#467： 3 Big Questions to Help Frantic Families Get on Track
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Summary
Does your family life feel frantic?Does it seem like every week you and your wife are scrambling to manage all the stuff that s going on like school, community activities, extracurricular social engagements, home maintenance, etc.? Perhaps what you need to do is apply some of the strategies that help businesses get organized to improve family life. That s the argument my guest makes in his book The 3 Big Questions for a Fr frantic Family by Patrick Lincione, a business consultant for Fortune 500 companies.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast does your family
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life feel frantic does it seem like every week you and your wife are scrambling to manage all
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the stuff that's going on like school and community activities extracurricular social
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engagements home maintenance perhaps what you need to do is apply some of the strategies that
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help businesses get organized to your family life that's the argument my guest makes in his book the
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three big questions for a frantic family his name is patrick lincione he's a business consultant for
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fortune 500 companies today on the show we discuss how the questions he asks his corporate clients
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provide clarity and direction to their businesses can also provide clarity and direction at home
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pat unpacks his three questions and explores how vital it is to create a sense of context mission
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and purpose for your family why every family needs a rallying cry and how to actually implement the
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principles we discuss in your family's life you want to start leading your family and living
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intentionally instead of staying in reactive mode this show is for you after it's over check out our
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show notes at aom.is frantic families and pat joins me now via clearcast.io
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well pat lincione welcome to the show it's great to be here so you wrote a book about three questions that can
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help frantic families but you're not a psychologist not a family counselor you're actually a ceo guy or
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consultant tell us about your background because it's really interesting yeah i uh i'm just i didn't
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go to grad school or anything my parents didn't go to college i just went to college first generation
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and then uh got a great job out of college that was supposed to be a great job at a management
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consulting firm and it wasn't for me and i was really more focused on the human side of business
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so through uh various blessings i had i was able to get into this field and then about 21 years ago i
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started my own company and wrote my first book which was a total accident i just came up with a
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theory and somebody said you should write a book about it so i wrote a fable because i was a screenwriter
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in a previous life for fun and people liked that and then it took off and i started writing more and
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more and now i'm considered something of a thought leader in the field of organizational health leadership
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teamwork and all things related to uh to business or organizations so that's kind of my story if you
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will right and so companies hire you to you know come in look at how they're running the ship basically
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and you offer suggestions on how they can improve so what was the right what was the moment when you
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realized that you thought the same principles you use with companies could also work to help improve
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families run better well you know so we have four kids four boys and my wife and i like so many
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it was a pretty frantic life two of our boys are in college now it's no less frantic because we're very
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involved with them still but um i was going out and working with great companies like southwest airlines
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and chick-fil-a and all these other businesses and helping them make their businesses more sane
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more intentional and then i'd go home and life was very reactive and it was it was crazy you know
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and i said to my wife one day not in a rude way but it sounds pretty rude i said you know if my
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clients ran their companies the way we do this family they'd go out of business
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and i thought and it was really an indictment of myself i tell i like to tell the story like like
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my wife got really mad at me but the point was here i would go to off-site meetings with my team at
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my office my company and i'd help my clients do that we get very intentional about what our values
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were and our strategy and how we're going to execute and we'd have a a rhythm for that and
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and we go home and whatever comes up that day we just respond to it and and i just thought why is
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this my family is more important than my business no doubt so why do i spend so much more time managing
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my business than my family and when i really thought about it brett i think what it came down
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to is because there's not unconditional love in companies you can get fired if you do a bad job or
