Gift Cards and Stomach Aches

Posted in Management with tags , , on March 4, 2012 by jrvitalis

During a CBS class on leadership, we read and analyzed case after case regarding effective management styles. It would have been nice if one style had emerged as more or less effective than another, but with so many variables involved, this is a complicated and fascinating topic.

I’ve often wondered how much of any given leadership style is innate, and how much is learned. In our house, for example, my husband and I have very different styles. I tend to be more structured, while he tends to be more go-with-the flow. Both of our styles are effective, and we generally end up at the same place, we just take different paths to get there.

I can see these types of differences in the girls as well. For example, Puppy received several gift cards on her last birthday. We went to some of the stores right away. Puppy browsed, but she couldn’t find anything she really, really wanted. Last week during a Mommy/daughter day, we spent the morning browsing books at Barnes & Noble. Since she’d been saving her B&N gift card all winter, she was determined to pick a book out to take home. After browsing for more than an hour, she started complaining that she had a stomach ache.

“Are you sick?” I asked.

“No, I think the pressure from having to pick one is making my stomach hurt. What if I get it home and read it and then never read it again?”

Needless to say, we left the store empty-handed.

Kitten is the exact opposite. When she had a few dollars of her own to spend recently, she marched into the store, scanned the toy aisle briefly, and then pointed to the toy she wanted. Sure that she would regret her choice, I tried to talk her out of it and coached her to take her time making her selection. She remained adamant. Much to my surprise, she brought the toy home and has played with it continually ever since.

This scenario plays itself out over and over in our home. Puppy likes to analyze things and think about every possible scenario before committing to a decision. Kitten tends to make snap decisions, but not out of haste or carelessness; she simply knows exactly what she wants and doesn’t hesitate to act on her opinions.

It will be interesting to watch these two grow up and see to what extent these early indications of management style influence their lives down the road. In the meantime, let’s hope Puppy’s gift cards don’t expire anytime soon!

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Puppy Quips 3

Posted in Miscellaneous with tags on February 17, 2012 by jrvitalis

Puppy (falling asleep on Christmas Eve): I feel a smile spreading across my face.

 

Puppy: Rich is when you can go to Disney World without worrying about how much it costs.

 

Puppy: I’m sweating like a ring-tailed lemur!

 

Me: Give me a kiss.

Puppy: Where are you going?

Me: To bed, I’m not feeling good.

Puppy (as she hops from one foot to the other): Can I go to the bathroom first? Otherwise, I’ll give you a quick kiss and hug and not enjoy it.

 

Me: You are such a good kid.

Puppy: I know. Modest, too.

 

The girls were watching a movie set in the 1940’s when I overheard this conversation:

Kitten: Is this movie in the olden days like Laura and Mary (from Little House on the Prairie)?

Puppy: No, this movie is set in the middle ages.

 

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My Core Competency

Posted in Management with tags , , on February 10, 2012 by jrvitalis

Puppy lost a tooth recently. Yes, another one. That fact in and of itself isn’t surprising, but the fact that I managed to botch the whole Tooth Fairy thing yet again is. I mean how hard can it be? Kid loses tooth, kid puts tooth under pillow, Mom or Dad takes tooth and leaves a reward in return. Simple, right?

Not in my house. Here, complications always arise. Once, Puppy’s tooth fell out during the night and she swallowed it. Another time, Mom forgot to play Tooth Fairy. With Puppy’s last tooth, Mom remembered, but didn’t have any cash or change to put under the pillow. And now this.

Putting her tooth in a bowl to keep it safe while we ate breakfast seemed like a great idea. Except after breakfast I rushed to clear the table so we could get out the door.

It wasn’t until we got home later that day and Puppy asked to see her tooth that I realized what I’d done. I spent the next thirty minutes with my hand down the garbage disposal, hoping against hope that I could find and salvage the tooth. No such luck.

