Efficiency

If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything
by Ann Crittenden

(Page 6 of 6)

Judith Rapoport of the National Institute of Mental Health believes that efficiency is the lesson learned by people who raise children and manage households. Rapoport has found this to be an enormous asset in directing collaborative research. As she explains, "as you progress in research medicine, you attract postdoctoral students who want to work with you. You have to organize all these different people - how they use their time, their flow of information, how they meet to discuss their findings, teaching them how to work on one data set, and at the same time be generating the next one and the one after that. Everyone should always have another paper ripening, in addition to the one they're working on, because that output is how they will be judged."

At Kentucky Fried Chicken, so many women with children are good at structuring this kind of workflow that there is a name for them: arrangers. "We tend to be list-makers and schedulers and arrangers," says Cheryl Bachelder, KFC's former CEO. "This always comes out on strength-finder tests." She cites the example of one woman executive who loves to draw up the flow charts showing what steps have to happen next, in which order, on a project.

An acquaintance of mine calls this the dinner-party skill. Think of all the details that went into Mrs. Dalloway's important dinner: the guest list, the menu, the invitations, the decor, the seating arrangement. Then, on the day of the big party, the details and the precise timing multiply: trips to the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the florist, the wine merchant, and supervision of the final performance - making sure the house is clean, the silver polished, the table set, the wine chilled, the food prepared properly, the flowers arranged... finally, bathe and dress and greet the guests as if entertaining them were the easiest and most pleasant thing in the world!

Even in the computer field, the tendency of women to be the arrangers has become apparent. Some 20 percent of computer professionals are women, and a pattern has emerged, with female programmers often becoming program managers. No one is sure why women tend to drift from the technical, engineering side of the industry to the business and management side. It is possible that the women have a relatively greater facility for organizational efficiency, and are going into areas in which they have this competitive advantage.

The most savvy employers are aware of mothers' efficiency. Lewis Mander, an internationally known chemist from the National University in Australia told me that "Some people think women with children will be distracted and diverted from their work, but I find they are the most efficient people around. I love to hire them. It's like that old saying, 'Always give the important new assignment to the busiest person in the office.'"

Ann Moore of Time Inc. has said that some of her best managers are mothers because "They have no time for politics - they have no time to waste! They get the job done because they have to be out of there. Some of my most productive people are the ones who have come back after having a baby."

In this 2002 interview on www.satellitesisters.org, Moore, then executive vice president of Time Inc., had this to say:

Moore: "Maybe one of the reasons I think working mothers make really good managers - and I particularly love working mothers who have very young children at home, because they don't waste any time. They're the most kind of sleep-deprived, time-pressed people, and I find them to be really efficient when they come back from maternity leave."

Host: "That's interesting because I think a lot of bosses are reluctant to hire working mothers with young children because they think they're so distracted."

Moore: "No, I think just the opposite - I am always in awe of how much they can accomplish."

In most offices, people spend a certain amount of time just warming up - getting a cup of coffee, schmoozing with colleagues, making a few personal calls. Then, after a few hours, comes lunch. Working mothers rarely do lunch. Once when I turned in a manuscript with a reference to a business lunch of soft- shelled crabs, a young editor, the mother of a toddler, scribbled in the margin, "What's a soft-shelled crab?" She worked in midtown Manhattan, an area full of good restaurants, and she never went out to lunch. She had to get the job done and get out of there.

Another working mother, a writer for television, told me that one of the biggest changes in her life since having a baby was how much more efficient she had become. "When I used to have a script due, I would say, 'I'm writing,' and I couldn't do anything else," said Becky Hartman Edwards, one of the writers on the series American Dreams. "I would procrastinate, mull over it, wait until 2:00 A.M. to start working ... Now I'm much more organized and much more productive during work hours, because I have to get out of here. I've got two kids at home."

Fathers with child-rearing responsibilities can suddenly become just as efficient. Ruth Harkin of United Technologies has male attorneys in her office in Washington, D.C. who share parenting, including the chief trade counsel, a father of two. He recently asked her permission to work at home on Wednesdays. I asked her if she had granted it.

"Sure! And now I see he's getting more organized."

Marian Ruderman told me that she had been concerned that motherhood might affect the quality and quantity of her work, but she felt she did better work after her first child was born than before. She found that, among other things, she had more focus and was more efficient with her time; she was better able to deal with difficult people; and she gained more distance from the stresses of work by having a different dimension to her life. Her colleague Patricia Ohlott confirmed this. "We have a mother of two in our group who until recently didn't work full time," said Ohlott, referring to Ruderman, "but she was one of the most productive people here."

The whole experience of becoming a parent had been so positive for Ruderman, personally and professionally, that she was inspired to initiate the study that showed that multiple roles in life do enhance and enrich each other.

Spatial Efficiency

A number of mothers told me that their holistic ability to manage countless details at once extended to geography as well. Rapoport remembers that when she was a medical intern (and the only female in her group of forty-five), she carefully thought through every trip she had to make, both within the hospital and on her way home: stop by the blood bank to pick up a blood sample on the way to the cafeteria, so you won't have to make two trips; get the paper with the lab values on your way back to the ward; go by the laundry and the grocery store on the way home from work. None of the male interns seemed to have these road maps stored in their heads, and often had to make two or more trips around the hospital for every one she made.

"To this day," says Rapoport, "I am still doing this: On my way to your house for this interview I stopped by the liquor store for some wine to marinate the meat I'm serving for dinner this weekend and, when we're finished, I'll go by the supermarket on my way home. No man I know thinks like this."

Copyright © 2005 Ann Crittenden

About the Author

Ann Crittenden is an award-winning journalist and the author of three previous books, including The Price of Motherhood, a New York Times Notable Book of 2001. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, she has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Newsweek, and many other national publications. She lectures before dozens of diverse organizations each year and is on the board of the International Center for Research on Women.