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your customers can leave but at home we tend to take it for granted unconditional love like well
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my kids are going to love me even if i'm not very intentional and my wife you know what are we going
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to do this is just how we are and so sometimes we take advantage of what we believe to be
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unconditional love and we don't do our very best at home so the the book is you know three questions
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that helps frantic families so you know i imagine as you talk to people you coach ceos you coach i'm sure
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they've mentioned their family life and i've noticed this too with my own interactions with friends like
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everyone just feels so frantic and like they're flailing around it's like what do you think is
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going on there like what why what makes life for family life so much more i mean i don't know was it
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like this in the 50s or 40s i mean or is it i mean is this something new or different no i think it was
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different i'm sure there was some franticness but back then we were just talking about this here in the
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office that back then parents were not near as involved in their kids lives and you kind of sent
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them out there and said if i put a roof over their heads and you know love them but they're
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going to make it on their own half of them went into the military and they life was harder and today
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you know i don't know what it is about our generation but you know dads and moms alike are totally involved
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at home often both working and yet they're driving their kids to every underwater travel lacrosse team
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i mean it's crazy how many activities we think we have to get our kids involved in and yours are younger
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than mine let me just tell you you don't have to have them involved in all those things the first
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i have twins that are now 20 and when we grew up in a very suburban area where everybody participates
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in everything everybody would say well you know you have to sign them up for that because if you
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don't sign them up when they're five they're never going to get involved in it when they're 17 and
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then they're never going to go to college and they're never going to have a normal life and so we
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would gosh it was nuts and that was kind of the prevailing wisdom and so here we are over
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committed under enjoying it it's making our kids too stressed out it's making us stressed out and
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this is not the way we're meant to live and so i just realized boy we should start being more
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intentional and and start taking care of our families in a way that we take care of our
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businesses and it's not just that makes sense to you that makes sense and it's not just kids
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getting over committed it's like parents getting over committed with like church organizations
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community organizations i mean just having friends in a social life that adds to it as well
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oh my gosh and every day it was basically what did somebody email us about and what do we have
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to respond to and what decisions do we have to make today and every one of them felt like a gut-wrenching
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crapshoot rather than an intentional calm peaceful decision with some sort of rationale okay let's start
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talking about solutions and so the the overarching solution you say is families need to provide context
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for themselves what do you mean by providing context for a family well it's the same as in
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business in fact my company is called the table group because we believe the table is the best piece
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of technology that exists well we almost called it the context group because without context it's really
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difficult to make decisions and be intentional so in context it's just really answering some questions
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to give yourself clarity so that when you have to make decisions and live your life you have something to
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look at and say well what makes sense here so for instance we one of the things we say is when i work
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with a company one of the first things we do is we say you know what do you believe to be true in
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terms of your behaviors every great company southwest airlines we helped them they they were great at it
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but we helped them codify their values like what are the behaviors three behaviors that need to be true
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here for a person to fit in and and be successful i thought well why don't families figure out what their
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values are everybody talks about family values and then you say what are those and they go i don't
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know they're family values so what i realized is that a husband and wife need to sit down and say
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you know what is it that we believe to be so true in our family that we want to teach it and and
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reinforce it in everything we do and and and it probably is different from one family to another
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your brother and sister-in-law though might be very wonderful people and close to you are going to
