Childcare – Who Pays?
“I’d love to work, but I’d barely make enough to pay for childcare,” says my friend, a mother of three. And I’ve heard this explanation from many stay-at-home-moms, heck, it was my reasoning for a long time as well. But assessing the cost of childcare solely to the mother’s income doesn’t make sense, says Joan Williams, author of Re-Shaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter. Instead, couples should view the cost of childcare as a cost of “protecting the economic future of the entire family, and specifically the children” and...
Read MoreThe Stop Doing List
If you’re like me, you have a To Do list — whether the high-tech version on your smart phone or the low-tech kind written on a Post-It, or perhaps just maintained in your head. But do you have a Stop Doing list? Maybe you should. I got this idea from Jim Collin’s illuminating book, Good to Great — Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Part of what makes good companies great is not being overly diversified. The great companies he studied pursued a single “Hedgehog Concept” (being the best at one thing rather than being an also-ran at a...
Read MoreThanks, Moms!
Here’s a shout out to all the stay-at-home moms (and dads) out there – thank you for all you do, not just for your own kids but for my kids too. I am writing this from my hotel room in Pt. Reyes, California where I am staying for a client off-site retreat that Leigh Marz and I are conducting with a partnership of non-profit organizations. I feel privileged to work with this talented, committed, and ambitious group. And what made this work possible was the support of my husband and the help of no fewer than four mothers of my children’s friends, who have hosted my son for...
Read MoreDIY – Ten Questions Coaches Ask to Improve Work Effectiveness and Satisfaction
Are you satisfied with your work life and performance? Here are some great questions to ask yourself if you want to improve your effectiveness, satisfaction, and overall happiness. What are my top three work priorities? Biggest challenges? What are my three greatest strengths? What is my greatest weakness? When and under what circumstances am I most effective? How do I waste time and energy? What would make my job more fun? What would make me feel proud? What am I tolerating? What work relationships are most important to me and who are my strongest allies? Where do I most want to...
Read MoreBreaking Up (With Your Job) is Hard To Do
I have a client who is completely fed up with her job. She is spread too thin, underpaid, under-resourced, isolated, and dissatisfied. She has tried hard to make the job work better, but it has now become clear that the fundamental problems with this job are not going to change. She sees that it will never provide what she wants and needs from her job: financial reward, respect, teamwork, meaning, and balance. If this job were a boyfriend, her friends would all be urging her to dump him and find someone more worthy. And yet she is finding it difficult to leave – in part because she feels...
Read MoreLaw School Grads — Where Did Our Drive Go?
“I don’t expect to love my job. There’s a reason they call it ‘work.’ That’s why they pay me for it,” my friend said to me at lunch yesterday. She is a senior associate at a big San Francisco law firm, and like many in her position, she is overworked and stressed but doesn’t know how else she can support her family. What has happened to all of those bright-eyed, eager law school graduates who were intellectually excited by their work, who wanted to make a difference, who loved the challenge and the puzzle of figuring things out? Far too...
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