Why Every Father Must Be The CEO of His Family
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[00:00:00] When you have co CEOs, it's like the perfect way to avoid that feeling of crushing responsibility and man, that is what's destroying so many families. So that feeling of I'm a hundred percent responsible, I think ancient fathers felt that just the way a really good modern CEO feels that way [00:01:00] Hey everybody, welcome to the 1000 houses podcast. I'm excited to be joined today by Blake Smith. He lives here in the Northern Kentucky area, right on the Ohio River. Blake, thanks for joining me today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat. Yeah. So Blake's been pounding away on a book. And so I told him I'd love to process part of the book.
Uh, with him on the podcast. So I've, I've really enjoyed just Blake's journey and what he and Chandler have been building, uh, with their team uh, their family. And so, yeah, I know that Blake, uh, has been really going deep into a lot of areas we're going to, he's actually going to do, uh, Uh, house craft event coming up these, this is like sort of a dinner date night that we do, uh, we sponsor through 1000 houses that he and the, the [00:02:00] Coles, Lucas and Tara.
And so we'll be bringing some of the things that they're going to be talking about there on the podcast as well about household systems, but I don't even know what we're talking about today. Blake, what are we, what are we, what are we hitting? Yeah, yeah, no, this is gonna be a surprise. So I was excited.
So the core thesis of the book that I'm writing really is coming from that concept in 1 Timothy 3, which talks about if you want to be an elder or an overseer, you want to be able to run your household well. Specifically it says, for someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?
Right. And so it's like, it also starts that whole paragraph about elders out by saying, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. So it's like, yes, I, I aspire to be an elder of the city, not like just a board member of a 501c3, like nonprofit thing, an actual elder, someone in my sixties, seventies, eighties, who people come to for wisdom.
And one of the core criteria in terms of especially outcomes is that I managed my household well. And so, [00:03:00] as Jeremy, you know, I've. We both have kind of been obsessed about what does it mean to manage your household? Well, and what's interesting is that the word manage is something that I've actually spent a lot of my life doing.
I started to venture back to startup 10 years ago that you were on the board of Jeremy and you and I both have been kind of an entrepreneurship managing other people. And what I started to realize is that A lot of these management systems that we've learned in business or in Silicon Valley for us actually can be cross applied into managing your household.
And so the core thesis of this book, which right now the working title is called Unicorn Family not the animal unicorn, but the idea of a billion dollar business, right? That's the goal of every startup. And it's this kind of rare, unachievable thing. Can I get, become a unicorn status? And so there's this idea of like, what would it look like to have a unicorn family where it's this kind of Difficult but aspiring thing to be a household that's run really well.
And the way we're doing it is by taking business systems and applying them to the family. And so, I've essentially mapped out goodness, uh, four main areas. One is like [00:04:00] in terms of your marriage. So the co founder relationship with your wife overall vision and direction, meeting cadences, and then finally management tools.
And so that's the 16 chapters going, going over those four main areas. And so what. We're doing today is we're just going to take one of those chapters. I'm going to read it out loud to you and we can kind of discuss it a little bit. And, uh, yeah, I'm honestly excited to get your feedback. It's fun. This is literally first draft as in this is reading straight from a Google doc, which is actually I think appropriate since you're in my friendship, Jeremy started on a Google doc, which is literally about 10 years ago, you were writing your book and I found your Google doc online and I think our first, our first communication was some.
Probably nitpicky comment that I made on your punctuation on that Google Doc. And then you saw these edits and you're like, who is this guy? And that's how we ended up meeting. So it seems only appropriate that now here we are 10, 15 years later, and we're doing the same thing, uh, nitpicking through Google Docs.
So, yeah, I wanted to just kind of jump in. So the main frame of this book is like, I'm [00:05:00] taking A specific principle that I learned in startups and then applying it to family. And I'm doing that over and over again. And the reason I'm doing that is because it's really helped my family thrive over the course of the past, uh, I guess, 13 years since we've had children.
Yeah. So we can, uh, we can jump into it. Uh, any other comments that you have or questions that you have about the book as a whole or anything, Jeremy, or you want to just jump into it? Yeah. Why don't you go ahead and read it and then we'll, yeah, we'll kind of go deeper into that from there. Okay. Cool. All right.
Uh, the way I chose which chapter I was going to do was this. The one that had the most comments from my beta readers so far. I have 30 people reading the book and so far the most people have commented on this chapter. Uh, maybe because they hate it, maybe because they love it, but that's why we're jumping into it.
So the chapter is called, Who is the Leader? And we're going to be talking about decision making hierarchy within the family. Great. So you ready? Yeah, let's do it. Here we go. One of the first things an investor will clarify when engaging with a startup co founder is who is going to be CEO. This is one of the most foundational questions to [00:06:00] starting any organization.
Who will be the ultimate leader? Of the 2, 200 companies listed in the S& P 1200 and Russell 1000, more than 2, 100 of those companies had a singular CEO at the helm. Even looking at civilizations, the vast majority of all humans that have ever existed did so under a government with a single leader at the top.
As a species, we've lived under authority, head of a tribe, head of a multi generational family, head of a family itself. Our species embraces hierarchy in our organizations by nature, almost without exception. Even primates as a whole, without exception, thrive in a hierarchy. Startups are no different.
Almost without exception, they have a clear CEO at the top. It is our nature to need someone in charge. Like I said, almost without exception. So when we started our company in 2012, my co founder and I were uncomfortable with the idea of having one leader. We'd been friends for five years, and neither of us really wanted to be the other's boss.
