Agile programming for your family Bruce Feiler

so here’s the good news about families

the last 50 years have seen a revolution

in what it means to be a family we have

blended families adoptive families we

have nuclear families living in separate

houses and divorced families living in

the same house but through it all the

family has grown stronger

18:10 say the family they have today is

as strong or stronger than the family

they grew up in now here’s the bad news

nearly everyone is completely

overwhelmed by the chaos of family life

every parent I know myself included

feels like we’re constantly playing

defense just when our kids stop teething

they start having Tantrums just when

they stop needing our help taking a bath

they need our help dealing with cyber

stalking or bullying and here’s the

worst news of all our children sense

were out of control

Ellen Galinsky of the families and Work

Institute asked a thousand children if

you were granted one wish about your

parents what would it be the parents

predicted the kids would say spending

more time with them they were wrong the

kids number one wish that their parents

be less tired and less stressed so how

can we change this dynamic are there

concrete things we can do to reduce

stress draw our family closer and

generally prepare our children to enter

the world I spent the last few years

trying to answer that question traveling

around meeting families talking to

scholars experts ranging from elite

peace negotiators to Warren Buffett’s

bankers to the Green Berets I was trying

to figure out what two happy families do

right and what can I learn from them to

make my family happier I want to tell

you about one family that I met and why

I think they offer clues at 7 p.m. on a

Sunday in Hidden Springs Idaho the six

members of the star family are sitting

down to the highlight of their week the

family meeting the stars are a regular

American family with their share of

regular American family problems David

is a software engineer elvenar takes

care of their four children ages 10 to

15

one of those kids tutors math on the far

side of town one has lacrosse on the

near side of town one has Asperger’s

syndrome one has ADHD we were living in

complete chaos Elinor said what the

Stars did next though was surprising

instead of turning to friends or

relatives they look to David’s workplace

they turn to a cutting-edge program

called agile development that was just

spreading from manufacturers in Japan to

startups in Silicon Valley in agile

workers are organized into small groups

and do things in very short spans of

time so instead of having executives

issue grand proclamations the team in

effect manages itself you have constant

feedback you have daily update sessions

you have weekly reviews you’re

constantly changing David said when they

brought this system into their home the

family meetings in particular increased

communication decrease stress and made

everybody happier to be part of the

family team when my wife and I adopted

these family meetings and other

techniques into the lives of our then

five year old twin daughters it was the

biggest single change we made

since our daughters were born and these

meetings had this effect while taking

under 20 minutes so what is agile and

why why can it help with something that

seems so different like families in 1983

Jeff Sutherland was a technologist at a

financial firm in New England he was

very frustrated with how software got

designed companies followed the

waterfall method right in which

executives issued order that slowly

trickle down to programmers below and no

one had ever consulted the programmers

83% of projects bailed they were too

bloated or too out of date by the time

they were done Sutherland wanted to

create a system where ideas didn’t just

percolate down but could percolate up

from the bottom and be adjusted in real

time

he weighed 30 years of Harvard Business

Review before stumbling upon an article

in 1986 called the new new product

development game it said that the pace

of business was quickening by the way

this was in 1986 and the most successful

companies were flexible

it highlighted Toyota and Cannon and

likened they’re adaptable tight-knit

teams to rugby scrums

a Sutherland told me we got to that

article and said that’s it in Sutherland

system companies don’t use large massive

projects that take two years they do

things in small chunks nothing takes

longer than two weeks

so instead of saying you guys go off

into that bunker and come back with a

cellphone or a social network you say

you go off and come up with one element

then bring it back let’s talk about it

let’s adapt you succeed or fail quickly

today agile is used in a hundred

countries and it’s sweeping into

management Suites inevitably people

began taking some of these techniques

and applying it to their families you

have blogs pop up and some manuals were

written even the seller once told me

that they had an agile Thanksgiving

where you had one one group of people

working in the food one setting the

table and one greeting visitors at the

door sometimes it was the best

Thanksgiving ever

so let’s take one problem that families

face crazy mornings and talk about how

agile can help a key plank is

accountability so teams use information

radiators these large boards in which

everybody is accountable so the stars in

adapting this to their home created a

morning checklist in which each child is

expected to tick off chores so in the

morning I visited Eleanor came

downstairs for herself a cup of coffee

sat in a reclining chair she sat there

genuine kind of amiably talking to each

of our children as a one after the other

that came downstairs check the list made

