This is what it looks like to walk into my house
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A few random whiteboards hung in my garage. It’s far from a Pinterest worthy collage or a beautifully framed family crest. Maybe one day with help from the ladies in the family. Instead, I just hung a few whiteboards in our garage. I cobbled this together over the years for one simple reason: the things you want to shape your family culture have to be visible. Starting on the right. A small whiteboard to track fines. Fines are the primary consequence we use when expectations aren’t met. Each Sunday we end our weekly family meeting with payday. The kids earn a weekly allowance equal to their age, plus extra for certain work above and beyond family chores. Fines get added to the boards in real time and then deducted from their total allowance. Then the board is wiped clean for the next week. Taped to the whiteboard are printed Family Agreements for each kid. They spell out four things clearly:
When an expectation isn’t met, we don’t argue. We walk to the board and the system carries the weight. Above the door is a small whiteboard that changes weekly. Each family meeting, we cover one short and simple idea. A value statement. A piece of Scripture. A quote. It serves as a quiet reminder every time we come home. Then there’s the large whiteboard on the left. Our family mission Our values Our family verse Some families turn all of this into art. Maybe we will someday. For now, this is what greets us when we pull into the garage. Is it finished? Probably not. There are a number of other elements that could make sense to add including our Family Issues List, our 3 Year Story, Year Ahead plan and our 90 Day Journey. And then there are a few ideas that are more for me and Brittany, including our Legacy Statement. We’re still experimenting with what’s enough but not too much. That’s the fun part of all of this. In short, the purpose of these is to keep our most important ideas visible and create a single place for accountability. Simple steps like these shift your family from feeling reactive to proactive. Hang a whiteboard or simply print something out today. Some families have a chore chart or a family schedule. Some have created beautiful and elaborate “Family Command Centers”. But start simple with one thing. Put it in a high-traffic and visible place: a mirror, the garage or a fridge door. These simple visual reminders reinforce your culture and create systems and frameworks that carry the weight. Make one small improvement today and then build on it over time. Have questions about any of this? Have a story about how your family does stuff like this? I’d live to hear from you. Get in touch: andrew@fam-lead.com -Andrew |