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have different ones and the family next door the one that sits in the pew next to you at church
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they're not necessarily going to be the same so my wife and i sat down i we said what is it that we
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were attracted to each other about what was it about one another that we love that we have in common
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and let's build our family around that and so we did you know one of the things i loved about my
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wife when i met her in college is that she would stand up for what was right regardless of the
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politically correct ramifications she was courageous enough to say this is how i feel
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and she said that's what she loved about me so we said okay let's make that one of the pillars of
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our family standing up for what's right regardless of the ramifications she was very creative i was
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creative our families weren't necessarily creative but we both loved that we said let's teach our kids
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to be creative let's build our family around that and then we said forgiveness is really important
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because we both we get in arguments sometimes and we have to recover we said forgiveness those became
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our three values we said that's what makes us unique some of my favorite people in the world brett
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and i'm sure you and your wife would come up with three different ones and the point is do you know who
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you are and do you know what it means to be a linchoni in my family and so having that kind of
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clarity just kind of helps us to say this is what makes us unique yeah so that first question
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providing contests is what makes us unique it's figuring out your core values but i thought
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there's an interesting distinction you talk about in the book as because as you're consulting companies
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companies you know the whole thing coming up with a mission statement coming with values it's become
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so cliche now and oftentimes you'll see companies come up with these things like we believe in doing
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good and being honest and like making as much money as possible and saving the environment right and
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so like those are values but they're not actually core values so when people typically come up
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with core values or whether it's a business or a family what are they actually doing typically
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and it's actually wrong well first of all they're trying when we come up with values and i wrote this
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for corporations too there's different kinds of values like there's aspirational values those are
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ones that you don't have and you wish you did and you're going to try to work on that well don't
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call that a core value that would be like my wife and i saying neither of us are very organized we're the
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same myers-briggs type pretty much and we're kind of spontaneous which is nuts but that's who we are
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if we said one of our core values is being organized anyone that knew us would think we were fools or
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liars and so you got to know what's not true even if you wish it were true you don't build your
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company or your family around that the second one is there's permission to play which are those very
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obvious ones like we're not murderers you know it's like be nice well that doesn't make a core value
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because it's usually pretty generic and then there's some values that you don't want to build
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around because they're they're weaknesses and you got to guard against that core values are the things
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that are so endemically true and good and that you want to be that you double down on those and you
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say let's never violate those because that's who we are it's like an example southwest airlines i was
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just talking to somebody from there today they're friends of ours one of their core values is having a
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self-deprecating sense of humor right that's what they talk about anybody that's ever flown southwest
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knows that well once a woman complained about the humor on the airline because they were making jokes
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during the safety check well the the ceo at the time herb kellher the founder he wrote her a letter
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that said we'll miss you instead of saying oh we're sorry it's like hey that's one of our three core
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values we're not going to change that in my family when one of my sons was really little he got in
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trouble because he stood up for a friend at school to a bully and of course like they do in so many
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schools they brought both the bully and my son in who stood up to him and told them both they were
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wrong and we absolutely reinforced our son we said you did the right thing really the principal was
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was rewarding you and we think what you did was fantastic because standing up for what's right is
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one of our core values we will never sacrifice that so if you don't know what your core values are
