about it pretty soon, your entire week then is spoken for. So it's kind of a natural or at least
916. 01:24:24 built into the schedule type of a reset button. We want to figure out what are the things that
917. 01:24:28 we really want to do. And I specifically after reading this book, like I want to land on that
918. 01:24:32 one sentence rally and cry, which can just very easily determine whether this thing is a good fit
919. 01:24:38 or not. And I do want to create a scoreboard for our family plan. I just don't want to do it the
920. 01:24:42 way that Patrick wants you. And he does it. So that will require some additional conversation
921. 01:24:47 with my wife. But I do want to follow up on that. We do have actually physically in our
922. 01:24:52 our hallway right by our kitchen right in the middle of our house mounted a whiteboard,
923. 01:24:56 which is perfect for this. But we need to figure out what do we want to put on there. And it's not
924. 01:25:01 going to be three different levels of objectives. Yes, this is the one action I might have because
925. 01:25:06 we've already done the theoretical three questions to one and a half, whatever you want to call it.
926. 01:25:12 We have that, but we're going to put that plan into action, basically right away. I do want to
927. 01:25:17 put together a scoreboard for it. But by scoreboard, I'm just using his terminology. Basically,
928. 01:25:23 what that means is I want to write down this statement, this directive and spell out what our
929. 01:25:29 goal and tasks are. And that could be very, very small and very simple that maybe it's just a piece
930. 01:25:36 of paper that we tack to the whiteboard in the kitchen. That's probably what we're going to do.
931. 01:25:40 But I just need to physically do that. Yep, totally agree.
932. 01:25:44 So that said, author style and rating. Ready to go. All right, Patrick Lencioni,
933. 01:25:50 you know, I love you. You know, I am a huge fan of the five dysfunctions of a team. I am not a
934. 01:25:56 huge fan, I think of this book, but I do really appreciate the fable aspect of it. So if you haven't
935. 01:26:02 read anything, Patrick Lencioni, he's a really, really good storyteller. I didn't feel like this
936. 01:26:06 story was quite as good as the five dysfunctions story, but it's still pretty good. I do like the
937. 01:26:12 three questions. I feel like this book could have been one tenth of the length, because the first
938. 01:26:19 two thirds of it is the fable, and then you finally land on the three questions. In fact,
939. 01:26:24 I don't think the three questions were explicitly stated in the fable, which was kind of weird.
940. 01:26:28 You had to go to the model to get them explicitly stated. I think the third one specifically,
941. 01:26:33 like he doesn't reference in the fable, at least I couldn't find it when I read it. It stood out
942. 01:26:37 to me and I went back and tried to find it and I couldn't. So I don't think this is Patrick Lencioni's
943. 01:26:41 best work. I think that there are better books in terms of like family management, the one that
944. 01:26:47 I mentioned earlier, the secrets of have happy families. I feel like that speaks to this topic
945. 01:26:52 a lot more approachably than this one. There's some good information in here. I'm really kind of
946. 01:26:59 conflicted at what to rate this at. I think I'm going to go with 3.5, because I do think that
947. 01:27:04 there's some really good stuff in here, but I also feel like you really have to dig to get to it,
948. 01:27:10 and it's made more difficult than it needs to be. I feel like this could have been a lot more
949. 01:27:16 approachable and the corporate bias definitely appears. I'll agree with you. I mean, Lencioni's
950. 01:27:22 easy to read. I mean, it's a story. It's tough to say that's complicated to read, and he's a pretty
951. 01:27:28 good writer with it. So that's definitely a vote in his favor. I had a problem with the corporate
952. 01:27:35 speak. I've said that a few times here. I really wish he had changed that up, and I wish even
953. 01:27:40 though he simplified it, I wish he had taken it further, because this whole two levels of objectives
954. 01:27:45 bit like that. I understand what he's doing, but I feel like that's one level too far. So I wish he
955. 01:27:52 would have removed that. That said, having actually followed or attempted to follow the bulk of his
956. 01:27:59 intent, I know the feeling of having followed through on it and can say that that is something
957. 01:28:05 I'm pretty excited about. I'm with you in the conflicted rating concept. Okay, the feeling I've
958. 01:28:12 had after going through this tells me it's definitely a five, but at the same time, like, okay, well,
959. 01:28:16 like the corporate speak bit is a deterrent, so I can't do the five. So I have to deduct like half
960. 01:28:24 a point for that for sure. And then I'll probably deduct another half for not going as far as I
961. 01:28:31 feel like he should have, and it would have been extremely helpful to have gone a little bit further.
962. 01:28:35 So I'm going to put it at a 4.0 for those reasons, but I do think this is a book I will recommend to
963. 01:28:42 a number of folks with some of the disclaimers that I have just mentioned. So I will probably
964. 01:28:48 continue to tell people that this is a book I feel like they should read, but I think I'm also
965. 01:28:53 with you in saying that Limcioni does have some other books that I would say are better, but not
966. 01:28:58 geared towards families. Like he's definitely a leadership writer, and he's good at that. And this
967. 01:29:04 is like his attempt at a family driven book, but he's a leadership writer. So it's hard for him to
968. 01:29:11 let that go like that that was kind of my complaint. Yeah, it feels kind of kind of out of place.
969. 01:29:16 Like even if you had somebody who was struggling in their family situation, I think I'd recommend
970. 01:29:24 the five dysfunctions of a team over the three big questions for a romantic family.
971. 01:29:27 Fair enough. It's just kind of weird, you know, but it is what it is. I just feel like this is a
972. 01:29:33 little bit out of his wheelhouse. All right, upcoming books then next one is My Pick. And this is
973. 01:29:39 interesting because there was somebody who mentioned on the the bookworm club, which I know we'll get
974. 01:29:45 to in a second about reading the classics. And this is one of those that I think classifies as a
975. 01:29:51 self development or productivity classic, how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.
