QUESTION #2

What is your family’s top priority—rallying cry—right now?

Answering this question will provide the quickest and most dramatic sense of relief to frantic families. But it’s key not to be distracted or intimidated by some new terminology—rallying cry, defining objectives, standard objectives—whatever you choose, the term should be as simple as it is liberating.

RALLYING CRY

Every family needs a single, agreed-upon top priority, something it can rally around for unity and maximum impact. The best way to determine that priority is to ask the right question in the manner that best provokes an honest, accurate answer. Here are some examples:

 

“If we accomplish just one thing as a family before the
Fourth of July, what would that be?”

“If there is one thing about our family that needs to be
different by Christmas, what would it be?”

“What is it that we’d have to accomplish by the time that
the school year starts in order for us to say that it was a
successful summer?”

 

There are two keys to answering any of these questions. First, limit yourself to one primary answer. As difficult as that sounds, it is critical. How many times have you written a list of ten priorities only to look back later and realize that you’ve accomplished just three of them, and not the most difficult (a.k.a. important) ones at that?

The second key is to identify the right time frame, usually between two and six months. Why? Because anything longer than six months can seem so far into the future that it’s tempting to procrastinate. I might not even be working in this job in six months. Or maybe my daughter will grow out of this by then. Anything shorter than two months is not enough time to make progress. I want to rekindle my marriage by the end of the month. Oh, and refinance the house and clean out the garage, too. Overly aggressive time frames, not to mention multiple top priorities, are recipes for disappointment and failure.

What might a typical answer look like?

There are no typical answers. Sometimes a rallying cry will be relatively tactical. We need to finish our move into the new house by the end of September. Or we have to reorganize our finances and record keeping within the next three months. Sometimes a rallying cry is broader and more foundational. By the end of the year, we will have made a decision about whether to move to another state, or commit to staying here for the foreseeable future. Or in the next six months we will have turned around our poor health habits.

 

Sometimes a rallying cry will revolve around one person in the family. Other times it will be limited to one particular activity or issue. The only thing that matters is that it is doable in the allotted time frame, and that the family understands that it is the single greatest priority for everyone.

Whenever I work with people who are trying to identify their rallying cry, I find that they are perplexed at first—for about three minutes. Suddenly, someone throws out an idea, and everyone starts thinking. Five minutes later, the answer seems overwhelmingly obvious.

Unfortunately, sometimes the answer that everyone agrees on first is either too broad or too tactical. In other words, the first attempt might really be a two-year goal, and so they need to come up with a more realistic, near-term rallying cry. Or maybe it’s not broad or deep enough, and they need a longer-term goal.

A mom and dad in debt might say “we need to revamp our financial plan so that we can afford to send our kids to college and put money away for retirement.” There is a decent chance that accomplishing that will take a number of years, and that a better, more realistic thematic goal might be “let’s significantly reduce our day-to-day expenses.” Once that has been accomplished, then they might be able to think about the next steps.

Or perhaps that same mom and dad decide that their thematic goal should be “let’s sell the car and buy one that costs less to run.” Well, that may be one element of the plan, but it could easily be accomplished within a week. A better thematic goal, one that would warrant a longer time frame, would be, again, to reduce day-to-day expenses.

Now, it’s important to realize that an outsider will not be able to read your rallying cry and tell if it is too broad and aggressive or too narrow and easy. Only you will know what is truly realistic and appropriate for your family. Luckily, it probably won’t take you more than ten minutes to figure it out.

DEFINING OBJECTIVES

Don’t be taken aback by the wonky nature of this section’s title. Defining objectives are just the basic categories of things you’ll have to do to achieve your rallying cry. Without identifying those categories, you’ll be left with nothing but a general statement—and no context for getting it done.

So the family that decides to reduce living expenses might create the following defining objectives: trade in the gas hog, eat out less frequently, take a less extravagant vacation this year, refinance the house, postpone the kitchen remodel. Those are five specific and trackable activities that, if accomplished, will assure them of accomplishing their top priority.

STANDARD OBJECTIVES

This is another wonky title that need not alarm you. Standard objectives are just those regular, ongoing responsibilities that a family must pay attention to in order to keep its head above water. Without acknowledging these perennial responsibilities, families leave themselves open to getting surprised and distracted from their rallying cries.

For instance, as important as it might be for a family to cut back on daily living expenses, it can’t do that in a way that jeopardizes fundamental needs of the family like health and education. And even if that family decides that its rallying cry should revolve around one particular child in the family, it must still attend to the basic, standard needs of the entire family.

Similarly, a company that decides to rally around changing its marketing message cannot simply ignore the need to continue selling its products, providing service to its customers, and retaining its employees. These are the standard objectives of the company, even if they aren’t the top priority in that particular period.

Coming up with your family’s standard objectives isn’t usually difficult. That’s because most families draw from a similar set of categories. These include financial health, physical health, spiritual health, marriage, education, social life, and fun. They might also include relationships with extended family, or maintenance of the home.

What’s important about standard objectives is not that they differentiate your family but that they encompass those things that were important three years ago, last year, and this year, and will be important next year and three years from now. That way, when you identify and call out your rallying cry, you’ll know you’re being responsible by acknowledging your ongoing duties.

More examples from real-life families can be found on page 204.