themselves breakfast check the list

again put the dishes in the dishwasher

rechecked the list

fed the pets or whatever chores they had

check the list once more gather their

belongings and made their way to the bus

it was one of the most astonishing

family dynamics I have ever seen

and when I strenuously objected this

would never work in our house our kids

needed way too much monitoring Ellender

looked at me that’s what I thought she

said I told David keep your work out of

my kitchen but I was wrong so I turned

to David so why does it work he said you

can’t underestimate the power of doing

this and he made a checkmark he said in

the workplace adults love it with kids

it’s heaven

the week we introduced a morning

checklist into our house it cut parental

screaming and half but the real change

didn’t come till we had these family

meeting so following the agile model we

asked three questions what worked well

in our family this week what didn’t work

well and what we agreed to work on in

the week ahead everyone throws out

suggestions and then we pick two to

focus on and suddenly the most amazing

thing started coming out of our

daughter’s mouth what worked well this

week of getting over our fear of riding

bikes making our beds what didn’t work

well our math sheets or greeting

visitors at the door like a lot of

parents who are we are kids or something

like the muta triangles like thoughts

and ideas go in but none ever comes out

I mean at least not that are revealing

this gave us access suddenly to their

innermost thoughts but the most

surprising part was when we turn to what

are we going to work on the week ahead

you know the key idea of agile is that

teams essentially manage themselves and

we it works in software and it turns out

that it works with kids our kids love

this process so they would come up with

all these ideas greet by visitors at the

door this week did an extra ten minutes

of reading before bed kick someone that

lose desserts for a month it it turns

out by the way our girls are little

Stalin’s we constantly have to kind of

dial them back now look naturally

there’s a gap between their kind of

conduct in these meetings and their the

behavior of the rest of the week but the

truth is it didn’t really bother us it’s

not like we were kind of laying these

underground cables that wouldn’t light

up their world for many years to come

three years later our girls are almost

eight now we’re still holding these

meetings

my wife counts them among her most

treasured moments as a mom so what did

we learn the word agile entered the

lexicon in 2001 when Jeff supplement a

group of designers met in Utah and wrote

a 12-point agile manifesto I think the

time is right for an agile family

manifesto I’ve taken some ideas from the

Stars and from many other families I’m n

I’m proposing three planks plank number

one adapt all the time when I became a

parent I figured you know what I will

set a few rules and we’ll stick to them

that assumes as parents we can

anticipate

problem that’s going to arise or we

can’t what’s great about the agile

system is you build in a system of

change so that you can react to what’s

happening to you in real time it’s like

they say in the internet world if you’re

doing the same thing today you were

doing six months ago you’re doing the

wrong thing parents can learn a lot from

that but to me adapt all the time means

something deeper too we have to break

parents out of this straitjacket that

the only ideas we can try at home are

ones that come from shrinks or self-help

gurus or other family experts the truth

is their ideas are stale whereas in all

these other worlds are these new ideas

to make groups and teams work

effectively let’s just take a few

examples let’s take the biggest issue of

all family dinner everybody knows that

having family dinner with your children

is good for the kids but for so many of

us it doesn’t work in our lives

I met a celebrity chef in New Orleans

who said no problem I’ll just time shift

family dinner I’m not home

can’t make family dinner we’ll have

family breakfast we’ll meet for a

bedtime snack we’ll make Sunday meals

more important and the truth is

recent research backs him up it turns

out there’s only 10 minutes of

productive time in any family meal the

rest of us taken up with take your

elbows off the table and pass the

ketchup you can take that 10 minutes and

move it to any part of the day and have

the same benefit so time shift family

dinner that’s adaptability an

environmental psychologist told me if

you’re sitting you know in a hard chair

on a rigid surface you’ll be more rigid

if you’re sitting on a cushioned chair

you’ll be more open she told me when

you’re disciplining your children sit in

an upright chair with a cushioned

surface the conversation will go better

my wife and I actually moved where we

sit for difficult conversations because

I was sitting above in the power

position so move where you sit that’s

adaptability the point is there are all

these new ideas out there we’ve got to

hook them up with parents so plank

number one adapt all the time be

flexible be open-minded let the best

ideas win plank number two empower your

children our instinct as parents is to

order our kids around it’s easier and

frankly we’re usually right

there’s a reason that few systems have

been more waterfall over time than the

family but the single biggest lesson we

learned is to reverse the waterfall as

much as possible in the list the

children in their own upbringing just

yesterday we were having our family

meeting and we had voted to work on

overreacting so we said okay give us a

reward and give us a punishment okay so

one of my daughters throughout you have

