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Give Your Relationship a Real Review

You do it for your business, so why not for your home life? Assess your accomplishments and set new goals now.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   01/13/2010

It’s 2010. A new year, a fresh start. And at most businesses around the country, folks are engaged in that sacred ritual: the annual performance review. You can’t argue with the logic behind a yearly sit-down to look over the accomplishments of the past year, identify areas to improve and craft a plan for the next 12 months. Done well, the annual review is an opportunity to think clearly about the big picture, recommit to goals and create a fresh start for the year.

Does the annual review have a role in the Business of Marriage?

Martin and I have conducted our own personal annual review for years–ever since our life insurance agent suggested it more than two decades ago. We formed the habit of going beyond setting New Year’s resolutions to writing down our goals and vision for the marriage and family. We set our household budget, determine areas in our personal lives that need improvement and even plan our vacations.

The notes we take from these meetings go into a file folder. Then comes the fun part. We put them away for the year. When we pull out the notes from the last review, we’re always amazed at how many of the goals we acted on. And if we don’t get to a certain item, we reassess its relative merit and either include it in the next year’s plan or ditch it. Perhaps it wasn’t that important.

These reviews represent some of the most productive and meaningful conversations we’ve had. Unlike the traditional employee review, we don’t review each other. Rather, each of us sticks to discussion and evaluation of our own experiences. Just listen to the other–especially when making observations about problems or failures.

Here is the outline of our annual review meeting held each January:

•    A Review of the Past Year

◦    Look over the notes from the last review and annual goal-setting exercise:

▪    What did you accomplish personally, and as a couple, that you are proud of?

▪    What frustrated you?

▪    Where do you think you could improve?

•    A Look at the Year Ahead

◦    What do you want to accomplish?

◦    How will you work together to accomplish this plan?

◦    Just as we would do at the office, we break our look ahead into categories–such as

personal growth, health and wellness, children, finances and vacation.

•    Budget Review and Resetting

◦    As with businesses, how you deploy your financial resources is a reflection of your

values, principles and mission.

◦    Now is the time to ensure that your money and your principles remain in

alignment.

◦    This meeting is also a great time to look over your relationship’s mission statement

or create one if you haven’t done it before.

One practice is an absolute must. Regardless of whether you’ll refer back to your plans and statements, you must write them down. Writing your goals and objectives brings them from the world of thought into the physical world–the first, necessary step in seeing them manifest in your actual life.

Business guru Peter Drucker said, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” We might paraphrase and say, “A goal is but a wish unless you write it down and first bring it into the world.”

The Great Recession of 2009 delivered a really tough year to many businesses and families. Years like this can create an environment of stress and anger–not the best frame of mind for the annual review. If you are finding yourself in this situation as a couple, the following activity for the new year can be a really great way to clear out the anger, let a little forgiveness in and start the year right.

Individually, write down your disappointments, grievances, regrets. Let yourself go. Really get into this. You can use all the expletives, nasty descriptors and unfair advantages you need to express yourself. Take your time and get it all down.

Now fold that paper up, take those notes to the nearest flame (fireplace, outdoor grill, campfire). Look at each other and say, “This was real. These feelings were valid. I’m releasing them and I’m releasing our relationship from them.” Then burn those suckers up! It’s over. It’s 2010. Time to commit to moving on.

Now do that annual review in this frame of mind. And see what happens!

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Marriage Is a Merger, Not an Acquisition

Like companies combining cultures, couples need to plot out their merger.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   12/18/2009

Acquisition: [noun] The act of acquiring or gaining a possession

Merger: [noun] The combination of entities from two to one

Which is marriage, “merger” or “acquisition?” Seems like a simple question with an obvious answer.

We don’t “acquire” a spouse, we “merge” as a couple. “Two become one,” as the mantra goes.

As I reflect on the Business of Marriage, however, I’m not so sure our typical expectations really jibe with that cut-and-dried answer. Half of marriages fail. Could the M&A question have anything to do with that? Can business teach us any useful relationship lessons? I believe it can.

Acquiring a business is a relatively straightforward way to grow an enterprise, diversify your offerings or even become an entrepreneur in the first place. The objective is quite simple: to gain possession of the business and its assets–people, processes, equipment and revenue streams.

