June 23; Why Do Moms Make The Best Managers?
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Six: Correction; 23 June

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror;

then we shall see face to face.

Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

1 Corinthians 13:12

Perfect Disorder

Charmaine with Hannah assisting on the Ph.D.

All management is OJT. The art of managing is to learn by doing, the practice–through on-the-job training.

There are a number of paths to get this education.

Charmaine’s training was a family affair.

The president and chief executive officer got her management instruction not so much from pedagogy in a classroom as from pediatrics.

Charmaine, the manager started out as a mom. Managing five babies.

For us, her moving into management was much like being born into a new family situation. All parents start out as individual contributors. Then children come and force the adults to attempt to control the future through offspring. All parents want to make the world a better place for and with and through their children.

Now. Once the new manager gets settled into her new role she learns that some situations are simply unmanageable and some of her staff might be little more than “children” at work. (Was this what Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood was thinking when she said, “We prefer the policy of immediate sterilization…”)

Or maybe in our family/management allusion, the English writer and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton is closer to the truth of managing life. He writes,

The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap… When we step into the family…we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made.

In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

And so the new-born supervisor moves into the fantasy world of management. The move is jarring: she moves from the world of perfection to imperfection; from building an outstanding product to leading (often) substandard staff; from machinery with tight tolerances to organizing people with no tolerance.

No, employees are not children (however they sometimes act).   The tidy world of the individual is left behind for the household mess of management. Where even Jack Welch sounds like Yogi Berra, “If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on.”

There are competing world-views on the value of family and children and women’s work. Popular feminism dictates that a child’s embrace is the kiss of death, a form of workplace violence. Today’s culture says feminine freedom is gained apart from the disordered family nightmare where mothers sleep walk.

The fairy-tale family is the best training. Our children teach us the value of tolerating disorder. The family is home-school for mother managers.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

###