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you don't know how to protect them and to reinforce them and most people think they don't really know
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what they are or they have a list of 12 things which are a mishmash of nice things easy things
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wishful thinking bad things and they just throw them together and call it values that was a long
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answer no short no no it's it's it was really clarifying but so like how can people when they're
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sitting down and trying to answer this question with their wife how can they ensure that they're
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this is actually core value they have to ask themselves like do we actually live this today
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is that with the yes okay that's a great question here's the beauty of this book and this this this
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concept and by the way let me tell you something this book called the three big questions for frantic
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family i've written 11 books almost all of them are about business this is the first one which is
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really a business book for families it's sold by far the least of all of them and yet everywhere i go
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people will come up and go we have transformed our family and it's very embarrassing for me as an
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author because they're using it more than i am and they say we i think this book has gone deeper
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for more people than anything i've ever written and it sold a fraction of the other so so it's
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one of those books that i think is really great but people generally don't go out and buy books to
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change their families they kind of wing it which is part of the problem so getting back to what you
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asked me you don't need to spend three days at an offsite in the woods to figure this out you can
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go on a single date let's say you have 90 minutes to sit down that's a long date i realize and you
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sit down and you say hey you know what is it about one another that we admire and that we want to be
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true in our family forever and we want to raise our kids reinforce it live it and we never want
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to make decisions that violate that so like i said my wife and i just said well what was it that i
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liked about you and what and i would told her things about her that i loved and she goes well that's
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exactly what i loved about you and i said that's it that's one of the things that we have in common
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and that we admire each other around so there's people in my office that one of their core values is
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humor and i happen to know the woman and her husband and they're hilarious and humor is a huge part
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of their life they value it now when they came up with that one i thought well gee i should be
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humorous too that should be one of ours like no no that doesn't mean we don't like humor but that
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is a founding principle in their family it's how they interact with one another another one was
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generosity they're really generous and i thought well shoot that should be one of ours well it doesn't
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mean i'm not going to try to be generous but it's not necessarily the the foundation of who i am
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i mean i i've read your bio brett and you and your wife could sit down and it would not take you long
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and it would be pretty clear you go oh yeah it's these things because you'd look at not only
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what you believe but how you act and it's not hard to you know in 20 minutes on that date that hour and
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a half date can come up with all of these questions answered now of course after you answer them two
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weeks later your wife's going to come to you and say hey wait a second you know some i thought of
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another one i think this is it and you're gonna you're not going to go well we already laminated it and
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made t-shirts because you're not going to do that anyway you're going to go hey you're right
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and so you're going to add that one or change it so it's a process but it doesn't need to take
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days and flip charts and it's really going on a date and asking a few basic questions of one
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another about what you love we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show so besides figuring out your core values to figure out what makes your
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family unique start providing that context because these values are going to start determining
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or start helping you guide your decisions you also talk about strategy so how can a family well
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first of all what do you mean by a family strategy and how can that make them unique yeah and that and
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that's the whole thing the strategy is one of those words like communication or love that everybody
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defines differently and nobody really knows what it means when we talk about strategy both in our
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company and in regard to families what we mean is what are the intentional decisions you've made as a
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family that will differentiate you from others and give you the best chance to be successful or live
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the life you want to live and you have to look at at your life and so my wife and i said well what are