Once you acquire, you control: Its future, its culture, its operations are yours to decide. You’ve added an important asset to your balance sheet. The future is exciting.

I recall the early years of marriage. My desire to be married and my understanding of what a marriage would bring were, should I say, acquisitive. All I could think of was “getting my man!” Oh, the bounty of love and romance that would be mine as a married woman. A big warm toaster oven in bed every night. Kisses each morning. I could have a baby if I wanted. I would have someone to spend the rest of my life with! I don’t recall spending much time thinking about the reality of a “merged” life with Martin.

In business, mergers are easily understood in theory–and devilishly hard to achieve in reality. Some say mergers have only about a 30 percent success rate. And it makes sense. In a merger, no one entity gets to dominate the equation. A new business is being created from the two that preceded it. What happens to the old systems, processes and cultures of the two previous businesses? New ones have to be constructed, blending the highest and best of each single entity into some sort of new and agreed-upon design. Some of this work is natural and organic; much is intentional and negotiated. Sounds like a marriage, doesn’t it?

So how do you “merge” successfully? You have to understand that operating as a unit looks entirely different from operating as two individual entities. Companies that succeed with mergers follow a few fundamentals.

Establish the cultural mores, values and principles that will govern the joined business. Just like companies, people come to their unions with all their own “stuff.” Successful companies sort this stuff out going into the deal. Couples can, too.

What must change for the sake of the merger? To be successful together, Martin and I agreed to give up yelling, something that was a fairly regular occurrence in my family but that didn’t sit well with Martin. We also determined not to spank our children. This would be better for us, even if it demanded more patience and more creative ways of dealing with the kids.

Something may work fine for me, but how should we do it? Really think about using the merger as an opportunity to create a culture that is truly supportive of the marriage–and not just the individuals within it. That may mean sharing more financially than you might otherwise, or realigning how the household is run. As Tim Gunn, host of Project Runway, wisely advises, “Make it work!”

Parenting is an area that can stir up all kinds of conflict as couples attempt to face the challenge. If the two of you were raised very differently, it stands to reason that trying to create a united front and parent effectively can be challenging.

Develop an integration plan. Slow down. Merging companies takes time, thought and real communication. Great advice for any couple considering a lifetime merger. Acknowledge the redundancies and make a plan for how you will deal with them. Don’t let the changes take you by surprise or anger you. They’re inevitable. Companies are really smart about this, and generating “economies of scale” is often a primary driver for merging in the first place. Couples, on the other hand, are more likely just to fight about it.

Identify the boundaries between “me” and “we.” This is one of the most important areas to work on consciously. Think about it this way. If you’re a Suburban and he’s a coupe, are you going to be a new-fangled crossover? Or will you agree to merge onto the highway of life together and maintain your separate identities? Understanding what marriage means in terms of your identity is a crucial discussion you need to have. How much freedom will you agree to give one another? What is “too merged?”

Deploy a strong internal communications program. Successful business mergers have great internal communications programs that keep employees apprised of what’s happening, when and why. We all know the importance of communications to a great relationship. Consider adding an intentionally designed program of communication around the question, “How’s our merger doing?” Useful topics can be: “Is our merger producing the desired results?” “How is ’employee morale,’ ” “Are the ‘corporate cultures’ integrating or creating power struggles?” And so forth.

Allocate resources intentionally. Businesses and marriages have finite resources–house, time, money, “stuff,” holidays and vacation days. There are a lot of things that can be sorted consciously:

• Households: Where do we live? What do we keep and what do we trash? Whose

bed stays? Whose beloved great aunt’s china do we keep? Don’t even think about the

Barcalounger.

• Holidays: Whose traditions are honored? Whom do we spend the holidays with

and where?

• Finances: The free credit report guy is right: It pays to know your lover’s credit

score. How will we set up our bank accounts?

• Household duties: This is where a guy can sometimes mistake merger for

acquisition, believing he is gaining a cook and bottle-washer.

• Time: It’s priceless and no longer all yours . . . it’s a shared resource to be

bargained for and jointly managed.

Merging businesses understand that all of these resource allocations should be made for the good of the whole, and not for one or the other of the merging entities. Couples don’t necessarily adopt this attitude.