you get five minutes of overreacting

time all week so we kind of like that

but the nurses just started working the

system she said do I get one

five-minute overreaction or can I get

ten 30-second overreactions I love that

spend the time however you want now give

us a put now give us a punishment okay

if we get 15 minutes of over reaction

time that’s the limit every minute above

that we have to do one pushup

so you see this this is working no look

this system isn’t lacks there’s plenty

of parental authority going on but we’re

giving them practice becoming

independent which of course is our

ultimate goal I’m just as I was leaving

to come here tonight one of my

daughter’s started screaming the other

one said overreaction of reaction and

started counting and within 10 seconds

it had ended to me that is a certified

agile miracle so the point is and by the

way research backs this up to children

who plan their own goals set weekly

schedules evaluate their own work build

up their frontal cortex and become take

more control over their lives the point

is we have to let our children succeed

on their own terms and yes on occasion

fail on their own terms

I was talking to Warren Buffett’s banker

and he was chiding me for a lot letting

my children make mistakes with their

allowance and I said but what if they

drive into a ditch he said it’s much

better to drive into a ditch with a six

dollar allowance than a $60,000 year’s

salary or a six million dollar

inheritance so the bottom line is

empower your children plank number three

tell your story adaptability is fine but

we also need bedrock Jim Collins the

author of good to gray tell me that

successful human organizations of any

kind have two things

they preserved the core they stimulate

progress so agile is great for

stimulating progress but I kept hearing

time and again you need to preserve the

core so how do you do that

Collins coached us on doing something

that businesses do which is define your

mission and identify your core values so

he led us through the process of

creating a family mission statement we

did the family equivalent of a corporate

retreat we had a pajama party I made

popcorn actually I burned once I made to

my wife bought a flip chart and we had

this great conversation like what’s

important to us what values do we most

uphold and we ended up with 10

statements we are travelers not tourists

we don’t like dilemmas we like solutions

again research shows that parents should

spend less time worrying about what they

do wrong and more time focusing on what

they do right

worry less about the bad times and build

up the good times

this family mission statement is a great

way to identify what it is that you do

right a few weeks later we got a call

from the school one of our daughters had

gotten into a spat and suddenly we were

worried like do we have a mean girl on

our hands and we didn’t really know what

to do so we called her into my office

the family mission statement was on the

wall and my wife said so anything up

there seemed to apply and she kind of

looked down the list and she said bring

people together suddenly we had a way

into the conversation another great way

to tell your story is to tell your

children where they came from

researchers at Emory gave children as

simple what do you know test do you know

where your grandparents were born do you

know where your parents went to high

school do you know anybody in your

family who had a difficult situation and

illness and they overcame it the

children who scored highest on this do

you know scale had the highest

self-esteem and a greater sense they

could control their lives the do you

know test was the single biggest

predictor of emotional health and

happiness as the author of the study

told me children who have a sense of

they’re part of a larger narrative have

greater self-confidence so my final

plank is tell your story spend time

retelling the story of her family’s

positive moments

and how you overcame the negative ones

if you give children this happy

narrative you give them the tools to

make themselves happy I was a teenager

when I first read Anna Karenina and its

famous opening sentence all happy

families are alike each unhappy family

is unhappy in its own right when I first

read that I thought that sentence is a

name of course all happy families aren’t

alike but as I began working on this

project I began changing my mind

recent scholarship has allowed us for

the first time to identify the building

blocks that successful families have

I’ve mentioned just three here today

adapt all the time empower the children

tell your story is it possible all these

years later to say Tolstoy was right the

answer I believe is yes Leo Tolstoy was

five years old his brother Nikolai came

to him and said he had engraved the

secret to universal happiness on a

little green stick which he had hidden

in a ravine on the family’s estate in

Russia if the stick were ever found all

humankind would be happy

Tolstoy became consumed with that stick

but he never found it in fact he asked

to be buried in that ravine where he

thought it was hidden he still lies

there today covered in a layer of green

grass that story perfectly captures from

me the final lesson that I learned

happiness is not something we find it’s

something we make almost anybody who’s

looked at well-run organizations has

come to pretty much the same conclusion

greatness is not a matter of

circumstance it’s a matter of choice you

don’t need some grand plan you don’t

need a waterfall you just need to take

small steps accumulate small wins keep

reaching for that green stick in the end

this may be the greatest lesson of all

what’s the secret to a happy family try