The Challenge

Business Dad : How Good Businessmen Can Make Great Fathers (and Vice Versa)
by Tom Hirschfeld, Julie Hirschfeld, Ph.D.

Mission Statement
a secret weapon for business dads

As businessmen and as fathers, we face nowadays what is known in business as a high-class problem: an explosion of opportunity without a single extra hour in the day.

Think of how life has changed since 1960. In business, that was the heyday of the Organization Man, who knew exactly where he fit within his company and his world. In his gray flannel suit, he would catch the same train every morning, do the same kind of work, drink the same number of martinis at his two-hour lunch, and pretty much never have to wonder where his next paycheck was coming from. He had every reason to expect his company and his job to be there waiting for him the next day. Life moved slowly, and the world changed gradually. It was a comfortable existence, all in all, if not the most exciting one.

Today, we have all the excitement we can handle. The natural barriers of time and distance, and the man-made ones of tariff and regulation, are crumbling into dust. For enterprising individuals and companies, possibilities expand every day. Previously unimaginable rewards are there for the taking. But for those a bit slower on the uptake, a bit more complacent or less informed, technology and globalization represent opportunities to lose, not win.

And the line between loser and winner seems to get thinner every day. Just when we imagine our careers are going fine - boom! - some fresh thundercloud approaches. It could be a new technology, a new market entrant, or even a new VP down the hall. In this age of dizzying change, the wheel of fortune spins faster the harder we run. Even if we're lucky enough to scramble our way to the top, we've got to keep sprinting just to stay there - and the trickiest part is that the blasted thing keeps changing direction. We can never relax, never coast. Laurels? Nowadays, they wither overnight. Nothing recedes like success.

The only thing between us and the bottom of the wheel is information - but information is part of the problem as well. It used to drift in at a nice, manageable pace, then sit politely until we were ready to absorb it. These days, facts and factoids come hurtling at us like balls from a pitching machine gone berserk. If we don't keep watching and swinging, we're bound to get beaned. What we don't know really can hurt us - we're playing hardball now.

To survive professionally, it seems we businessmen must constantly work harder, longer, and farther away. Despite the Internet and videoconferencing, the airlines have never been busier. The “just in time” techniques widely applied to cutting inventories now seem to apply to human resources as well, so we have less and less control over our hours. Even when we're not on duty, the communications revolution keeps us on call. The “efficiencies” from a decade of downsizing have managed simultaneously to increase our workloads and to dangle a constant threat above our heads. But the travel, the crazy schedules, the job stress - they're all worth it, because we're doing it for the kids.

The kids. Ah, the kids. Don't you love to think of them, home with their moms or nannies, or off in day care or school, just waiting for that moment tonight when we'll walk in the door? If we can only get this draft report circulated by seven o'clock, we should be home before they hit the sack. And even if we can't squeeze in any quality time tonight, there's always tomorrow, or this weekend, right after golf. Sure, we'd love to spend more time with them, but our top priority has to be bringing home the bacon, after all. Luckily, their moms are terrific with them. After all, the kids have mostly been Mom's department, whether she has a “day job” or not - though we're good family men and help out whenever we can. After a hard day at the office, we probably wouldn't be that much fun to hang out with, anyway.

Just a minute! What's wrong with this picture? Nothing, except that it's not 1960 at home anymore, either. Back then, a good family man basically had two roles to fill with his kids: provider and disciplinarian. Mom handled the rest. But today's approximately ten million businessmen with kids under age eighteen have been hit with what the business books might call a paradigm shift. As a result, the kind of remote-control fathering caricatured above just doesn't cut it anymore. Success at home, like success at work, is a lot more demanding than it used to be. On the other hand, it's also a lot more rewarding.

Three related trends have dramatically expanded our job descriptions as fathers. First, our own parents rarely obsessed about parenting or even used the term; they just did it. Now, though, society is much more focused on what parents should do to bring up - but not mess up - their children. People think more about what kids really need, and how parents can affect them for good or ill. Entire industries of books, magazines, and Web sites have sprung up telling parents what to do and what not to do - and some of the advice is even right.

Second, the social infrastructure for rearing kids is - let's face it - rotting. The structured schools, safe neighborhoods, wholesome TV programming, frequent worship, and united families of yesteryear, which reinforced the messages parents sent their kids (or even offset parental shortcomings), can no longer be depended on. Schools pay more attention to political correctness and children's self-esteem than to learning, kids get snatched off neighborhood streets, TV teaches materialism and cynicism, spirituality too often comes as an afterthought, and half of marriages end in divorce. Where once parents could count on society as an ally, now we have to fight the culture's low expectations of (and for) our children. So raising kids right has become harder.

But not all the news is bad. The third trend is generally positive, although closely linked to the second: the blossoming of options for men and women about what kind of lives to lead. Mothers enjoy more and better opportunities in the world of paid work, while men have learned that strong and silent don't have to go together. Just as women are no longer seen as lovable incompetents or mere ornaments in the workplace, we men are no longer automatically foreigners in the nursery or the kitchen. We can enjoy richer, deeper relationships with our children than the Organization Man ever imagined.

This loosening of gender roles may give men more choices, but put it together with the newly perceived urgency of our children's needs, and it spells responsibility. In a haywire society, successful families don't just happen: parents, both parents, have to make them happen. We dads still have to be providers, but no longer just in the financial sense. We're desperately needed as equal partners in child-rearing, in providing that warm, structured upbringing that could make the difference down the line between Yale and jail. Our wives and the (other) experts tell us that we need to make a true commitment to parenting - to be there for our kids every day, not just physically but also mentally and emotionally.

Do you know your kids' teachers? Their friends' names? Their homework schedules, or how many sweets they're allowed in a day? What are your thoughts about their current disciplinary challenges? And by the way, do you remember your sales deliverable for next quarter? Have you figured out what could go wrong in your revenue pipeline? What are you doing about it? Do you even know who your real competitors are?

© 1999 by Tom Hirschfeld with Julie Hirschfeld, Ph.D

About the Author

Tom Hirschfeld is a venture capitalist at Patricof & Co., where he invests in technology and communications companies. He serves on the boards of six corporations and one nonprofit institution. He was previously assistant to the mayor of New York City, vice president in corporate finance at Salomon Brothers, and author of two books about video games.

Julie Hirschfeld holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and specializes in marital and family therapy. The Hirschfelds live in New York City with their two children.