Are you tired yet? Marriage, like business, is hard work. All the happiness, contentment and self-realization produced by a high-performance relationship isn’t something you “get.” It’s something you create from the giving and receiving of support, love and care. From two individuals, the merger creates a family: an organizational model that supports growth, change, stability and self-discovery.

That’s not a bad asset to have on life’s balance sheet.

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Does Your Relationship Need a Mission Statement?

Companies search for their motivating force and define it. You can do that at home, too.

By: Melissa Thoma   |  11/15/2009

I recently encountered a blog post in which organizational development pro Robert Wickam discussed what it means to be a healthy business:

A healthy business is one where every person is a contributing partner to the business. In healthy businesses, conflict is low and trust among colleagues is high. Each employee is fully engaged and understands his or her role in achieving the company mission . . . People are viewed as thinking and feeling human beings who bring enormous energy, creativity and talent to their work. They are encouraged to pursue meaningful opportunities that allow them the autonomy to make decisions and contribute to the company in significant ways.

I had to laugh because you could swap the words “healthy business” for “healthy marriage,” and the statement would be just as true. In healthy relationships, partners share a clear sense of purpose, agree on strategies to reach their goals, hold to common values and rise to certain behavioral standards. They have a mission. Just like work.

I thought to myself, “What’s my marital mission statement?” Good question. Most of us got married because we “fell in love.” Wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. Felt attracted. But this idea of romantic love is relatively new, and with it comes a 50 percent divorce rate. Perhaps there’s a way to really hone in on and create a greater sense of mission and purpose that will draw you and your partner deeper into a relationship.

So what goes into a statement of mission? Businesses spend lots of time and money attempting to express their mission in order to bring a sense of attention and intention to their work. People working in businesses don’t simply want to be making widgets; they want to be connected to something greater than themselves.

For a relationship, the work begins with a statement of purpose. What is the highest motivating force behind your union? Is it having children? Is it supporting one another? Is it experiencing unconditional love? Talk with your partner about this and try to identify the deepest motivating force driving your relationship.

I asked Martin about this, and we agreed it was our deep desire to experience union with our creator by becoming co-creators of our lives. Now admittedly, Martin and I are right-brained creative types, so this really works for us. It encapsulates the desire that drove us to make a home, create a family, create a business and support each other in our respective creative endeavors.

On a spiritual level, Martin and I believe the energy that drives the creative process is unconditional love, so that is what we hope to experience from our union. And this particular mission and purpose encourage us to continually be co-creating our lives.

How do you hope to achieve this purpose? How will you achieve your mission? In business we develop strategies governing our conduct in pursuit of the business goal. Will you be an aggressive growth organization? Will you be customer-focused? Will you develop a unique culture? Businesses create game plans, and couples can, too.

Some relationships may depend on utilizing religious faith guidelines to achieve their mission. Some may delegate roles. Martin and I agree to act cooperatively to consciously develop a higher quality of life through vision, action and planning.

Most businesses also define the core values that drive their organizations. The leadership simply agrees on the appropriate boundaries for action. For our family, we choose to live by respect, trust, non-judgment, encouragement and self-control.

Finally, all this thinking work must manifest itself in expected behaviors. For us, that means conscious, non-ego-oriented behaviors that support a loving environment.

Using the framework of purpose, strategy, values and behaviors, our family created this mission statement:

We are co-creators of our lives, sharing a desire to love and be loved unconditionally, by consciously determining our behaviors and the outcomes we wish for ourselves and our family. We value respect, trust, non-judgment and self-control. We bring our best selves to this union, casting out destructive, egocentric motivations so that we may achieve the most positive and loving lifestyle we are capable of.

We think that’s worthy of a cross-stitch sampler.

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Bring the Budget Process Home

The concepts that keep business cash flow in order can do the same at home.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   10/20/2009

It’s the most argued about, most costly, most dangerous issue in most relationships. Money.

Money is handled in a fairly straightforward way in the business world. We budget for it. We account for it. We invest it and spend it, and we have methods for safeguarding it. And we all know that the aim of a healthy business is profit. So let me ask you a question: How do you intend to profit from your relationship with your spouse or life partner?

