The Power of the Mama List

On Mother’s Day, a post of gratitude for my mom, my wife, and moms everywhere.

My wife was out of town this week from Tuesday through Saturday. She was traveling on business for the first time in years to a conference.  

Before she left, she led me to the refrigerator to show me a crucial item attached by a magnet: 

The Mama List. 

The Mama List is set of detailed instructions for the care and logistics of our daughters.  It included day-by-day schedules and checklists for each girl for school and outside activities.    To make this week more interesting, it was also Teacher Appreciation Week, so each day included additional items to bring like flowers or gift cards. 

Throughout the week, I had to be the early morning drill sergeant to get the girls motivated to move from the breakfast table to their rooms to get dressed and then to pack their lunches and get all of their papers signed and into their school folders and to brush their hair and no, now is not the time to play with your recorder or do a hula-hoop demonstration, and then into the car in time to leave for school.   

If that run-on sentence leaves you out of breath, that’s how I felt.

By Friday, I got smart and called in the heavy artillery:  the sausage biscuit.  I told the girls that if they both were ready by 7:30AM with no fussing, we could get a biscuit on the way to school.   Worked like a charm, but somehow violates all of my fancy management theories about intrinsic motivation.   Food works, too. 

On Wednesday, I received a phone call from the girls’ piano teacher.  She needed to move one of the girl’s lessons from Friday to Thursday, but still keep the other girl’s lesson on Friday but at a different time.  Could I accommodate that change?

My brain froze. 

I had to go back to the Mama List and review the detailed schedule for Thursday and Friday, then calculate all of the transportation times to see if the logistics would work.    

I then realized that my wife’s brain is more powerful than a supercomputer running an airline reservation system.  All of these different schedules, routes and requests stored in her brain.  Then some outside event occurs that impacts the schedule, her algorithms kick in and poof – the revised schedule comes out.  This schedule makes sure that everyone gets to where they need to be and that all, well most, of their needs are met.  Way better than any airline.   

I expressed my appreciation to her today – which I really could do having spent a week in her shoes.  She asked what was hard about it.  Not any one thing, but the constancy of it all.  It is a continuous effort of caring management. 

Which brings me to the power of the Mama List for business.   When you find a person who can bring that kind of loving, caring management to your organization, hire them.  It is amazing what happens when you bring in a mom’s tender loving care plus organizational skills  — they help make your entire environment a better place and help everyone be happy and productive.   I am truly blessed to have an operations manager as part of my team who does this for me! 

So a heartfelt thanks to my mom, my wife, and mom’s everywhere for all you have done and do.  

Love, Ron.