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