And we sure as heck did not want the other person to be our boss. I remember meeting with [00:07:00] investors, successful executives, advisors, they all told us we needed to choose a leader. The problem was that as soon as we broached the topic, it started to get really uncomfortable really fast. I remember trying to talk through it on long walks or whiteboarding out different organizational charts and the moment someone's name was in the CEO slot, the other person wanted to erase it.
We were young, we had egos, and neither of us wanted to have a boss. So we decided on an elegant solution. Co CEOs. We would divide up the role of CEO according to our natural inclinations. I would pitch, he would oversee finances. He would oversee the product, I would oversee marketing. Certain decisions would need to be jointly decided, like strategy and vision.
This was immediately a relief. We both had a top title and could keep our egos intact. We were going to buck the overwhelming data from the history of companies, governments, civilizations, and our species as a whole. What could go wrong? Turns out a lot could go wrong. There were some fatal flaws that we quickly discovered in the co CEO model, especially in a young organization.
One [00:08:00] slowness. I remember an advisor saying having joint decision makers means you're committing to be three times slower than your competition. In my experience, this is completely true. Even when you divide and conquer so many organizational decisions need to cross departments and functions.
I think we imagined that most of our decisions would be isolated, but it turned out most of our decisions were cross functional in terms of decision quality. It's so important to have joint input to decisions. And we had plenty of that. But the problem is that after there is joint input, someone needs to say, okay, I've listened to all sides of this and we're going to do x.
Two, team confusion. Another huge impact on our startup of having co CEOs was that as we scaled the team, they got increasingly confused. Who do I go to for this decision? Became a regular request. Because we were continually rejoined the lines of who owned what, the team was always behind in knowing the authority structure.
Three, relational tension and eventually failure. Eventually, what forced us to shift our structure was the relational tension that the co CEO model created. Because there was no final decision maker, we could [00:09:00] argue for hours until someone gave up from exhaustion. These hours of debates aren't good for a co founder relationship.
It's better to just disagree and commit to supporting the decision to keep moving forward, but we didn't have a mechanism other than losing the argument or getting tired. Over time, this deformed our relationship from deep friendship to mutual critics. Before we move on to the application for families, which I'm guessing you're sweatily dreadling, actually, I am too, uh, I want to quickly clarify what a CEO co founder does. The core duties of a CEO, according to the author, Patrick Lencioni, are as follows. One, build and maintain a cohesive leadership team.
The CEO is ultimately responsible for the health of the leadership team. They look for disagreement, relational issues, tensions, lack of trust, and invest the time and effort to eradicate them and build the team to be a high functioning unit. Two, create organizational clarity. The CEO is responsible for creating clarity on the direction, strategy, mission, vision, and values of the company.
They typically will not do this in a vacuum, but instead will be the facilitator and [00:10:00] final decision maker of a process to create a well rounded organizational picture that everyone can see and understand. Three, over communicate organizational clarity. Not only does the CEO need to create organizational clarity, they have to talk about it to everyone all the time.
And then four, reinforce organizational clarity through human systems. In order for an organization to thrive, it must have documented systems that everyone follows that push the organization and the direction it wants to go. As you can see, the job of the CEO is actually less about decision making power, although that is an element.
It's actually much more about responsibility for outcomes, harmony, and clarity. Without a central owner, these key elements to an organization thriving will suffer. All right, so now the practice for the home, who is the CEO? Oh no, we're going there. Relax your little sphincter, it's going to be okay. If you're like most modern families, you are likely uncomfortable with the idea of a central authority in the home.
Since the beginning of the 19th century in the West, [00:11:00] families have been on a steady slope towards egalitarian parenting, where both parents share responsibilities equally and interchangeably. I'm sure there are great arguments for having egalitarian parents that are interchangeable, but the topic of this book is specifically about how my wife and I have taken startup practices and tools and applied them to the home.
As I said above, egalitarian models do not work in startups or business organizations, so I think the onus is on the person arguing for egalitarian parenting to make the case that families are fundamentally different types of human organizations that require a different model. Until I hear that, I'll continue my chapter.
If I'm wrong, I'll write an apology and an addendum. So for now, let's entertain the scary idea that each of our homes needs to have a CEO who is responsible for building up the cohesive leadership team, creating organizational clarity, over communicating organizational clarity, and creating human systems that reinforce organizational clarity.
I think the challenge in front of you is which of you is going to be the CEO. I'm not going to make this decision for you, but I'll tell you what elements contributed to how Chandler, my [00:12:00] wife, and I came to a decision on this front. One, capacity and biology over the past 12 years. Chandler has been pregnant nine times and given birth to six children.
This takes a huge toll on her body and energy. Sure. I'd like to say that we share that burden equally, but any mother will tell you she bears this weight. Primarily. We thought it made sense to not have the mother responsible for those elements, given her waxing and waning capacity. Two. Religion. Chandler and I are both devout adherents to the Christian religion.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all traditionally select the father as the leader of the home. In modern Christianity, there's a little bit more up for debate, but the Old and New Testament are incredibly clear on this. And then three, tradition. We both grew up with fathers who were leaders in the home.
We knew what that looks like, and we had no reason to reject it. In this book, I'm absolutely not going to die on any hills around who should be the leader in your family organization. However, I will say that having a clear leader, specifically the father, has created clarity, direction, and thriving in our home.