Start by considering the “profits” you hope to reap as a couple or as a family. Through my marriage I hope to gain access to experiences that I might not have by myself. I profit from the ability to co-create on every level: from having children to building a business to creating a home environment and a lifestyle that are rich and satisfying. And it goes deeper than that. I will profit from having the support of my spouse in sickness and old age. This is no small list of profitable outcomes.

We expect such amazingly rich outcomes from our relationships. But do we budget, plan, invest and safeguard our resources to ensure that we will be able to achieve these outcomes? Do we bring a businesslike discipline and mind-set to producing results in our relationship? It makes sense to do so. Money is, after all, the No. 1 area of conflict and cause of divorce in marriage.

Let’s assume you’ve laid out a budget at home. Now let’s talk about how to manage those budgeted finances. In an earlier column I talked about designating a CFO for the family. This is the person who is accountable for overseeing the family resources, the budget, investments, savings and real assets (cars and land and houses). Note that this person doesn’t get to decide how it all gets spent; he or she just oversees and manages the money stuff. Martin is our family CFO. He tracks the financial and tax data that come into the household and makes sure the bills are paid on time. Why is he the CFO? Because he has the time and the attention to detail to be good at it. Does he decide how much money should be spent at this week’s grocery run? No. We agreed on a budget together in December.

In a well-run business, the CFO doesn’t approve the expenditure of every little penny. That is micromanagement, and it doesn’t empower employees to use their insight or enable ideas to shine. At home it should be no different. Each of you should have discretionary budget amounts that you may spend freely without the input of the other. Likewise, you should agree to a cap on the dollars each can spend without the knowledge and input of the other. It’s a purely personal decision. There’s no right or wrong to it. At our house, Martin and I feel comfortable spending upward of $1,000 without consulting each other. That expenditure should be tied to that overall budget–no spending beyond your resources without a talk. But otherwise, we’re free to take advantage of sales or deals, or to treat ourselves or the other to a gift.

I know that many couples have joint accounts and separate accounts with discretionary spending privileges. That’s great. Still, couples should agree to an amount that they feel calls for a discussion even when it comes from those individual accounts. Consider a business. No matter who you are and what authority you have, there comes a level of investment or expenditure on which you’ll seek counsel and agreement from other managers or owners. It’s no different in the business of marriage. You might purchase that darling red BMW convertible from your discretionary checking account, only to find that your spouse is infuriated because you have put the family at risk should one of you lose your job and you need to reassign your resources. Open financial books and open communication are the best way to deal with money in marriage.

At Thoma Thoma, we practice “open-book management.” Our employees all contribute to the bottom line. As such, they all have a right to know about our basic financial situation and how that impacts them. Even if you’re keeping separate accounts, we recommend that anyone who is contributing toward a shared purpose (and contributing doesn’t just mean dollars) has the right and the obligation to see the basic financial picture. Keep the books open, and be accountable to one another.

Smart businesses employ professionals to assist them with financial management. So should you. I really don’t understand why we don’t have required classes in personal finance at the high school level to prepare us for running a household. Managing money is complicated, and most of us didn’t learn much more than how to balance a checkbook (obsolete information these days, when we run our checking account off a debit card and internet banking). So seek out as much counsel as you can. The two of you probably came to your relationship with different views about money and how to use it. Proper counsel can open you both up to new ideas about money and help you negotiate an agreement about how the two of you will use money together.

How can you assess the well-being of a company? Just look at the bottom line. The same can be said of a marriage. Any couple with financial trouble is undergoing stress that is detrimental to the relationship. So don’t wait another minute. We’re coming up on the end of the year. Make this the year that you address your budget, your finances and start generating real profit in your marriage.

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Low-Conflict Conflict Resolution

Conduct ‘Courageous Conversations’ and resolve conflicts more agreeably.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   09/15/2009

Conflict is part of every human relationship. Make that every kind of relationship: I just glanced up from the monitor in time to witness our black cat swipe a sharp claw and hiss angrily at our rotund and lazy gray cat, who was hogging the windowsill. And while Bad Omen (another story) bullied his way to success with Murry, the same technique is not as effective with your partner.

Martin and I will soon celebrate our 26th wedding anniversary. In that time we have engaged in more forms of conflict than I care to count–yelling, one-sided rants, lectures, bawling, note-writing, the silent treatment and late-night come-to-Jesus talks. All of these have involved varying degrees of failure. But as is often the case, our business showed us a better way to discuss our problems. And we’ve used this technique at home with similar success.

