My latest book “I Am So The Boss Of You: An 8 Step
Guide To Giving Your Family “The Business” compares
life in the corporate lane to life in the car pool lane,
and provides tips on how moms can use corporate structure
and rules to rule the household.
But while many concepts are transferrable
between home and office, Mother’s Day is an event
that is really only celebrated at home, not in the workplace.
I don’t think it’s a mistake that it always
lands on a Sunday, where it can’t take up precious
billable hours between Monday and Friday. But what if we
could re-write the calendar and have Mother’s Day
land on a workday? How would we be able to tell it’s
Mother’s Day versus any other day in the office? I’ve
been thinking about this.
You know how moms always tell their kids
“every day is Kid’s Day”? First of all,
that’s crap, or at least it should be, or they truly
are the boss of you and you need to rethink a few things.
But it seems to me that Mother’s
Day is pretty much every day in the work world, and not
in a good way. Hear me out.
At home moms are privileged to receive
the time honoured traditional offering of burnt toast and
cold coffee from our own junior employees, which ostensibly
is a “treat” and intended so save mom the trouble
of doing this herself. Of course the dichotomy is that more
often than not, this causes mom more work in the cleaning
of the kitchen’s aftermath, or maybe an extra half
hour at the gym after breaking her ‘no carbs’
diet just to keep the smile on her proud child’s face.
How might this manifest itself at work?
It happens all the time. A badly written proposal can easily
cause more work for the mom-manager as she works to get
the employee to rewrite it in the way that will be acceptable.
And how about a subordinate, who offers to attend a meeting
on her behalf, but then makes inappropriate comments or,
worse, commits the department to completing extra projects.
I’m not suggesting we tell
our kids to stop making us a bad breakfast, or that we don’t
assign tasks to learning employees. In fact, it’s
the reverse. We need to keep doing this so that they can
learn from their mistakes and one day graduate to making
an entire unburned meal or being 100% responsible for a
professionally executed strategic plan. In this, we are
still mothering them every day, all day. So let’s
take that second Sunday in May and celebrate Mother’s
Day the way it should be celebrated; with other moms, while
we assign our employees to eat the toast themselves.
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Watch for Funny
Mummy every month. Follow Kathy on Twitter
@KathyBuckworth
or visit www.kathybuckworth.com
Kathy’s newest book, “I Am So The Boss
Of You: An 8 Step Guide To Giving Your Family The
Business” will be released Random House in March,
2013.
This article was originally published in the Metro
News.
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