976. 01:29:56 So this is my choice. And I picked it specifically because this seems to be very polarizing opinions
977. 01:30:02 of this book. Either it's amazing or people just really dislike the idea. They kind of think it's
978. 01:30:08 about manipulating people. I want to get to the bottom of it. I don't think I don't anticipate
979. 01:30:13 that it's about that at all. But I think that just based off of the title, I can see how people
980. 01:30:17 would interpret it that way. So I want to understand what's really going on here.
981. 01:30:20 The book following that is My Choice, which is Peak by Anders Ericsson. And this is one,
982. 01:30:28 this is a listener recommendation. So I kind of went through some recommendations here a little
983. 01:30:33 while back and was picking ones that I thought seemed interesting. And this one is about developing
984. 01:30:38 your skills and expertise in a given area and like how to improve whether it's an academic goal
985. 01:30:45 or athletic or musical skills or acquiring new skills. Like that's what he's talking about. So
986. 01:30:53 secrets from the new science of expertise. So I think it'll be kind of interesting.
987. 01:30:58 Nice. Yeah, that sounds interesting. For gap books, I'm reading one right now,
988. 01:31:03 which is The Richest Man in Babylon by George Claisen, I believe is how you pronounce this.
989. 01:31:08 This is another quote unquote classic productivity book or financial literacy book, I guess.
990. 01:31:14 If you liked The Monk and the Merchant, you would definitely like this one because it's
991. 01:31:18 written as a narrative and a lot of the principles are distilled throughout the narrative. But it is
992. 01:31:25 specifically regarding principles of wealth building. So I don't know, it's an entertaining
993. 01:31:30 way to learn how to manage your money, I guess. Yeah, which is kind of interesting. It kind of
994. 01:31:35 goes somewhat along with the one I just wrapped up reading this. The million dollar one person
995. 01:31:40 business, this is by Elaine Pofelt. I think I got her name right. Basically, it is about how to
996. 01:31:47 build a business that reaches a million dollars in revenue as a single person, which I am not sure
997. 01:31:55 that's my target, but the concept of building a business that could scale has been of great
998. 01:32:02 interest to me, especially lately. So I did, I just finished this. It's one that I would recommend
999. 01:32:08 if you're interested in building a business of your own. So she does a pretty good job of laying
1000. 01:32:14 out a lot of complicated principles in that world. So I don't know, it's kind of interesting. So
1001. 01:32:19 if you're interested in building a business on your own as a, not a contractor, but like a single
1002. 01:32:24 person, solopreneur sort of thing, it's one I would recommend if you're in that scenario.
1003. 01:32:28 Very cool. All right. And if you want to recommend a book, you can do that from the website. If you
1004. 01:32:35 go to bookworm.fm/list, you will see a list of the planned books, the ones that we've completed,
1005. 01:32:42 and then the list of recommendations is actually now hosted on the Bookworm Club. But on that
1006. 01:32:48 list page, there is a button to recommend a book and that will take you right to where you can
1007. 01:32:52 recommend a book. My wife literally did this yesterday while we were a for a walk. Awesome.
1008. 01:32:58 So that's where you want to go if you want to see what's planned or if you want to influence
1009. 01:33:02 what's planned. Yeah, it's kind of fun. I moved all of the recommendations we had on the Bookworm
1010. 01:33:08 FM site and put them on the Bookworm Club, which means that you get a couple things whenever you
1011. 01:33:13 do that is one, you can actually vote for books now if they've made it onto a recommended,
1012. 01:33:18 that recommended list. So if there's one on that list that you want to try to promote to get on
1013. 01:33:26 the podcast, that is the way to do it. Because sometimes I get recommendations that come through
1014. 01:33:31 and you get them multiple times, but you don't really, we don't haven't had a way to wait those
1015. 01:33:36 and rate them or show that weight publicly. So now we have a way to do that. So you can go to that
1016. 01:33:43 recommendations category on the Bookworm Club to see that. If you're not a member of the club,
1017. 01:33:48 you should become a member of the club. We have one or two things that we're potentially
1018. 01:33:51 going to be doing here in the near future that would be exclusive to club members. So
1019. 01:33:56 just keep that in mind. But yes, we'd love to see you on the club. It's where we have conversations
1020. 01:34:03 about the episodes and people can ask questions, this clarification, that sort of thing. So that's
1021. 01:34:08 one way that you can help us out. There's also a lot of Amazon affiliate links there that you can
1022. 01:34:12 click on that help us help support the show. And the way that you can promote it is with an iTunes
1023. 01:34:18 review, which there's a link in the show notes down below for that that you can click on and
1024. 01:34:23 leave us a review there as well. Are we still fighting KCRW? Mike, I don't check out this stuff.
1025. 01:34:28 Yes, we are. Okay. So we're still trying to take down KCRW.
1026. 01:34:31 Correction. Mike is still trying to take down KCRW as the number one listing when you search
1027. 01:34:38 for Bookworm on iTunes. So if you don't mind, help us out, leave us a review there, and someday
1028. 01:34:43 we'll take them down. Yeah, and to be honest, I don't think it's an apples-to-apples comparison.
1029. 01:34:48 I definitely think that we are more in line with the definition of a podcast book club. So I'm
1030. 01:34:55 going to go ahead and say join the Bookworm Club and join the Internet's largest book club.
1031. 01:35:01 Unverified. So you can do that at is it club.bookworm.fm? Yes, club.bookworm.fm.
1032. 01:35:10 All right, so check out club.bookworm.fm. And if you're reading along, then pick up how to win
1033. 01:35:16 friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. And we will talk to you next time.