A few years ago, we hired professional leadership coach Barry Goldberg to help us develop our management team. For one year we worked individually and as a group to learn the best ways to manage as a team. Goldberg introduced a script that we lovingly named “The Courageous Conversation.” We now train the entire staff in this process, and it is the foundation for how we deal with conflict at Thoma Thoma.

Here is the process: First imperative is to ask for a mutually agreeable time to have the conversation. Let your partner know that it is of the courageous sort and the nature of the issue. For example, “Martin, I need to have a courageous conversation around the issue of forgetting to pick up our child twice in one week. When can we talk about this?”

Sometimes your partner will be ready to talk about it right then. Fine; do it. Other times he or she will prefer to regroup later. Fine; set the time. The idea is not to create a torturous period of anticipation. It is to create a “safe space” for the conversation to happen in a non-threatening manner. If the topic is a real button-pusher for your partner, it may be enough to say, “I need to have a courageous conversation,” then introduce the topic at the actual time of the conversation. Once you have a mutually agreeable time, let it go. No goading, jokes or under-the-breath muttering. Just wait for the conversation. Once you are sitting down for this discussion, begin like this: “Martin, Sam was left at school for an hour two times last week.” (Just state the facts, please).

Take a breath and share this statement, filling in the blanks: “When you [do the behavior in question], I feel [how it makes you feel] and it makes me want to [behavior you want to respond with.] What I would prefer is [insert desired behavior here.]

Continuing my example: “Martin, when you forget to pick up Sam, I feel like I can’t trust you and you don’t respect me, and it makes me want to (scream, cry, take your head off, accuse you of being uncaring and immature). What I would prefer is that you set an alarm on your phone or in your computer so you don’t forget Sam again.”

Your judgment or opinion of a bad situation will likely be very one-sided and colored by your life experiences and past hurts. Your opinion may not have value or relevance to your partner based on his or her life experience and past hurts. So framing the conversation to describe how the behavior makes you feel is less arguable. It acknowledges your reaction, without implying that the problem is anyone’s “fault.”

How you feel when someone does or says something is a fact, not a judgment. A grievance defined in this way encourages others to acknowledge your feelings (which most of us need, anyway) and encourages the two of you simply to address the problem.

In the above scenario, Martin might say, “I’m sorry about that; it makes me feel really bad, too. I’m just so stressed out about that deadline next week that I get wrapped up in my work and forget the time. I’ll try setting my phone alarm from now on.”

He might also say, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I don’t think of this as a problem. Sam was not worried or upset. And I eventually remembered him.” You then have a chance to listen and decide if you want to make an adjustment. You might just say, “This makes me too nervous and irritated; do you think you could set your phone alarm from now on?”

Here’s what’s notable about a conversation like this. The problem is framed without judgment or condemnation. I didn’t say, “Martin, you absent-minded professor, you completely abdicated your responsibility as a parent twice last week by forgetting your son at school!” (As you can see, I’m actually quite good at initiating a conversation like that, as well.)

The blame-free framing sets the stage for you to discuss a problem in which there isn’t really any fault, only upset. For instance, I had to have a courageous conversation with Martin about his snoring, which was leaving me exhausted and angry. If I remember correctly, I said something like: “Martin, your snoring has become so severe that when you get going in the middle of the night, I feel out of control and it makes me want to smack you over the head and sleep in separate beds.” He got to the sleep clinic real fast and doesn’t snore anymore.

If you stay on your courageous conversation script, you won’t be tempted to bring up past grievances or issues. You won’t get going on the “you’ve done this a thousand times” or the “you always do this” script.

If you are on the receiving end of a courageous conversation, you have several factors working for you. First, your partner didn’t just walk up and start yelling. You have had a heads-up that there is a problem and the nature of that problem in a general sense. You can be prepared. Your responsibility is to listen and offer your feedback about that issue along with encouragement to get past the problem to the solution.

Try this with a problem that arises at home. All you have to remember is your script: “When you [do the behavior in question], I feel [how it makes you feel] and it makes me want to [behavior you want to respond with.] This conversation is indeed courageous–and also effective.