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our what are the strategic things that we've decided that make us who we are and we looked at it we said
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well one is my wife stays home okay now she actually runs a bible study now which is fantastic and she's
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very involved in other things and in the kids lives but she did she left her job and and postponed her
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career because she wanted to be a mom and and and that's her that's a strategic decision we make she
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didn't do it regretfully she didn't do it just because every day she wakes up and doesn't do it
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she said i am going to do that and therefore pat you are going to be the primary breadwinner i'm going
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to be with the kids and that was a core strategic decision we made another one was our lives are going
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to revolve around our family and our children not our career so even though i've been i've been blessed to
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be successful i don't i don't travel abroad hardly ever i travel only for like one or two nights at a time
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at most i've coached my kids teams we're we're very very invested in our kids lives that's a strategic
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decision we made another one is that we chose to live away from our families i don't neither of us live
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in the same city as our families we didn't choose that necessarily on purpose but we realized it was the right
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thing to do where we live so we said our extended family is going to have to be a group of friends
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and people we know that aren't part of our clear family like thanksgiving this year was with the
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same family we always do it with they're like the cousins to our children and the aunts and uncles but
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they're not so we had to create an extended family that wasn't part of our natural family now
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we realize that those are intentional decisions we've made and we need to honor those so when
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somebody says hey do you want your child to be on the travel underwater lacrosse team and travel to
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europe we look at and we go would that allow us to have a family where we were totally involved in
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their lives nope we're not going to do that and when somebody says hey do you want to buy a house in
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lake tahoe we look at that and we go well it depends would that allow us to live according to our
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strategy or not and and it gives you peace so that when you make decisions you don't feel like
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you're making it up from scratch you look at your values you look at your strategy and you say this
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is probably the right decision and you move on right right because you've already made the decision
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right exactly and that's what businesses do but but usually when people go do you want to be on the
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underwater water lacrosse team the parents look at each other and go i don't know do we want them to
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be in lacrosse is that our goal for them in life i don't know what are the kids next door doing i think
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our cousins our cousins are doing that and and does he want to and are we going to regret it and and
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and this is real angst people feel and they end up making decisions that they look back on later and
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say we didn't even live our lives intentionally things just happened and that's not how we're
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meant to live you know intentional living is really a good thing and so this having the context allows you
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to be intentional and not reactive no we've my wife and i've implemented strategies like that
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we try to limit the amount of activities our kids get involved in i don't travel or hardly do any
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speaking engagements and see there's people listening to this who are gonna go oh man i should
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do that too and it's like well first of all be intentional about it what what you don't want to
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do is say because there's some great parents out there they go no i could travel a little bit but
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i'm going to take lots of time off and i'm going to do it differently what you don't want to do is let
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the world dictate this to you and you feel like a victim of circumstance because there's a lot of people
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listening to this that said i never really made a decision just as business got busier i just started
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saying yes and before i knew it i was living a life that i hadn't really chosen and so again it's
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about context and intentionality versus reactive feeling like a victim of circumstance all right so
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your values your strategy serves as a filter for all the stuff that comes at you every day in your
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family life the second question is what's our rallying rallying cry so what do you mean by that
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okay this is probably the most powerful part of this and by the way all of this you can come up with
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in one date so the rallying cry goes like this and we use it in companies too what is the single most
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important thing that you need to focus on as a family right now and and let's say in a family for
