« As you attempt to put yourself in a position to acquire all the things that money can buy , don ’ t sacrifice the things money can ’ t buy .»
- Earl Nightingale
• Without electronics
• Doing a fun activity of their choice , with some open communication saved for the end ( this step is the basis of experiential education .)
With the Board Meeting Strategy , children get the respect their business-owner parents usually only give to their key team members or largest investors .
I ’ ve done the strategy for years , and it works extremely well . I even wrote a book about it and shared some personal stories and breakthroughs I had with my adopted sons as a result .
The longer I do these Board Meetings , the more I want to keep doing them . One of the greatest things about doing these Board Meetings is that I often get to pull my boys out of school to have one . It ’ s great doing a fun activity during the week when everyone else is grinding away . There ’ s something special about breaking this routine and having an experience with your son or daughter . If you ’ ve done it , you understand .
A lot of people don ’ t understand this . They see it as irresponsible beyond belief . They say , “ You pull them out of school to spend a day at the beach with you ? Don ’ t you believe in a good education and the value of school ?”
Of course I do . I like my boys ’ school , too . However , I believe in the importance of our relationship more .
On occasion we need to break the normal routine to remember what ’ s most important . Work and school can easily dictate our schedule forever if we let them . I refuse to let this happen . Therefore , two to three days per year each of my kids will miss school and I ’ ll miss work to have a Board Meeting .
This makes perfect attendance loyalists and workaholics want to throw up . They are usually the first ones to say to me , “ What kind of example are you setting ?!”
This is something I ’ ve thought on a lot . It ’ s something that takes me back to the gurus I saw on stage . They were successful in the eyes of the unimportant majority but unknown and disconnected to an important minority .
I believe the example I ’ m setting is this :
When my kids grow up they will have a habit instilled within them to play hooky from work and school every 90 days to spend time with their most important relationships – without remorse and without guilt . It will also prove to their own kids that they can and will put their relationship ahead of their work – an issue I see dividing a lot of working parents from their children .
Missing two days of school per year is a small price to pay for real connection between parent and child .
Each Board Meeting I come back to work more energized , more productive , more focussed . To steal Steve Covey ’ s analogy “ the saw has been sharpened ”. I ’ ve given time and space to people that mean the most to me .
Showing this type of , “ irresponsibility ” putting work and school 2nd , helps marks the time and ground the most important relationship . Most people – and society as a whole - would be better off if more people took the responsibility to be what most would consider irresponsible .
Without fail , every New Year ’ s we reflect back on our year as a family and ask the boys for highlights . Every year they always talk about their Board Meetings .
I have a simple goal in all this . When my children turn eighteen and leave the house to start the next phase of their life , I plan to hand each of them a yearbook of our Board Meetings over the years – a short log I ’ ve been keeping since we started the practice . It will include the dates , a few details of the fun adventure they chose for that day , a photo , and notes of reflection from the conversations we had .
Four meetings a year for 15 years commemorated forever .
Visualizing this day keeps me committed to my responsibility to be “ irresponsible .”
Let me ask you : if you had received a log like this from your father on your 18th birthday , do you think you ’ d have said , “ I can ’ t believe I missed those days of school "?
I can ' t speak for anyone else but I know what I would say . I didn ' t have this with my father growing up and I wish I had .
Thanks to some great mentors I learned how to have a great relationship with my dad . I ’ m one of the lucky ones , but like the gurus on stage I know hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people who never learned this skill and now have a huge void within themselves . They were taught to be responsible , to put school and work first and to wear this commitment like a badge of honor . Now they ’ re alone and unfulfilled . Their children barely know them . If they had only taken the time to be a little more irresponsible …
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