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 transferable 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 to 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 per cent 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.
Kathy Buckworth's latest book "I Am So The Boss Of You: An 8 Step Guide To Giving Your Family "The Business" is available at bookstores everywhere. Visit www.kathybuckworth.com