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the next three months for the next three months it might be long it might be six months what is the
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biggest thing going on in our family that we have to get done right because the problem is there's a
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thousand things going on but what is the biggest thing right now okay now a few years ago my sons were
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getting ready to go to college and and it was all about laura and i said okay everything that we do has
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to be done in the spirit of how are we preparing our our boys and our family to go away to school
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so we had to think about okay that was our rallying cry getting the twins 50 of our children ready for
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college that was now were there other things that were interesting absolutely other things i wanted
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to do yep but i couldn't do those if i was doing it at the expense of this because that was the number
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one thing years ago brett and this is my favorite one when we had three children we had three boys and
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my wife and i are disorganized so we were pretty scattered we found out we were pregnant we weren't
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surprised we knew how that happens and we were very excited very excited obviously but we were
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like oh my gosh we're already stressed we're already overwhelmed what are we gonna do we're gonna have
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another child and it's a boy so we said okay we our rallying cry was prepare our family for baby number
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four okay so that doesn't mean you should go out and put signs on the wall and make t-shirts like
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companies do your rallying cry is the guide for everything else you do so we said if that's our
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rallying cry prepare for baby number four then you have to come up with what we call your strategic
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definitional objectives okay the objectives are the goals that determine whether or not that goal is
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going to happen we call it in the business world defining objectives they define how we're going to get
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that done so we said if we're going to prepare our family for baby number four what do we have to do
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well the first thing we had to do is we had to get our seven-year-olds that's where our 20-year-olds
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were at the time we had to discipline them up because they weren't taking a shower without us pushing them
00:22:32.020
in there making their own lunch getting their books together and their homework done without us goading
00:22:36.460
them and we said when when our fourth child michael comes if those boys are not more disciplined we are not
00:22:42.480
going to be able to do this that was our first defining objective our second one was we have a
00:22:47.460
two and a half year old three year old who's who's not where he needs to be he's and so we were like
00:22:53.380
Casey get out of our bed and get out of those diapers because life is over as you know you know
00:22:56.860
we had to get him schooled up because if if he wasn't more mature in those little areas we weren't
00:23:03.120
going to be able to handle it then we had to clean out our garage and because we had more stuff coming in
00:23:08.500
we had to outsource some activities in our family that my parents thought i was crazy because we
00:23:12.620
should mow our own lawn but we said we can't do that and then we had to finish the kitchen remodel
00:23:17.420
that we were in in the midst of that had been going on for 12 months that we were about to kill the
00:23:22.260
contractor and we said if michael comes and that's still going on we are going to kill that contractor
00:23:26.600
so we had five defining objectives if we're going to be ready for baby number four we have to have the
00:23:32.440
twins schooled up we had to have Casey better disciplined we had to have our garage cleaned out
00:23:37.380
we had to finish the contracting and we had to outsource some services when my wife and i went
00:23:42.260
to bed at night brett we would think about those five things rather than the million little details
00:23:47.460
that overwhelm us so you come up with that defining objective i mean that thematic goal
00:23:53.220
what's the biggest thing going on in your family right now and then you come up with what are the
00:23:57.240
four or five things that we have to do to make that work does that make sense that makes perfect
00:24:01.780
sense below those defining objectives there's these things called standard objectives which are
00:24:05.940
which are ongoing in a family for instance so my wife and i had to get ready for baby number four
00:24:11.520
but i also had to pay the mortgage we had to keep our marriage strong we had to keep our faith strong
00:24:17.140
we had to keep the kids healthy keep them doing well in school so there's what we call standard
00:24:22.180
objectives which probably don't change for like 10 years at a time because they're kind of like how do
00:24:26.820
we keep the family in business so to speak there might be some other things that are pretty much
00:24:31.460
always going on the question is what's particularly unique as you go into 2019 given what's going on
00:24:39.840
in your family and there's no right answer it's just you have to have one answer let me give you an
00:24:45.060
example when we were getting ready for baby number four i was determined to re-landscape our front yard
00:24:50.060
and our backyard because we bought a new house it was kind of crazy it wasn't very kid friendly
00:24:53.460
and we said nope we're not going to do it that is not the most important thing we need to do right now
00:24:59.320
and so every day i would pull into the driveway and see that ugly front yard and i'd go
00:25:02.980
that ugliness is a testament to my discipline of focusing on what really matters because there's
00:25:07.880
always three or four other things you want to do and it's when you say no to those things
00:25:12.440
because there is a higher priority you know you're living an intentional life so the rallying cry is
00:25:17.960
like that one thing that you can work on for the next three months that will really move your family
00:25:21.740
ahead yes it's going to move the ball forward and you will you will do that at the expense of a bunch of