I'll, I'll stop there. I have a list of [00:13:00] tips that comes after that on, if you are saying, Hey, I'm the leader, we can kind of go through those, but I'll stop there and get kind of reactions, uh, on the topic. I'd love to hear your thoughts, Jeremy. Well, first of all, Blake, you are a misogynist. Yes. My apologies.
Yes. Apparently. I think it's important to say that because the vast majority of people in our culture have a slur. That is primed for this position. In other words, we can't have a reasonable conversation. You, you are so reasonable in this essay and I'm excited to get into the details, but I do think it's important to sort of call out at the beginning that most people haven't really thought about this very deeply, uh, very carefully, because, you know, Once you can attach a slur to a position, you don't have to think about it anymore.
They're just an evil person. They're immoral and there's something broken about them. So it's like, and this is, this is the trick our culture has played on, on us and just labeling. And this is why the fight, we had the fight before the fight about the label. So first of all, I just think it's important to understand [00:14:00] the vast majority of people.
In the secular world and probably maybe the majority of people in the Protestant Christian world at least would probably have a pre a pre determined label for what you just described as misogyny and and so they won't give it a fair hearing. And so I, I want to just hear maybe for a second, Blake, how do you deal with that?
Like, like you, both you and Chandler think about that. Well, the first thing that I wanted to do in this book is I'm actually not appealing to scripture. Uh, I'm actually appealing to what has worked in our home and worked in my businesses. And I thought it was actually kind of a fun exercise. I am a Christian and we actually, that is our central operating system actually is the Bible, but we thought it would be kind of, you know, I think it'd be helpful for people to hear an argument from effectiveness, as opposed to just from scripture.
And I think there are a lot of great sources, you being one of them, arguing from scripture. And so, part of it is I think you have to just say, okay, let's, I wanted to die on the hill of you need to have an organizational structure, as opposed to man [00:15:00] versus woman to start. And I think it's pretty difficult to argue there shouldn't be an organizational structure.
So now the question then narrows into who's the, who should it be the husband or the wife, or is there a should at all? Right. And so we, we've kind of narrowed that and I, I liked kind of taking that sort of approach. And then I think there is, there's a, it's like, okay, what framework are we going to use?
I think it's very easy to argue from scripture male headship. And I think that actually is, is pretty doable to argue that without scripture, I think goes into some of the elements that I talk about, which is like, Consideration specifically of capacity, especially if you're gonna have a large family with Children.
There's also, I think, a question of what the shape of the family will look like as those Children start to mature and become teenagers. And like, there is, I think, masculine and feminine energy that it's still, we're still allowed to say that to some degree and to map those, they will have different shapes of organizations.
And so yeah, it's a hairy one. It's the reason I wanted to bring up this one because I think it's the spiciest and it's kind of fun to kind of talk through this stuff. Yes. I, I will say though to the misogyny [00:16:00] thing, I think the biggest reason people react to this is actually not I think it's actually, they're reacting to a deformed view of what it is to be a leader.
And that's why I liked putting the Patrick Lencioni stuff in there is that actually, uh, a dictator is actually a pretty flawed version of leader. And the best organizations don't have a dictator. They actually have a leadership team with lots of confrontation and disagreement. And then finally, okay, now let's choose the best of all the conflicting ideas.
And I think in that model, it's actually a lot simpler. That's kind of scary. to have one person to be CEO than if you're like, okay, there's one person who's King and everyone else is a servant, that is kind of scary. And I think it's actually a really flawed view of leadership that is inconsistent with the biblical view of leadership that Jesus demonstrates.
Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent. Yeah. I really liked, I really enjoyed the way that you framed it from effectiveness and make. And Ryan is comparison. I do think it's fair to say, look, we've run this experiment. [00:17:00] Millions of times, every corporation, every, every team, if you get closer and closer to the highest performing in any category, you'll see a single leader.
It's incredibly rare to see two leaders at the top of a, especially in this, why I think competition is so valuable because oftentimes in a competition, like Like, like the NFL, for example you know, you would look at that and if they discovered that two, two head coaches actually outperformed a single head coach, then you would see this phenomenon all over the place of dual head coaches that are constantly winning Super Bowls.
It's never happened. It'll never happen. And so to me that there is an open and shut case and you describe it in your essay. And I think that's really clear. The thing that I I think that the thing I want to always be really mindful of is is, you know, part of what you're framing is I think where people are going to get hung up.
And, you know, it is effectiveness. [00:18:00] The first. consideration. And I think the reason why people freak out is that they have a, they have a view that hierarchy determines value. So that, that, that's an intuition people have in the West. And so as soon as you say the husband is the leader, he inherently, especially if you say that's a default, then, then there's something at default about men that, that they have more inherent value.
So that's the first thing they're going to, they're You know, quibble with and then if you say no, it could be the man or the woman, you know, but just needs a single leader, right? That's, that's when I think there's you know, where you get really into the skill, skill level conversation, because as soon as you say, the man should be.
If there, there are, let's, let's face it, let's probably, I don't know, let's just call it 30 percent of marriages where the wife is inherently more skilled at visionary leadership than her husband and doing the kinds of things that Lencioni describes, [00:19:00] she's more skilled. And then, so, so then to make the so you can, you have to kind of like kind of walk through both arguments, the argument from value and then the argument from If this, if regardless of skill, you're going to give that seat to the man, because he's male then of course that, that just stirs up a whole another can of worms about the nature of like, yeah, how, how would you make that kind of decision?
And what's the, what's the, uh, I mean, you, you gave some of your reasons, but yeah, I don't know how you stir up either of those things, the value or the skill. Kind of question that also pops up to the surface with this topic. Yeah, I think it's a second order conversation. I think the, I think the first order conversation is, is hierarchy good.
Yeah. Right. And it's like, great, let's at least advance that one. First then the question is what operating system we use to decide who's going to be leader. And I think that you can argue from nature. You can argue from skills like you're describing. You could also argue from, uh, Tradition, right?
You can argue from [00:20:00] religion. You can argue, like, there are a lot of different ways that you can do it. And then I think there also is the kind of, like, the feminine, masculine energy and the question of the shape of the organization as a whole going forward. And so, yeah, I, I think it's an interesting one.
It's, like, how much, I'd say I've, I've received a lot of comments so far on the question of, like, hey, how hard do you want to push on this given that the, I, I'd say I'm not hiding my Christianity in this book at all, but I am kind of arguing primarily first from an organizational structure thing. And what I've noticed is actually.
If you go into now, maybe that's worth calling out. It's like, if you go into the job of the leader and how much work I've put in, I list out my favorite leadership books and just say, Hey, if you're the leader, you need to take this seriously and say, cool. Like, uh, if you want to take this seriously, you need to read all of these books.
I have, let me see how many I have, 20 books that I recommend. So I was like, okay, next step. If you really say like, I'd say, okay, mom of three kids who is also working, who is also [00:21:00] doing X, Y, and Z next step now read these 20 books. And now start leading these, uh, you know, what is it 60 to 70 meetings every single, uh, year.
And then let's also like, we're, we're actually piling a huge amount of work. And I think there's actually a great argument just from a capacity standpoint to say like, Hey, In a world where women have to be everything, is it possible to serve them in this one area and say, cool, I'll, I'll own that. Right.
Yeah. There's a couple of elements. I wanted to dive a little bit into your, the third reason you talked about relational tension. You talked about when you were co CEO and just the exhaustion you felt in the constant conversations. So. This, this is, this is something that I guess I am I feel like it's just so underappreciated about the nature of family.
And that is that so there's a question, there's, there's certain different kinds of families have different levels of decision making that have to, you know, you have to make all kinds of decisions about money. You have to [00:22:00] make decisions about where to live. You have to make decisions about, you know, your children's education, how many kids to have, I mean, there's thousands of decisions and.
I would say the modern family has a fraction of the decisions that the ancient family had in terms of just, and in the importance of decision, the ancient family had to decide, I mean, About alliances. And I mean, it was just the safety concerns, so much of that's taken off our plate, where some families are so individualized that the primary decisions they're making as a family or which restaurant to go to.
And you know, which movie to watch on Netflix. And you're like, I'm not going to give somebody a Trump card in that, but, but there's, there's still like budgets, there's still things hyper affluent families. That are hyper individualized have the least number like they might be able to pare down the amount of pressure on that That co ceo team down to you know, two percent of the pressure that was that would have been on the leader in a traditional family Okay, so that that that's a variable but I would say that that most families Especially if you're struggling you're [00:23:00] struggling financially with budgets.
There's gonna be a lot of pressure on that Two headed monster. And so what, what's going to actually happen. And this is what I've discovered over and over again, is that just like you discovered in your co CEO situation, that, that, that you wear each other out to like, and that is designed to do that.
And then as soon as that happens, you've created a pattern in the family. So picture, picture a family where the husband and wife are just constantly fighting. No one's in charge. They're, they're not able to work this out really well. And the husband just says, look, I really wanted to family, but I just can't fight anymore.
I give in to you. And let's say that happens at six months of the marriage or, or a guy who's really resilient and it's like three years into the marriage, there's still a single CEO of that family. It's just now it's, it's, it happens through the process of being in a cage match and somebody gets exhausted.
And so every time I, every time I really get to know a family I would say there are exceptions to this, but they're very rare, virtually every time I get to know a family. [00:24:00] I can tell you who the CEO is. Right. And so it's, it's, so I would just say part of the argument that I would make about your third point, that the relational tension is that, is that it isn't true.
What's really frustrating is you might be frustrated by the default nature. Somebody might be frustrated by the default nature of the leadership going to the husband for various reasons. But And, and you may in, in like, in words say that you believe in, you know, there was a, there was an article that just got published.
It was like huge New York times. I don't know if you saw the ballerina farm controversy, but my wife was telling me about it. Yeah. Okay. So, but basically, you know, The New York Times did kind of a hit piece on this traditional family. And one of the things that, that they said in their defense because basically the hit piece was saying this, this woman is actually, they have eight kids, is really under the leadership of this man.
And the man said, we are co CEOs. That's the phrase he actually used in order to defend himself. This is a, this is a Mormon family in order to defend himself against the [00:25:00] accusation that in reality he was exerting. An unusual amount of influence over his wife. And, and I just got so frustrated with the whole conversation because I'm like, you know, first of all, you know, if he, if he would have ever said what you said in this, in this essay, that I'm actually leading this family and Chandler is, is in a way submitting to me as the, as the head of the family that would have blown up in, in ways that would have been so much more dramatic, but instead and, and what, what she, what was really happening and what she was sort of saying is, but if you actually.
Hang out with the family for like a few hours. You can tell that the husband's in charge. That was kind of her case. And I was like, yeah, so what? Like, again, you can hang out with a family for a couple hours and see that the wife's in charge. Like, yes, like put me in any house and I'll tell you who's, you can, you can, maybe the kid's in charge.
I've been in a house. I spent the night once at a house where I could tell the eight year old was the CEO of the family. I mean, it was, it was obvious from like, like 10 minutes into, into the thing and the whole night that the [00:26:00] wife was in submission to her eight year old son. And then she would force her husband to be in submission to the eight year old.
But this happens in every family. You can't exist in a, in a situation where you're in a cage match and you're constantly needing to make decisions. And for some pattern, not around who eventually you just, you just select someone and say, well, we're going happen by anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It's a Yes. Sweet.
Myth that, that you, that, that you can somehow exist. It's normal. And if we if e do say it's normal, if we do say no, no, no, no, no, you should be co CEOs for the 50 plus years you're married. Then I can tell you right now that that design sucks. And that's what you're saying. And because it sucks, it's going to destroy that entity.
And guess what happens? We, we, we are living according to a blueprint that's constantly breaking down and it's predictably. So, so because we refuse to have this conversation, yeah, this is what's, this is what's occurred. I think what's interesting is that when you don't have an overt statement as to who's in charge [00:27:00] of something, uh, it results, I think, in increasing the hyper individualization of the organization.
For instance, uh, let's say that you're having four families over for pizza. Actually, not even having them over, we're meeting somewhere and we're all on a group chat saying, what should we get for pizza? Right. If you're no one's in charge, you're going to say, this is my favorite pizza and you're going to champion what you want.
Right. And I might champion what I want. And everyone's a champion what they want. And then we'll see, maybe something will come out. If I tell you, Jeremy, you're in charge of getting pizza for the four families. Your first question is going to be like, well, what type of pizza does everybody like? Right Isn't that interesting that there's something about actually when you are given the decision seat, the immediate reaction is to optimize for, for the whole, right?
But I think when you aren't given that seat, the immediate reaction is to champion what you individually want. Right. And so. I've seen this in companies. A lot of times when I'm working with a client, the first thing I'll do is say, Hey, let's really quickly map out who's the decision maker. And you see everybody get uncomfortable [00:28:00] included.
And then once we select that decision maker, do you see that person suddenly stop They talk the least. And suddenly they become the person with the biggest ears in the room. And they're like, okay, I want to make sure I'm, Serving the group. Well, that's a huge point. Yes. Having authority does not suddenly make you an egomaniac.
Now it does do that to some people. And a lot of, a lot of people are reacting against the idea of leadership because we all have seen examples of that does happen. And that is an absolute disaster for that wife and those kids. But there's, there is no way out of this dilemma. I mean, the family itself is a, is a closed system at some level in which if you, if there's something broken in the system, everyone's going to suffer.
But I think the thing that. that you just said that I, you know, I would say when you, when you say, which pizza do you, do we want to have? And everyone is sort of like fighting for their own. That, that of course, assumes everyone in the family is sort of some type, a disagreeable person. But in reality, what happens in so many families is you have, you have sort of kids who won't fight for their preferences.
And of course they become [00:29:00] disadvantaged in those families. So the idea that, and women, by the way, On the average are more agreeable than men, which means that if you do this and you have a lot of daughters like I do, right, I have four daughters to, to suddenly say, Hey, it's going to be whoever either, uh, whoever can exert the most authority and power and influence is going to ultimately be in charge, then I'm going to be condemning my daughters to a situation where their preferences are going to be constantly subservient to the loud voices in the family.
But as, as the father who loves my daughters, I'm constantly concerned about that. I'm like looking at, okay, yeah, I hear you loud, you know, child. Who's very clear. And we know who you're talking about, but I'm like, I, this one really, I, like, I want to know what they want and I'm going to make sure that their voices is also heard and I don't want them to have to become a disagreeable type a person.
I want them to be exactly. You're actually lending your disability to them by saying, I'm going to fight [00:30:00] for you. Yeah. And I, and I, and I don't have to fight for fight for the authority because it's been granted to me. So I don't, I'm not in, I'm not in a position of insecurity at all. I am completely secure as the leader of this family.
And because of that, I don't have to fight at all for that position. And that gives me the ability to fight for those people in the family whose voices aren't being heard. That's, that's an example. You see that happening in, in sports and any team environment where there are a lot of like very powerful personalities and, but you're trying to, and, and so I would say another, another element that I'm kind of thinking through you know, in the duties that Lynch Yoni describes.
For the leadership team. Part of, part of, I think where people are really, uh, or are the leader is, is that, is the nature of, of how, how important is the, is the goal. And I would say that as soon as you say co CEOs or we're co coaches, what I really hear is, This team doesn't matter much. Like what we're trying to do is [00:31:00] not that important.
We actually don't care if we win the competition and people wonder, well, is there a competition with, is your family in competition? And I would say 100 percent you are in the fight of your life. As a family there are so there is so much coming at you that you're competing against I don't I don't see it primarily as a family competing against other families I see family.
We have a mission that we're trying to accomplish. It's much more like an army trying to take berlin Like like we're we're we're we're we're marching against massive forces huge resistance. We're being We're being flanked constantly and we're under attack and we're trying to take ground at the same time. And so if that's happening, if that's a reality, if that's actually what's going on in the family, then yeah, like if you're, if you're trying to figure out who to co, like in your analogy of like, let's look at the startup world and find out how many co CEO companies are outperforming, you know, single leader companies you can run that experiment, but try this experiment.
Like [00:32:00] try to, try, try to see how many. Non hierarchical armies are, are beating hierarchical armies and you won't, you, I don't, I've never even heard of a single one. If you want to lose a battle, I mean, then, then create confusion about who's, who's in charge. Like it's, it is over, like the enemy will absolutely love that.
And so part of the way that I, I, I want to maybe hear you process is it seems Like the reason we had the luxury to debate this question, which I would say to me is an absurd question. If you, if you understand the nature of family, it's a very understandable question if you assume the modern family, but if you think about the family, the way that the Bible describes it, It kind of becomes ridiculous because if the family has massive things to accomplish and it's facing huge forces that are trying to destroy it, then nobody would be confused about this question.
It's really that, that, that I think is creating confusion. Yeah. [00:33:00] I kind of make the analogy less military and more towards a startup. It's like, okay, how do you define a startup? And it's like a desire, a startup is something that desires growth in a, in an area where there's high risk and high uncertainty.
Yeah. And it is going to require some level of innovation. And I would say a modern American family in particular are meets all three of those criteria, right? And I think we're actually, everyone's already agreed. We want growth, right? Families in general want at least personal growth and individual growth.
But I think most families would say, yeah, we'd like to grow as a family as well. Right? Second is the high risk and uncertainty. We have a less than 50 percent success rate in marriages. Right. And as a start, but then as families as a whole, actually carrying on and working together, I think we have a single digit success rates.
Right. So this is highly uncertain and highly risk. And because of the culture that we're in, it requires innovation. And so it's like, okay, cool. They're in the same category. These are human organizations that are meet those criteria of being a startup. That's why I think these tools apply. Yeah, that's so good.
Yeah. So I think if you started with this premise, [00:34:00] okay, don't think about the family, but design an organization that's going to have to work together as a team for 50 years and innovate constantly, constantly face huge oppositions, make all kinds of difficult, fast decisions. Now, I want you to design the organizational structure that will likely accomplish that, accomplish that.
That's, that's when I, I kind of say the, the opposition, this is kind of ridiculous given that idea. Yeah. Now, if you were to say, okay, scrap that, okay, what you want to do is you want to create a club that gets together every once in a while and just tries to, you know, do things that are kind of, that, that are kind of recreation, uh, that where there is sort of like a sense of like belonging.
But, but definitely not attempting to accomplish anything. You're not, you're not facing any real opposition. You're not really trying to do anything together. You're just trying to have an experience as a group. Design the organizational structure for that group. And at that point, I'm kind of like, I think co CEOs would be fine.
Absolutely. So what type of family do you want to have? Right. And [00:35:00] I think going to the idea of like family as team, As opposed to family as club, right? And I think that we've, I make the argument in mind of like, Hey, what are the reasons, why would you even want to have a team? Cause you do get to choose.
It's amazing. You can actually leave your family completely forsake them, forget about them, and the police aren't going to go after you, like you actually do have the decision. You can do whatever type of family you want if you legally. Right. So it's like, okay, why should you do a family team? I would argue again, from.
Experience. It's like, okay, uh, teams have the highest level of intimacy of any human group. I've ever been a part of drinking buddies. But team is like very deep, right? Two is, uh, feeling useful is naturally, uh, desired by all human beings, especially children. They want to be useful and a team is a great place for that.
Three marriages work better when there's a goal. And I've just experienced that time and time again with my wife, like it's, it's, it works better. And then finally, If you have a natural leadership wiring like I do, and like you do you're going to get [00:36:00] bored with any other type of family that exists other than a team.
And for me, that's a non starter. I don't want to, I don't want to forsake my family. So my family is going to have to be a team. Yes. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. I love that. Now there was something I wanted to throw out there in this list of, okay, uh, the leader slowness, team confusion, relational tension. These, these are the three that you pointed out.
The one that really gets me, uh, I don't know if it fits on one of these categories or it's its own, its own bullet. But I think that a single leader makes one person feel more comfortable. Responsible. This is kind of like the the tragedy of the commons problem we talked about before. And I, I think the difference is enormous.
Like, in, in, in the, uh, in sort of the literature about like CEOs, they talk about, they use the phrase monkey on your back. They basically say somebody in the organization has to have the monkey on their back because they're basically like, I am, cause I, I don't, one of the, my biggest struggles as CEO, when I was a CEO of a company, I would say one of the biggest mistakes that I've [00:37:00] made.
Was that I wanted to feel as responsible. I wanted to share the responsibility equally with my leadership team. I didn't want to feel more responsible than them. It felt uncomfortable to me. And so I was like, no, we're all in this together. I just, I just am in this one seat where I have authority. But and so I would like sit in these meetings and I would want to go along with the consensus and I just, you know, and this is part of the curse of being an agreeable person.
And I am. And so this, this was, this is one of the things that made me. You know, an underperforming CEO and, and I, I had to learn it in, in, in one of the main reasons, by the way, I wanted to be CEO of a company for a season was to become a better father. Cause I'm like, I know there's things that my, my, my temperaments and and there's certain skill deficiencies that I have that are going to hurt my family.
So I'd rather. Work them out in the context of a business and then brings more of those skills back into the family than to then to experiment on my family. My family is just [00:38:00] too important to me to, to be the primary arena where all of my failures are, are being experienced. And so I went into the business world and I would say that one of the things that I, I regret about my performance as a CEO is that I, I was able to, to diminish the feeling of the monkey on my back.
And I think that when you, when you feel, when you, and you see this with really, really good CEOs when they, when they're in the room, they, they feel 100 percent accountable and 100 percent responsible for everything they're hearing. There, there's a, you know, there's stuff, something on our customer service.
There's like our product sucks. Like they take all of that personally and that does something to the organization. And this allows them to. Fire people that are at a really high level and you don't fire your kids in a family context, but you make really hard decisions. Like, and so, but they'll make decisions that personally make them feel terrible, but they'll make them for the organization because of the [00:39:00] level of Of ownership.
They feel now when you, when you have co CEOs, it's like the perfect way to avoid that feeling of crushing responsibility and, and man, that is, that is, that is what's destroying so many families, you know, father's come home and they're like, my kid is, is like, she, he's, you know, uh, complaining and arguing constantly my wife, she seems kind of miserable, you know, like our family culture, everything's a mess.
And, and he's like, I don't feel responsible at all. Like, I, I'm responsible for what happens at work, but all this weird stuff at home, we just, we share it magically amongst us. Maybe my wife is more responsible. So I'm like, what's your problem? Why don't you, why don't you upgrade this stuff? I don't, but, and so that feeling of I'm a hundred percent responsible, I think ancient fathers felt that just the way a really good modern CEO feels that way.
Yes. And this is like Jocko with, you know, extreme ownership. It's like any problem that I see, I am ultimately responsible for this problem. And it's my fault, right? And taking that blame. I think [00:40:00] that will, I think, create more action in an organization than any other framework of of looking at problems.
I think that's actually a separate point. I think that that's worth adding which is, I think that, yeah, this idea of tragedy of the commons. And it's like, without a clear owner at the very top problems confessor, and it becomes just part of the situation. You might just be co complainers as opposed to someone actually taking action and changing something.
Yes. Awesome. Well, let me, let me, if we can do one more round on and get into the most controversial, I think, element of this thesis. And that is the like, is there something inherently about being a male, you know, that makes, You. Uniquely. Capable of, uh, being the, the leader of the family. This is a really, really tough part of the conversation.
And you, you listed, you know, capacity and biology as one thing. So pregnant a lot, and that's [00:41:00] tough your faith and tradition. So, so I wanted to maybe and I don't know if this fits under One of these in might maybe it's part of the biology. And and, and what's really tough about the word religion which I think is totally appropriate for the argument, but I think what, what it, what it conjures up that might be a little bit tough is that when I, when I think of religion or my faith in particular, my faith in the Bible, my faith in Christianity, I don't, I don't primarily put it under the category of religion.
I put it on the category of Truth, right? So, is there something innate about the world? And so my faith is telling me that there are these truths that are, that are just, that are, that are baked into nature. And and so one of the things that I guess I'm wondering, I'm curious how you feel about this.
Part of it is that in my family for example, April is a much more skilled manager than I am. And, and she, she's like, you know, I've, I've worked with many, many managers, uh, in business. And I would say April is probably a nine or a [00:42:00] 10 at managing and I'm around a three or a four. Okay. So that's generous.
Blake, see my management. I'm, I'm trying, Blake, I've read traction so many times. I, I've, I've upped my game. I'm like, I'm getting close to a four. So I'm like, part of, part of what happens in the context of our family, however, is if my wife tries to manage and, and lead the family as, as a whole for whatever reason.
It's they, they respond differently to my leadership, much, much more gracious about me leading than April. And so, uh, and so part of what happens is April behind closed doors or in our meetings, we will get to a place of consensus on a lot of things. But man, when we're a united front before the family, it's so important that I not throw my wife under the bus and say, because you're a better manager, I need you to use your management skills and start to lead the family because I suck at that.
Because actually when I, when she, and so part of what [00:43:00] even happens in our context is April literally will coach me all the time, like via texts or in our meetings. Hey, Jeremy, you should probably talk to, like, she will coach me, but if she exerts management over the family, it will always feel. Like it will be taken in a more frustrated, negative, annoying light to our family than if I exert leadership.
Is that because I'm a man, like, why is that? And it, it, you know, you can see this, this dynamic a little bit in the business world. I mean, people talk about all the time that, you know, when a woman is leading, you know, there is a. A sense in which she can be perceived, and you know, women bemoan this all the time in leadership.
Like, like, they're, the exact same thing being done by a man is taken differently by a business. You know, and so the, the bossy bitchy kind of like language that we use around women we, we don't use it anymore, but people think it and talk about it, you know, in, in, uh, when they're talking about the topic it's, it's, this is a consistent thing.
[00:44:00] And, and I think that what, what, how women have overcome this in the, in the business world is they've actually learned to become, to, to adopt a more masculine leadership style within the business world so that they can, they can overcome if they're just very, very feminine. In the way they lead, it seems to elicit a lot of these reactions that women are trying to overcome and are very frustrated about the inequality, the basic inequality, but in the family where you want your wife to be maximally motherly, maximally feminine, fully living into who she is.
And then you tell her. You also need to function as the organizational head. It seems like that's where it breaks down really badly. And you can't, you can't use the tools that we use in business to overcome kind of the, the, the, the challenges that people have with the difference between male and female leadership.
Yes. Yeah, I think it's a very uncomfortable conversation in 2024, and I still find the conversation uncomfortable, but [00:45:00] what I've experienced is the more we've leaned into traditional masculine and feminine roles, the more our family has thrived. A very basic one is that of home protection. Right. Uh, initially I was, that was not on my radar.
I grew up in a suburb and was just kind of like, yeah, don't need to lock the doors. Don't need any sort of protection. I don't think I've even had a baseball bat under my bed even. Like, it was just like, yeah, like, we'll be fine. And as I started kind of starting to take just protecting our home a little bit more seriously I noticed like my wife was hugely relieved.
And like it was actually taking a burden off of her and like literally her just tension in life went down as I started to take that and she began to thrive more. It's like, Oh, that's really interesting. And it's feels like each of these steps that we've taken has resulted in the family thriving more.
So the one that we've done most recently is, uh, Chandler describes it as a masculine parenting energy which is, uh, we have a 13 year old boy and, uh, [00:46:00] in Chandler has now at this point said, I'm not going to. I'm not going to engage if he gets oppositional, or if he starts to push back on me. She just says, very quietly and sweetly, I'd like you to go and talk to your father.
And so, and she just stays in that zone, and then, you know, suddenly I'm sitting here working, and then he comes in this door. Over here. And, uh, I say, what happened? And he explains it. I say, okay, what'd you do wrong? And then he explains it and say, now, what are you going to do differently? And then he explains it and say, all right, go do it.
And it's over. And like my emotional level went from zero to maybe 0. 5 and then back down to zero. I had zero didn't ruin my day. Didn't ruin Chandler's day. And the system, the situation is that could have been, uh, eight out of 10 energy drain on my wife. And it was like, Oh my gosh, this is seems to be working.
And the more we've kind of leaned into that the more it's worked. Right. And what we want to do culturally is, is again, retreat back to skill and not gender as the, as the only variable in that equation, [00:47:00] but what you just described that there was gender, you know, involved in, in that there was male energy that you don't want to expect from your wife, who you need.
You need her to, and this is the reason why, to me, the ultimate way of resolving this is to understand that gender is a family construct, not a social construct. In other words, our maleness and femaleness were created by God in Genesis 1 to create a certain kind of family. We can read that right, right in Genesis 1.
And so he, he gave us gender. To create a certain kind of family. So when you try to equalize the family and say, don't represent your gender in the family, represent only your skills. And we want everyone to be as gender neutral and as androgynous as possible. The family gets much weaker. Like the team of a feminine woman whose mother, who's, who's, who's living out these mother skills and a masculine father who's living out the, the role of a, of a, of a, all the [00:48:00] masculine strengths that this is what actually makes a family thrive.
And so this to me is what people really hate about your thesis. And I think that. That the real strength of the thesis, I would say, is resting in part, at least on the fact that masculine energy and masculine strengths were designed for the family and, and the need to have a visionary leader, a protector, a provider, all those elements that, that a father or a man needs to feel, feel.
It's going to create the most thriving kind of family if both of those the man and woman lean into those, uh, the sort of biological and innate elements of their strengths, as opposed to trying to resist them. But culturally, because of, because we value equality above, uh, family, there is, there is a desire to try to somehow erase that reality.
And the fact that it makes for [00:49:00] weaker families. Is a cost that our culture is willing to pay. But I think that we have to take a step back and decide, do we want to, do we want to pay that, that price for ignoring gender roles? Yeah, I agree, man. Yeah. So, well, I love these conversations. I think they are really hard to have.
I love your, your your essay, your chapter. Yeah, there's, there's, this is so important. And I think, I think the framing from you, you described first sympathy, three, the Bible itself is saying we, we need to create well managed homes, uh, households. And so we need, we need help more. We need people to be explicit more than ever about what it takes to have a well managed household.
And so it takes a lot of courage to, to be explicit about what this means. But because the Bible is saying that. Are the governance of the city is relying on [00:50:00] on the elders or the families that are well managed. We I don't think that for the sake of Children for the sake of society for the sake of governance for the sake of, you know, our sanity, we can ignore these these conversations.
We have to be willing to have them and we have to be willing to have them as explicitly as possible. Yes. Yeah. The stakes are high in this presentation that I'm doing for Housecraft. I pulled together one slide, which was the easiest slide in the entire presentation, which was, I just went on chat GPT and said, what are the top five church leader scandals where a family wasn't, the household wasn't ran well and it hurt the church in the past five years.
That was a really easy slide to make. Yeah. Like it was usually, Oh, yep. There it is. The stakes are incredibly high in the church for not taking this seriously. Yeah, 100%. Awesome. Well, like, thanks. And yeah, if you want to process other parts of your book, man, I can't wait for it to come out. It's right now called Unicorn Family is the working title.
I'm still questioning [00:51:00] whether it's working. So we'll see. Yeah. Well, if you have any ideas for Blake's, uh, But the title of Blake's book, if you like unicorn family, or you have any other ideas, like let them know, hit them up on, uh, where can people find you? Is there a good place? Probably LinkedIn is the best.
I also, I don't know if you have show notes, I've got a newsletter for folks who are, if they're interested in finding out more, I can give you the link for that maybe put it in the show notes or something. Yeah. Yeah. Give it to me. We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, definitely like Blake sends out.
A very simple weekly email on Fridays of like basically three things that are that are on his mind that are often related to things he's learning about family and they're extremely helpful oftentimes like, you know, he's cracked a code or found a tool read a book, like, so yeah, Jeff definitely jump on that on that newsletter.
Awesome. Thanks, Blake. Thank you. [00:52:00] [00:53:00]
