The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family

A Leadership Fable... About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life

Patrick M. Lencioni

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780470432419
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

A singularly relevant application of organizational leadership to the home and family

In this unique and groundbreaking book, business consultant and New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni sets his sights on the most important organization in our lives—the family.

As a husband and as the father of four young boys, Lencioni realized the discrepancy between the time and energy his clients put into running their organizations and the reactive way most people run their personal lives. Having experienced the stress of a frantic family firsthand, he and his wife began applying some of the tools he uses with Fortune 500 companies at home, and with surprising results.

In the book, you'll learn to answer questions like:

• What makes my family unique?
• What is my family's biggest priority–its rallying cry–right now?
• How can my family use the answers to these questions today, next week, and next year?

An indispensable resource for busy professionals with full family lives, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family belongs on the bookshelves of anyone who has ever struggled to balance leading people at work with leading a family unit.

The Fable

PART ONE

The Problem

PROVOCATION

Theresa Cousins had never been so mad at her husband, Jude.

Ironically, the comment that sparked her anger wasn’t really directed at her specifically and certainly wasn’t meant as criticism. In fact, he said it without malice or emotion.

If my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they’d be out of business.

That was it.

But as a full-time stay-at-home mom, Theresa couldn’t help but feel like the target of the comment. Worse yet, she suspected that Jude might be right.

THERESA

The only sister among three brothers, Theresa Toscana considered herself a little tougher than most of her childhood friends. Receiving a partial scholarship to play volleyball at the University of Notre Dame, she chose mathematics as her major and made extra money by tutoring other athletes who were struggling with their freshman year calculus requirement.

One of those athletes was a tennis player who had a roommate named Jude Cousins, a fellow Californian who wasn’t having much trouble with math but did need occasional advice about women. Even after she finished her tutoring assignment with his roommate, Theresa and Jude found excuses to be around each other. The two became friends, though they never dated.

After graduation, Theresa returned to her family’s home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she spent two and a half years in what she referred to as “accounting prison,” bored to tears doing tax audits for companies that held no interest for her. So she went back to school to become a junior high school math teacher, something she would come to love.

It was during her first year in graduate school that she also reconnected with Jude.

REUNION

Having quickly abandoned his aspirations to be a journalist in Chicago, Jude joined the herds of recent college grads moving west to work in high tech. After finding a job with a growing software company, he quickly began climbing the corporate ladder, or more accurately, being pushed up it by an industry on fire.

Living with some college friends in San Francisco, Jude spent many Saturday mornings at a local Irish pub watching Notre Dame football games with fellow alumni. It was there that he saw Theresa, and after watching a disappointing loss, he agreed to have dinner with her at her parents’ house that night.

Within a week, the old friends began dating, and five years later, to the relief of Theresa’s mother, they were finally married.

For the next few years, Jude and Theresa worked hard at their jobs and enjoyed life in the City, eating out with friends and going to movies whenever they wanted. As much fun as that sounded, quietly they were struggling to start a family. Finally, after two and a half years of trying, Theresa became pregnant—with twins.

CONTINUOUS CHANGE

Almost to the day that they received the doubly overwhelming news from their doctor, Jude decided to leave his high-tech job and start his own consulting firm, working out of the spare bedroom in the couple’s new little suburban home fifteen miles east of the City.

By the time the twins, Emily and Hailey, had their first birthday, Theresa had abandoned any plans for an imminent return to teaching, deciding that two infants would be more than enough work for a while.

And when she had Sophia a few years later, Theresa accepted that her teaching career would have to wait even longer, and that her role as a mother would be more than a full-time job. Besides, Jude’s practice had grown much faster than they could have imagined, which meant he would be home to help less than she might have liked and that they would easily be able to afford their modest lifestyle on only one income.

When Sophia was ready to start preschool, Theresa thought life would slow down and allow her to breathe, and maybe even dive back into teaching part-time. Then along came Michael, born on Theresa’s thirty-eighth birthday.

Just like that, Theresa Cousins found herself resuming a daily regimen that would fill her days and nights for the foreseeable future, with no achievable end in sight. It was more than she had expected, and would take its toll on her over the course of the next couple of years.

THE SCHEDULE

As the school year started and Theresa pondered the approach of her fortieth birthday less than four months away (on Christmas Eve), the Cousins family was in various states of full bloom. The twins were almost ten and were just beginning fourth grade, Sophia, nearly six, was entering kindergarten, and Michael, at one and a half, was still two years from preschool. The daily schedule at the Cousins household said it all.

