. . . and if by chance we find each other . . .

Where do I begin? I, Tidy Heidi, moved to Holliston nine years ago, a week before my wedding. It was quite the adjustment for me and my stepdaughters. I went from a clean, well organized, tastefully decorated bachelorette pad to clutter and chaos. Dirty dishes were piled high until there were no more clean ones. This was the catalyst to get someone to unload, refill, and rerun the dishwasher. I learned that my husband would occasionally bribe the girls with money to get them to clean the kitchen. I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

I kind of knew what I was getting into, but I promised myself that I wouldn’t attempt to pressure my new family into adhering to my standards – I needed to accept them “as is” and not try to change them, right? However, I overlooked one thing – as soon as the movers had carried the last box into the house, change was inevitable. Things were different. Instead of three, we were four plus one shy cat. The girls actually wanted a home they could be proud of, and they believed that I would make this happen.

If you think it is difficult to get your own kids to do chores, try being a stepparent. You have little or no authority. Add to this the ambivalence and often raw emotions that are part of the stepfamily experience, and you might imagine that I was facing one of the greatest “management” challenges of my life.

I am a project manager. I am accustomed to assigning tasks with little or no authority. How difficult can this stepfamily management be? You may be thinking, “Come on, Deb. You’re a PMI-certified, PMO project manager. Why can’t you figure this out?”

There were excuses from my step team – I worked today, I am tired, I am lazy (yes, an admission of guilt), I slept late, I am super busy. And there were promises – I’ll try harder, I’ll do it later. My husband (the business owner) was of little help. He reminded me that not everyone’s standards and priorities are the same. Kind of brought to mind a poster from the late 60’s. . .

Ick! It would be an understatement to say that I was never fond of that poster.

So with my business owner not on board, I turned to my executive sponsor, if you know what I mean. I’ll let you use your imagination as to who this might be. I was just about at the breaking point, and then it came to me – an honor system with a “Chore Tracker” spreadsheet.

Those of you who have worked with me know that I have at least one spreadsheet for every project. I introduced it by explaining, “With this Tracker sheet you get recognized for your contributions.” I also said, “I respect that at times you do have other things to do or may not be feeling well. With this system, you are not assigned to any particular task on any day or week, but over time, you can make sure it evens out.”

So up it went – at eyelevel on the refrigerator. . .

This simple chart changed my life. My stepchildren actually like it. One came home from work and said that while she was driving home, she was hoping that the dishes hadn’t been done yet, because she wanted to get her name up on the chart. On more than one occasion, I overheard them explaining it to their friends. They were kind of proud of it (don’t ask me why).

When one of them was really slacking off and had no good excuse, I decided to pivot the data and graph it (yes, I am an Excel geek). I posted the results on the refrigerator.

It was great! Displaying the data this way helped kick things up a notch and evened out the workload again.

It has been nearly one and a half years since the first sheet went up and I am happy to report that it still works well for us. I am absolutely not advocating that we stop using project schedules with tasks, durations, and resource assignments. It actually makes me shudder to think what my projects would be like if we had to run them with my honor system Chore Tracker. I am saying that oftentimes, people need someone to step forward and lead, providing them with structure and direction, and very important, they may need recognition and appreciation. There could be times when we project managers need to be creative and find ways to motivate people, to elevate morale, to keep project work moving forward. And when you do, when you find that sweet spot . . . it’s beautiful.