Fortunately, Puppy is fairly pragmatic. While I searched for the tooth, she drafted the following letter to the tooth fairy (In the interests of full disclosure I should note that I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up the spelling):

 

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I know I promised that you would always get my teeth ever since I swallowed my tooth. But my mom accidentally misplaced my tooth so I am sorry I broke my promise. Could you still visit me please?

From,

Puppy

p.s. My mom put it down the garbage disposal so it is not my fault

 

Fortunately, Puppy is now sound asleep and I’ve not only successfully removed the letter from under her pillow, but also deposited a handsome reward in its place, accompanied by the following response:

 

Dear Puppy,

Thank you for the update on your tooth. Of course I’ll still visit you! After all, it wouldn’t be fair if I held you responsible for your mother’s mistakes. Just promise me I’ll get your next tooth, okay?

Keep Smiling,

The Tooth Fairy

 

Playing the role of the Tooth Fairy is obviously not one of my core competencies, but fortunately writing is. Good thing, too, because with only seven teeth down, I’ve obviously got my work cut out for me.

 

 

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Obtaining Buy-in for the Big Move

Posted in Management with tags , , , on February 3, 2012 by jrvitalis

My husband will be getting his Ph.D. this spring and our family will be facing an out-of-state move. In business school, it was always emphasized that obtaining buy-in from employees was a critical factor in implementing any major changes. With this in mind, I’ve encouraged the children to be as involved in the relocation process as possible. As my husband interviews, we look up his location on the map, talk about what it would be like to live in each place, and sometimes even look at real estate online together.

 

So when Puppy announced a couple of months ago that she only had one request about whatever house we ended up living in, I was eager to hear her thoughts. (A blue bedroom? A bunk bed? A play house in the back yard?)

 

But no.

 

With a serious look on her face she said, “I just really, really want to make sure we buy a house with no electricity.”

 

This shouldn’t have come as a surprise since the girl is obsessed with Little House on the Prairie and spends every free minute pretending she is Laura living in the “olden days,” but it definitely caught me off guard.

 

I started explaining all the reasons why it wouldn’t be practical to buy a house with no electricity, but her mind was made up. Obviously I couldn’t agree to her demand, so we ended up comprimising: we’d occassionally turn the electricity off.

 

I thought that was the end of the feedback I’d receive about the move, but last week Kitten made a request of her own. Again, I was eager to hear her thoughts. I expected she’d ask for a purple and pink bedroom (her favorite colors), a loft bed, or even a kitten. Instead, her request stunned me.

 

“Mom,” she said. “When we move I really, really think we should buy a house with a big swimming pool in the living room. And it should turn into a wave pool. And on the other side of it, we should have a hot tub.”

 

Too stunned to argue, all I could think at the time was that obtaining buy-in for this move just might be harder than I expected.

 

 

 

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Framing

Posted in Management with tags , , , on January 27, 2012 by jrvitalis


Just after her fourth birthday, we discovered Puppy was virtually blind in one eye. We hauled her in to a specialist where she was diagnosed with amblyopia. Basically, her eyeballs are shaped dramatically differently, so right after birth, her brain shut off the connection to one of her eyes. In an effort to turn the connection back on, she had to wear a patch over her good eye ten hours a day for eleven months. The good news was that this worked, and her “bad” eye now has nearly perfect corrected vision. The bad news is that “corrected vision” means she has to wear glasses every waking moment of every day for the rest of her life (so her brain doesn’t shut her eye back off).

 

Obviously this wasn’t news we were happy to hear, but my husband and I knew that our reaction would frame how Puppy viewed having to wear glasses. So we made the whole thing very exciting. We took her to the eye glasses store, let her try on as many pairs as she wanted, and encouraged her to pick out a very cool, funky pair.

 

Our plan worked. Puppy received and continues to receive regular compliments about her glasses, and when I told her about contacts recently, she couldn’t imagine why in the world anybody would not want to wear glasses.

