I had one of those days recently.
Everyone was busy. Everyone was working on something. But somehow, nothing was moving.
A discussion would open and quietly fade without anyone closing it. A question would be raised and left hanging — not because no one cared, but because no one felt it was theirs to answer. In a culture built on trust, the boundaries of responsibility had softened so much that almost nothing landed on anyone in particular. Things just floated, waiting on an owner who never showed up.
I sat with that feeling for a while, and the familiar inner monologue started up: shouldn’t someone be taking responsibility for this? Why do I have to be the one worrying about whether it moves forward?
I left the office a little tired, a little righteous. The org was the problem. Obviously.
Then I came home.
My son was supposed to be finishing his homework. He wasn’t. He was on the floor with his toys, half-distracted, perfectly content. The living room was scattered with the small evidence of a day he’d lived on his own terms — books open at random pages, a drawing balanced on the armrest of the couch.
I felt the same tight pull in the chest. The same inner monologue, just with a different subject: shouldn’t he be taking responsibility for his own homework by now? Why do I have to be the one worrying about it?
I was about to say something sharp. And then I paused.
Two Complaints, One Shape
The pause was uncomfortable, because I noticed something I didn’t want to notice.
The two sentences in my head — the one from the office, the one from the living room — had the exact same shape.
Shouldn’t someone here take responsibility for moving things forward?
Shouldn’t he take responsibility for his own homework?
In one sentence I was the employee, blaming the system for not assigning ownership. In the other I was the system, blaming the employee for not picking ownership up.
Both let me off the hook.
At work, I’d been generous with myself: of course I couldn’t carry it alone — look at how the system was set up. At home, I was stingy with my son: of course he should carry his own — never mind how the system around him was set up.
Same situation, opposite lens. And the lens I used depended entirely on who I happened to be in the moment.
Home Is an Org. And I’m the Manager.
I turned that over for a while. The longer I looked, the harder it was to unsee.
A family, when I look at it honestly, has all the features of a small organization:
- A team with different ages, strengths, and energy levels
- A daily process — mornings, meals, homework, bedtime
- A culture — how we speak to each other, what we praise, what we ignore
- An environment — where things live, what’s easy to do, what’s hard
I’ve written before about how a family functions like a cross-functional team. But the next step — that if it’s a team, I’m the manager — was one I’d been quietly avoiding.
And I’m the one who designed all of it. Not on purpose, mostly by accident — but I’m the one with the most leverage to change it. The expectations I never made explicit, just assumed he’d pick up. The consequences I apply on Monday and forget about by Friday. The autonomy I keep saying he should have, but never actually hand over. The example I set when I’m half-present at the dinner table myself.
If a new engineer on my team didn’t seem to take ownership of their work, I wouldn’t call it a character problem. I’d ask whether they ever clearly knew what was theirs to own. I’d check what the team around them was modelling.
So when my son doesn’t seem to take ownership of his own homework — what should I call that?
The Uncomfortable Flip
This is the part I keep coming back to.
At work, when a responsibility floats with no owner, my instinct is forgiving — the system wasn’t clear, no one was set up to catch it. At home, my son lets his homework float in the same way, and the forgiveness vanishes. Why won’t he just take responsibility for it? The question I’d reach for instantly at the office — what’s getting in the way of him owning this? — almost never comes first. Sometimes it doesn’t come at all.
I don’t have a clean explanation for the asymmetry. I just know it’s there.
What I’ve started doing instead is flipping the frame. Not why am I more forgiving at work than at home — that question just goes in circles. The more useful one: if I were the one being managed at home, what would I want?
Because I already know that answer. I know exactly what I want from my own org. Why wouldn’t I give the same to the small org I run?
One Thing I Want to Be Careful About
I want to be honest about where this analogy ends.
This isn’t "treat your kids like employees." They’re not employees. They’re not deliverables. They’re not metrics waiting to improve.
The point runs the other way. The empathy I extend to colleagues — what good leadership instinctively does, asking what’s the system around this person? before what’s wrong with this person? — I should extend first to the people I love most. Not the reverse.
And maybe, if I can practise that lens at home — in my own kitchen, on my own bad evenings, with the person whose mess matters most to me — then I’ll be slower to reach for the easy story at work, too. Slower to blame the org. Quicker to ask what I might be contributing to the very thing I’m complaining about.
Because the harder skill, in both places, is the same one. Look at yourself first.
If I treated my home the way I wish my company treated me — what’s the first thing I’d change?
I’m still working on my answer. I’d love to hear yours.