You may think there are only two answers to the perennial plea, “Mum, can we have a dog?” Yes or no. Allison Mitchell takes a different view. “You can say no, or you can negotiate some kind of compromise, which in our case was a hamster.”
A hamster? That’s a rotten compromise, I say. Mitchell splutters with defensive laughter. “It’s got four legs and it’s furry. The kids are happy, and they’re still working on me for a dog.”
I should think they are. But this is what happens if you have a mum who specialises in human development, and who decides one day that the management techniques she has learnt in business would be equally effective when applied to her own family. Practising home negotiation, time management, financial planning, delegation, outsourcing and performance appraisal, and lacing it all with positive thinking, would make her home run more smoothly and give her more control as a mother, she reasoned.
So she tried it, noticed that the clutter mountains evaporated and that she no longer lived knee-deep in toast crumbs, and promptly switched from coaching executives to coaching mums in personal development.
Now Mitchell has written a book, Time Management for Manic Mums, in which she combines Kim and Aggie-style prescription with Mr Men models of mothering. If your family exists in a sea of angst and chaos, all you need to do is to follow her seven Truths of Time Management (No 1: There is no more time), learn to value time and yourself, identify time drips, have a personal vision, spend 12 minutes a day planning, and so on — and you will cease to be Manic Martha and become something much closer to Perfect Paula.
Fortunately, in person she is neither. We meet in her office, a crisply furnished room created in the former coach house next door to her Victorian home in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. I would very much like to see into the domestic quarters, but the blinds are down, presumably to keep nosy journalists at bay, so I can only describe the enormous clipboard on an easel behind her, and the reassuringly grubby arms of the office sofas. And phew, she is not wearing the sock she recommends that mummies put on their hand for ad hoc dusting. No, she is jolly and much less scary than her somewhat uncompromising theories suggest that she might be.
After a degree in management science Mitchell, 38, spent seven years working for Arthur Andersen (now Accenture) as a management consultant and human resources manager, and gave up full-time work when the second of her three children was born. “I did training and development and bringing out people’s potential and I’ve taken all that stuff and mapped it across into family life,” she explains. “I find it really works. As a mum you are like the CEO, and the cap- abilities and competences a manager needs are almost the same as a mum’s.
“You need to have a training perspective because you’re nurturing children. You need to be a coach, a mentor, a sponsor. You need to be able to negotiate, to sell, to work within a team because each person in your family is different. An appraisal of an employee is not dramatically different from telling a child that they have done well. Or when being disciplinary — the skills and motivation are very similar.”
The fundamental theory is this: identify a goal, then plan its execution. “Unless you’re clear about where you want to go you won’t achieve anything. Communication is key — being clear about what’s going on to the kids. Before I did this I was a typically frazzled mum, lots of fun but not good at the detail or setting boundaries. My house was messy. Now I’m a lot more organised, a lot more focused as a mum. My core value is fun.”
Mitchell’s children are aged 6 to 11. Is this how she talks to them? “I try to do things with them that get them to think about what we value as a family,” she says. So — and Mitchell knows you might think this is naff — they have a Mitchell of the Week trophy which is awarded at a family meeting. “Everybody has to say what’s been good that week. It focuses on positives.”
Then there is the marbles jar, which allows her to reward good behaviour with marbles, and which produces £5 for each child when the jar is full. This takes about six weeks. “It empowers them to work as a team and it suits me because it allows me to be spontaneous.”
Her eureka moment came one morning when her angry insistence that her daughter, then 8, would go swimming produced an icy response: “I hate you, Mummy.” Reflecting on this, Mitchell realised that her approach made no sense. “I was bossy, directive, talking to her in a way I would never use to another human being. ”
So she changed tack, called her daughter back and used what she calls the coaching approach, asking what outcome her daughter sought rather than telling her what she must do. Her daughter duly volunteered to go swimming, and the next day Mitchell found a card tucked into her bag which read “Mummy I love you.” Mitchell melted, but also recognised that she had brought about the change in her daughter’s attitude.
“Now I never say: ‘This is what you must do.’ You want them to be individual; to be able to do things on their own, to problem-solve. The question I always ask them is: ‘What do you think?’ They might be fighting over a piece of grass and I say: ‘What’s the outcome you want?’ “People might say it’s a bit freaky, but every night before they go to bed I say: ‘What was the best part of your day? We deal with bad things if they crop up, but if you use positive language you feel different.”
As a result Mitchell is more able to enjoy her family, a state of affairs that her banker husband appreciates, she says. And how have the Mitchell children taken to being micro-managed? “They love it,” she says. “They know what’s going on.” They just haven’t got a dog yet.
A TIMETABLE FOR WORKING MOTHERS
If you have a demanding but rewarding career that intrudes on home time, be honest about your motivation. Time Management for Manic Mums, Hay House, £9.99
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