 

Unfortunately, our plan worked a little too well. A few weeks ago Kitten told me that she was seeing white dots in her eyes. With a knot in my stomach, I hauled her to the eye doctor. It wasn’t until she announced at the eye exam that she hoped she’d need glasses like her sister and best friend Otter that I realized the whole thing was likely just a ploy to get glasses (which proved to be the case when she was given a perfect bill of eye health).

 

Then yesterday, Otter’s big brother got glasses. When I told the girls at the breakfast table this morning, Puppy jumped up and started dancing. “Yeay!” she yelled. “Now Squirrel, Otter and me all get to wear glasses!”

 

I looked over at Kitten, who was sitting quietly in her chair. Her head was down, and her little chin was quivering.

 

“Are you okay, Kitten?” I asked.

 

She looked up at me, a single tear dripping down her cheek. “It’s not fair,” she said. “How come everybody in the entire world except me gets to wear glasses?”

 

On the outside, I played the sympathetic mother, but on the inside I was howling. How many parents have to deal with a child who is devastated that they don’t “get” to wear glasses?

 

So this afternoon, you’ll find me in the sunglasses section at Target, where I’ll be buying a pair of kiddie sunglasses so I can pop the frame out and give Kitten a pair of glasses of her very own.

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Busted!

Posted in Ethics with tags , , on January 20, 2012 by jrvitalis

Ethics are a frequent topic of discussion at our house. I often encourage the girls to try to make good decisions not because they are afraid of getting in trouble if they don’t, but because it’s the right thing to do. And as a parent, I try to set a good example by doing things like going back into the grocery store when I discover an item I didn’t pay for in my cart. Apparently, my efforts are paying off, because I recently had a major lapse in judgment, and Puppy was more than happy to point out the error of my ways.

We were at an outlet mall after a long day. The outlet mall was divided into two halves by a road. We needed to get from one side to the other, and since we were all tired and hungry, we decided to drive rather than walk our tired crew across. Crawling in the car, I told Kitten she only had to buckle the top of her five point harness. As he started the car, my husband pointed out the police car behind us.

“I guess we’d better buckle all the way,” I sighed.

There was a long silence in the car, then Puppy piped up.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You don’t care at all about our safety, only about getting a ticket?”

I was busted. And truthfully, quite embarrassed that I’d set such a poor example for my kids. In the future, I’ll take extra care to make sure I do the right thing. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because I’ll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m being watched.

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Product Flops

Posted in Marketing with tags , on January 13, 2012 by jrvitalis

It’s obviously worst-case-scenario for any company to invest heavily in a new product or service, only to have it flop. Yet the scenario is not uncommon. Here are a few notables:

*Cosmopolitan yogurt (Yes, Cosmopolitan as in the fashion magazine)

*Colgate kitchen entrees

*Bic underwear

And then there is the plethora of celebrity endorsements (Tiger Woods) and cancelled television shows that never live up to expectations. The truth of the matter is, no one really knows for sure what is going to work, and what isn’t. The same holds true of parenting techniques, and what works with one child often doesn’t work with another.

For example, my family was having dinner with Squirrel, Otter and their parents. The kids were outside eating while the adults enjoyed a quiet dinner inside. Suddenly, Otter banged in the house and demanded a glass of water from her mother.

In our house, when our children forget their manners, I often use humor to remind them. I decided to do the same with Otter.

“Otter,” I said, “don’t you mean please may I have a glass of water my mother whom I love and adore?”

She looked at me like I had three heads.

“Quick,” I grinned, “say ‘please my mother whom I love and adore’ before your mom drinks all your water!”

After a few more rounds, she realized that playing along was the only way she was going to get her cup filled, and she acquiesced.

“Please, mother my door,” she mumbled.

I started to explain that it was “mother whom I love and adore”, but by that time she’d given up on the water and disappeared back outside.

Thank goodness I hadn’t invested any time or money in that one––my efforts were definitely a flop!

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