00:25:27.660
other things that would be nice to do but aren't as important so like you know one rallying cry i
00:25:31.560
think there's an example you gave in the book it's like dad finds a new job because his job is making
00:25:35.660
him miserable and that's coming home and and we need to fix that and and you and you depending on
00:25:41.980
the age of your kids i talked to somebody just yesterday a guy came into my office a ceo and he
00:25:46.400
goes oh yeah we're involving our kids now his kids are 10 8 and 5 and they're like oh not the rallying
00:25:51.240
cry but they sit down with them and say hey here's the number one thing going on in our family
00:25:54.740
and it might be daddy's looking for a new job so here's how we're going to help him he's going to
00:25:59.380
have to take a little extra time we're going to have to do more around the house while he's doing
00:26:03.140
this he's probably not going to be quite he might have to miss a few ball games because he might have
00:26:06.980
to go do some interviews and you get the whole family rallied around that and suddenly it's becomes
00:26:12.160
like everybody's in it together and they understand why things are different and and you give dad a
00:26:18.400
better chance without stress mom a better chance and it might be like mom mom's health isn't good
00:26:23.720
or mom needs to find a hobby or whatever else it is if everybody's focused on that there's a much
00:26:29.460
better chance than if you're siloed out and everybody's working on their own thing which is
00:26:34.060
exactly what happens in bad companies and too often in families that casey has his own thing
00:26:38.480
connor has his own thing matthew has his own thing mom has her own thing and everybody starts to pull
00:26:43.480
apart okay so i want to point out that one thing you said because i thought it was important
00:26:47.860
was okay you have your rallying cry these objectives you're working on to achieve that rallying
00:26:53.040
cry but at the same time they're those standard objectives those things you have to do day to day
00:26:57.360
to keep things going the way they are you can't let those slack or else things are going to start
00:27:02.540
falling apart exactly and like if and and it's probably not that hard to come up with those at
00:27:06.780
all because in my family it's pretty easy it's like how's our finances how's our health how's
00:27:10.660
education how's our faith life how's our marriage how's our relationship with our extended family
00:27:15.620
you know those are those are the things that probably never go away the problem is when you live for
00:27:21.700
those things on the bottom only you kind of get burned out because you go okay what's next well
00:27:26.800
just more of the same another school year another checkup another vacation which are really really
00:27:34.640
really important but it's not necessarily moving the ball forward you always have to have to what's
00:27:39.520
the thing that we're doing that's making our family even stronger so that next year will be a
00:27:43.560
different family i love that so here's a question you've been talking about coming up with this
00:27:48.540
and it's been like you and your wife do you bring your kids in on this conversation trying to figure
00:27:53.120
out the the core values the strategy the rallying cry or is like is this like a ceo level job and like
00:28:00.080
you just convey that to the members of your family you know honestly the the the socially acceptable or
00:28:06.740
progressive answer would be oh yeah involve them but the truth of the matter is you're leaders of your
00:28:10.460
family as a parent and you need to set their thing now you can involve them in certain ways in terms
00:28:14.700
of how to describe it or how to make it real and it's a wonderful thing of course it depends on how
00:28:19.160
old they are but so yes involve them but just like i would say to a ceo when they say well we're going
00:28:25.080
to do our values we're going to take a survey of all the employees and ask them what they are it's
00:28:28.260
like no that's some of your employees don't know the right answer you're a leader and so you can
00:28:35.300
solicit input i suppose but you need to set the direction and frankly most of our kids want us to do
00:28:40.360
that now if you're a family and you had a 17 year old and a 15 year old i'd probably sit down and go
00:28:45.280
hey you guys let's talk about what we think the most important thing is but generally the parents
00:28:50.440
set the tone and then involve them and how to implement it and and get their buy-in but um really
00:28:56.400
the parents job is to kind of create that that context okay so the third question but it's great
00:29:01.660
to have meetings with them well yeah let's and sit down with them but oh go ahead well that's the next
00:29:05.840
that's that leads me nicely to the next question this idea of meetings so the question is how do you
00:29:09.940
talk about and use the answer to these questions because it's one thing you do this thing with on
00:29:13.360
a date with your wife we found out what makes us unique we found out a rallying cry and then you
00:29:18.440
never talk about it again and it just goes nowhere right you know what we did the first time we came
00:29:24.180
up with this is we were at a restaurant that had paper tablecloths and crayons me and my wife and so
00:29:28.580
we uh we we we sketched it all out there and we just tore it off the thing and stuck it on the
00:29:33.020
refrigerator and it would just sit up there and we'd walk by it in the morning go oh yeah that's right
00:29:36.120
these things so here's what a meeting looks like so i want everybody out there to imagine a single
00:29:40.500
sheet of paper right and on the top is a big square that says our our rallying cry in our case
00:29:45.360
it's like prepare for baby number four then underneath that horizontally there's five boxes one says
00:29:51.460
you know get the seven-year-old's just twins discipline get the three and a half year old
00:29:55.120
out of the bed and out of his diapers you know finish the kitchen remodel outsource some of the
00:30:00.020
services and clean out the garage those are our five things and then at the bottom it says
00:30:03.480
marriage finances health education all those things faith okay you have a single sheet of paper
00:30:10.980
with these boxes on it what you should do is once a week you should just look at it for 15 20 minutes
00:30:16.780
and go how are we doing in these areas and you look at each one and you go let's be green yellow or red
00:30:21.440
green means man we're doing great yellow means we're doing okay red means oh we're we're way behind
00:30:26.200
and if you're like me i i let people use lime if it's between yellow and green and orange between
00:30:31.280
red and yellow we actually involved our kids in this when they were 11 and seven and three
00:30:38.160