Mondays were relatively easy, with swim practice and piano for the twins after school. Tuesdays were soccer practice for all the girls, which involved Jude coaching Hailey and Emily’s squad, and Theresa helping out with Sophia’s amoeba ball team. Wednesdays were the busiest days, with more swimming and a Girl Scout meeting for the twins, as well as Theresa’s Bible study. Thursdays were Theresa’s day to volunteer in the classroom, and another full soccer day, followed by a Friday that always seemed to involve a sleepover or a birthday party of some kind.

Saturdays were a logistics nightmare involving swim meets and soccer games and household chores, and an occasional recital, all with Michael in tow. Sundays were the calmest day of the week, reserved for church, and at least one soccer game or practice. And more often than not, Jude and Theresa had another family over for dinner or a barbecue, filling their house with no less than six kids, which was noisy but wonderful.

Add to that the daily homework, laundry, house cleaning, diapers, groceries, school board meetings, grandparents’ visits, business trips, and the random illnesses or emotional crises that befall any houseful of four children, and the Cousins family was hanging on for dear life, with Theresa doing most of the hanging.

FEEBLE ATTEMPTS

More and more frequently, Theresa and Jude found themselves engaged in a ritualistic conversation about the need to find sanity in their schedule. Somehow the discussion usually took place in the bathroom while Jude was shaving or brushing his teeth, and would be prompted by Theresa coming in to remind her husband about an unexpected or forgotten item on the schedule that day.

“Don’t forget about the parent-teacher meeting tonight,” or “The twins’ scrimmage in Walnut Creek starts at six-thirty.”

Jude would stop what he was doing, take a deep breath, and announce, “We have to cut back our activities.”

“I would love to,” Theresa would respond sincerely though somewhat hopelessly. “What can we stop doing?”

And then the husband and wife would proceed to review the various activities on their calendar, justifying each one as being important enough to keep doing, or lamenting a commitment that they had already made from which they couldn’t escape.

“Classroom volunteering keeps me involved at school, which I think is important,” Theresa would explain.

Jude would nod his head and ask, “Can’t we take the twins out of piano? What were we thinking when we signed them up for that?”

“Well, we’ve always said that the girls need some sort of music, and they really like it. At least Hailey does, and she won’t do it if Emily doesn’t.”

Jude would gently correct her. “Actually, I think it was you who always said that they need music lessons.”

She would pause, and change the subject. “Maybe we should stop swimming.”

Jude would consider it, for a moment. “But isn’t every one of the girls’ friends in swimming? That’s half their social life right there. And ours, for that matter.”

Theresa would agree and then add, “And I definitely don’t want to stop doing Bible study.”

“Absolutely not,” Jude would affirm. “In fact, I should start going too. I need to figure out how to free up my time on Wednesday mornings.”

Theresa would sigh, “I don’t know what else we can change. Sometimes I just want to move to the country and live like the Waltons.”

Jude would bow his head in a defeated sign of agreement, and then come to life as though he had a sudden brainstorm.

“Here’s an idea.” He’d pause, for effect. “Let’s stop changing Michael’s diapers! That will save us at least an hour a day. Sure, it will be messy, but I think it’ll be worth it.”

Theresa would laugh, and then Jude would look at the little clock in the bathroom. “Ooh, I’m going to be late.”

He’d kiss his wife and hustle out the door with a “See you at soccer!” or “I’ll pick up Sophia from swimming!” or “Remember, I’m out of town tomorrow night so I can’t go to the recital!”

And yet another day of chaos would begin.

Some days Theresa would find herself longing for what her father-in-law annoyingly called a “real job.” But she knew that this would be her full-time vocation for much of the next decade, and she had decided long ago to take it more seriously than any paid position she’d ever had.

Which is probably why the comment her husband was about to make set her hair on fire.

SENSITIVITY

They had just put the last of the kids to bed and were cleaning the kitchen. Theresa mentioned a missed dentist appointment and the fee they’d have to pay as a result. And that prompted Jude’s infamous remark.

“If my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they’d go out of business.”

Knowing his wife’s passionate nature and her family’s Italian heritage, Jude wo...

Table of contents

• Also by Patrick Lencioni
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• The Fable
• The Model
• AUTHOR’S NOTE
• FAMILY EXAMPLES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT