Parenting MBA: How to Apply What Makes You Successful at Work to the Most Important Job of Your Life

By Josh Leibowitz

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Harvard Business School graduate and former McKinsey & Company partner Joshua Leibowitz found himself off the road, out of his old routine, and into quarantine with his wife and children. Suddenly, his home life—particularly parenting—became the most challenging project of his career. Could the skills he acquired from leading organizations and consulting for Fortune 500 companies help him become a better parent? How could he build a stronger, more loving family?

The incredible family time gave Leibowitz the opportunity to expand on the core concepts he had gained from a career as a consultant and business leader in order to use them to create a blueprint for becoming a better father and spouse. Parenting MBA candidly delivers relatable anecdotes, honest advice, and winning strategies to help parents and children see each other clearly, support one another completely, and become the best versions of themselves.

Putting these ideas into practice will help parents fulfill their cherished goals of building lifelong positive relationships with their children and raising good people who can reach their full potential.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josh Leibowitz
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987267011

Josh Leibowitz

Joshua Leibowitz has always striven for success, from youth to adulthood. As a teenager, he ran a wholesale and retail business with his older brother. After college, he graduated at the top of his class from Harvard Business School and then went on to become a partner at a major consulting firm, McKinsey & Company. As he achieved career success, Leibowitz and his wife settled into family life with their three children. He most recently served as the president of Seabourn, an all-inclusive luxury cruise line. He has spoken at major conferences on branding and digital marketing and delivered a TEDx talk on how to be a “vacation superhero.” Parenting MBA is his first book.

Book preview

Introduction

The average company on the S&P 500 lasts eighteen years⁠—which is just about as long as our kids live in our homes.

On Friday, March 13, 2020, I walked out of my office with a few possessions in my briefcase and my mind filled with mixed emotions as I prepared to lock down with my wife and three kids at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was anxious to get home. Little did I know that this would become the longest amount of time I had ever been home with my family. The roads were more crowded than usual as thousands of people made the journey from their offices to their homes to hunker down.

Each of my kids called me during the commute home. They had likewise emptied their lockers and packed their bags. My middle child said, The school told us we will be back in a few weeks once the virus is over. I remember thinking it would maybe be more like a month or two. How wrong we all were.

What came next was a year of living together, me working from home and my kids Zooming school, and it ironically turned out to be the very best year of my life as a husband and a parent. It didn’t start off great, though. For the first few weeks of the lockdown, I literally locked down in my home office, on video calls, and failed miserably as a dad and husband. I was way less present than usual. I might as well have been four thousand miles away from my family, rather than forty feet.

Then I had a breakthrough, a moment that helped me become a better dad and husband. As I sat on video call after video call, I watched one of my neighbors pass by my house on a bike with two of his kids riding alongside him. I thought to myself, I am missing one of the most important moments in my family’s life when I am finally at home and can be with them as a dad and not on a plane somewhere or tied up in a late-night meeting or client dinner. Our children are in our homes for just eighteen years, and I finally had an opportunity to be with them, more than at any other point in our lives.

My major decision was whether to leap into being more present than I had ever been or to continue to hide behind work. If I focused on being more present as a dad, I wondered, would I live up to the challenge? How would my wife and I co-parent when I was there 24-7 to witness the highs and lows versus receiving a report when I came home? How would my kids react to me being at the dinner table for what turned out to be over 365 days in a row?

After watching my neighbor pass by my house on his bike for the twentieth time, I decided to dive headfirst into being present as a parent. I would take the gift of being home together to become a better dad.

I have managed large companies, helped turn Fortune 500 companies around, graduated from Harvard Business School, and been a partner in a major consulting firm, McKinsey & Company. Surely all that experience would help me be a better parent⁠—right?

However, I noticed that being present all the time was not the solution to being a better parent. As I watched working moms and dads on Zoom calls, I realized that parenting every day from home is way harder than what had previously been typical parenting for me. In fact, in some ways, it was harder to balance working and parenting time. The pandemic taught me that success as a parent is not defined by how often we are present, but by how well our children operate when we are not present, both now and in the future. In the same way, as an executive who has led companies with thousands of employees, I define success not by how well employees operate when I am with them, but instead by how well they operate when I am not with them.

This book applies ideas from what makes us successful at work to the most important job of our lives, parenting. I applied everything I learned about leading and managing large companies and teams⁠—in business school, consulting, and running a major travel brand⁠—to a fresh, new way of thinking about parenting. I hope the stories and ideas in this book help each of us become a better parent while at home, at the office, or even on the road.

But first, a little bit about me and what I’ve done in life, by age:

At fifteen, I was running a $1-million-a-year, forty-employee wholesale and retail business with my older brother, Ira.

At twenty-five, I received an MBA and graduated at the top of my class from Harvard Business School.

At thirty-two, I was a partner at a major consulting firm, McKinsey.

At thirty-six, I, and my wife, had a household of three young children.

At forty-six, I gave my first TEDx talk on work-life balance and vacation.

At forty-eight, I was running a luxury-travel company with four thousand employees . . . and locked down in a house with my wife and three teenage daughters.

At fifty, I decided to write it all down in this book.

This book follows the structure of courses at Harvard Business School and the management-training method of McKinsey to draw twelve Ideas from business on how to be a better parent. I organize the Ideas into three sections.

Section 1 is all about strategy, laying the foundation and vision for what you are trying to accomplish as a parent.

Section 2 is about the day-to-day management. Parenting is a full-time job often done part-time, and this section offers insights on how to get through good days and bad and to engage actively as a parent every waking moment.

Section 3 is about long-term performance. This section covers big-picture priorities for long-term growth and success.

Two important caveats before we begin this parenting MBA. Call them fine print if you want.

First, feel free to read this book in any order you like. Each of the twelve Ideas sections are designed to function separately and cover subjects that may be relevant at different points in time in your parenting. For example, if you want to work with your kids on self-esteem, jump to Idea #2 on marketing and branding; if you’re looking to help your kids get focused, jump to Idea #7, where we discuss the 80/20 rule in life.

Second, and most importantly, there is no one way to parent, and there is no parent who will ever get, or has ever gotten, it all right. Life is about making mistakes and learning to do better each time. If there is one durable lesson I’ve learned from parenting and managing, it is not to dwell on the