where we'd sit down at night sometimes and we'd go okay let's rate ourselves and it was so cool
00:30:43.740
because the kids would rate themselves in these areas and they'd usually be tough graders so you go
00:30:48.060
through and you go how are we doing on the twins discipline and laura and i would look at each other
00:30:52.800
and go you know they're still not getting ready in the morning pretty well i i it's pretty good it's
00:30:57.140
yellow or or lime let's just put in lime okay how about casey nah he keeps coming into bed with us
00:31:03.900
still in diapers that's a red how about the kitchen remodel okay that guy we think it's going to get
00:31:09.480
done we think that's what yellow and you just go through this it takes you five minutes then you
00:31:13.600
look at it you go you know what we need to do this week we need to turn the red things to yellow and
00:31:17.160
the yellow things to green okay that's it good i'll see you next week the difference between that
00:31:22.780
conversation for 15 or 20 minutes once a week and what most of us do in our families
00:31:27.740
is exponential it's massive if we families say to me oh my gosh just having that scratched out piece
00:31:35.380
of paper up on the on the refrigerator and looking at the red things and going oh yeah i gotta do this
00:31:40.600
this week oh yeah okay good good good that's how i'm gonna organize my day most of us wake up and go
00:31:45.000
what are we gonna do well i'll look at my email i'll see what what the kids are doing who's yelling
00:31:50.380
the loudest for something and at the end of the day we go did i really make a difference
00:31:54.140
and with just this much structure and i this conversation brett might sound to people listening
00:32:00.880
like it's a lot of work literally in the book there's like a few pages where it says go on a
00:32:06.280
date and ask yourselves these questions do this and this and this it provides examples of different
00:32:11.360
families and in 90 minutes you can turn everything upside down and go i think we have a handle on this
00:32:17.680
and then if you take 15 minutes a week to review it honestly it takes you from zero to eight
00:32:23.560
in terms of intentional living and that's all we really need is to be an eight yeah and i imagine
00:32:29.020
husbands and families like i bet wives appreciate when the husbands take the lead on this i think
00:32:33.400
a lot of wives they want to do this sort of thing they want intentionality in their family and they
00:32:37.180
try to implement it but like they feel like they're just dragging their husbands to it
00:32:40.400
and maybe it'd be better yes you're exactly right and and it's it's so i was in this very room i'm in
00:32:46.000
right now in this conference room and i had a ceo and his executive team in here and we were talking
00:32:50.360
and the whole concept came up of dating and i said yeah you know it's really frustrating to me
00:32:54.520
because we see we're going to date but then my wife never schedules it and he says no it was this
00:32:58.580
brazilian guys no that is your job you plan the date you show her that it's important to you
00:33:04.240
and i realized it's true and and by the way this is true whether the women in my office who work
00:33:09.260
i have a woman in my office whose husband stays home and helps with the kids and she works
00:33:13.260
but nonetheless there's this thing about men and women the art of manliness i love it where
00:33:17.160
men tend to think well my wife sets a social calendar well the problem with that is it makes
00:33:21.800
her feel like she's trying to coerce you into doing things that you don't really want to do
00:33:25.640
and when your husband when the husband says we're going to go out on date i've planned it don't worry
00:33:30.220
about it honey we're going to do this it's pretty cool and um and no matter even though i'm saying
00:33:36.220
that to you right now i still whiff at it most of the time but it's the right thing to do i've got to
00:33:40.380
i've got to say we're doing this and and having this conversation my wife loved doing it she said
00:33:47.820
to me and now she's going like we got to have that we got to do it again we got a new thematic goal
00:33:51.080
right yeah shows yeah leadership show some leadership well pat is there some place people
00:33:55.820
can go to learn more about the book and your work you know um yes we have a we have a website called
00:34:01.520
tablegroup.com table like the kitchen table tablegroup.com and you can find it there we have all of our
00:34:07.940
corporate stuff there but you can find the the frantic family and and you know i'm embarrassed to
00:34:12.420
say i don't think there's a specific website for just this book but the most important thing you can
00:34:18.300
do is is go to the website or just go to amazon or someplace else hopefully and and buy the book
00:34:24.080
and and it's it's crazy it's i think it's like 20 and there is it's it's a story by the way it's a
00:34:29.640
fiction story every people listening should know that all of my business books but one are short stories
00:34:34.100
because i'm a screenwriter so i write them like a little movie because that's a lot more interesting
00:34:37.780
so it's a story about a a husband and wife who are really frantic and how they struggle with
00:34:44.520
comparisons to other families and what they're supposed to do and how they put it together and
00:34:49.020
that really helps you understand what it's about it's short it's a good read i think if i might say so
00:34:55.280
and then in the back there's a there's actually the structure for how to do it this is probably the
00:34:59.480
most useful book i've written fantastic well pat thanks so much for coming on the show it's been a
00:35:02.980
pleasure hey i love the art of manliness i love your website i i'm i'm shocked at how many things
00:35:07.760
you have that i wasn't aware of so to all those people listening they're probably already big
00:35:10.880
followers of yours but what a great what a great resource this is i love it it's going to become a
00:35:15.760
go-to web page for me well thanks so much i appreciate that okay god bless my guest there is
00:35:20.100
patrick lincione he's the author of the book the three big questions for frantic families is
00:35:24.280
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can check out more about his work at tablegroup.com
00:35:29.660
also check out our show notes at aom.is slash frantic families where you find links to resources
00:35:35.960
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:35:52.640
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the show you've got
00:35:57.140
something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on itunes or stitcher
00:36:00.900
it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a
00:36:04.940
friend or family member who you think would get something out of it as always thank you for your
00:36:08.660
continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly