Who’s to blame…? A live example of management.
October 14, 2008
Who’s to blame…? A live example of management.
Watching the process of the kids going to school each morning, and hearing stories about this experience from different members of my family, a very important question came to my mind… hearing each mother complain, I wondered who’s really to blame, the small child who has no experience or time-management skills, or the parent who should be managing this process?
- 6:30am: The mother wakes up, taking about 5min to get up from the bed, then spends another 10min in the bathroom.
- 6:45am: She remembers that there are kids to wake up so she goes over to their rooms, taking 5min in the process.
- 6:50am: The mother enters the kitchen, start preparing her morning cup of tea, taking about 10min in the process.
- 7:00am: The mother notices the kids aren’t awake yet, so she starts yelling at them, accusing them of laziness and telling them “this is what happens when you sleep late” — although she is also responsible for putting them to bed!
- 7:10am: The kids wake up and go to the bathroom taking about 15min in the process.
- 7:25am: The kids start getting dressed, a process that usually takes 10min, only to find that some of their schools uniforms need ironing, delaying another 10min.
- 7:45am: The kids are ready to leave, but their breakfast and sandwiches are not ready, so the mother goes into the kitchen to prepare their sandwiches, taking 10min in the process.
- 7:55am: The kids eat their breakfast quickly in 5min.
- 8:00am: Too late, the bus usually arrives at 7:45am, and the kids are supposed to be in school at 8:00am!
The mother starts blaming the kids that they are lazy and unorganized with no sense of time, complaining to the father about his undisciplined kids!
Now, let us consider this other scenario…
- 6:30am: The mother wakes up promptly, passing by the kids and waking them up before going to the bathroom.
- 6:45am: The mother enters the kitchen, adding water to the kettle, she goes back to the kids making sure their stuff is all ready, notices some of the uniforms need ironing…
- 6:55am: The mother prepares her tea, and gets back to ironing the uniforms, in the meanwhile the kids are in the bathroom.
- 7:10am: Kids out of the bathroom, their uniforms are ready, they start getting dressed while the mother prepares the breakfast/sandwiches
- 7:20am: Kids are dressed and ready, they eat their breakfast taking their time.
- 7:35am: Kids are ready to leave with 10min buffer time, they say goodbye and go wait for their schools bus.
Now let us compare the 2 mother’s with real-life managers, a lot of managers treat their employees exactly as the first mother, not really doing their job correctly but when things go wrong they are sure to blame their subordinates for their own incompetence not realizing that as a manager, usually its their own problem that the employees are not functioning as required.
The problem is that mother #1 will never admit that it is her problem and will always try to find excuses to blame the kids…
Which mother(manager) are you? and if you are a father(boss)… make sure to understand which type of wife you have…
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Tags: time management
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7 Comments
Great point Ahmed but i think it not depends on the mother only.
I’m standing in mother’s row cause really I’m feeling sorrow for women in Egypt 🙁 and also it depends on wife like u said before, so
men always blame his wife cause she didn’t make that or didn’t mange time on that and so on…… and and and…………!
@Lido: I would think Time Management is mostly learned through experience.
el om madrassa
Great analogies to represent time management and consistency! We all struggle one way or another with these two principles. When I was younger, I lacked the concept of time management, I struggled. I guess I had too much time to kill and therefore never thought about organize it. Now, I’ve changed… I don’t know who. My subordinates think that I am too rigid when I attempt to embed these elements in the fabric of our projects. My son calls me too demanding when I try to nourish it in him. “Chill off dad” he says!
Are time management and consistency born, learned or made?
@Doha: I do not disagree with you, however the point was to show that the blame is not on the kids but on their mother (or both parents as you suggest) – its a fictionous story by the way just to try to address a very common probelm with many managers seeing that their role is only to judge and boss around without really trying to do real effort in helping out themselves, or trying to understand that sometime the problem is with them not their team members, and when anything goes wrong, they are always the first to blame their team.
@Mohamed: Thanks.
a nice example, a very true one
Dear Ahmed,
I agree with you on the point that a manager has to see how he controls his time and how he organizes his work before blaming his employees. Every manager has to blame himself first beforing blaming his subordinates.
But i totally disagree with you in passing the example of the mother to express your idea. First of all it is not only the mother’s responsibility to put the kids to sleep and wake them up. It is a joint responsibility that the father has to take a role in. He has to help her by waking the kids up until she prepares breakfast, uniforms and everything…why not??
this way they together will demonstrate a better example of time management and team work which is the whole idea of marital life.