Management Monday: Lessons from Mom

Jeffrey Czajka • May 1, 2025

This month we will celebrate Mother’s Day, we first want to recognize, appreciate, and celebrate all that mothers do to make us who we are. A mother’s love does a lot to shape our world. 


While reflecting about my mom, I couldn’t help but think about all the ways that she helped shape me and the impact it has had on my business career without even trying. Although there are many stories and lessons that have had a positive impact on my career, there is one theme to mom’s parenting that seems to apply nicely to our Management Monday series.


If you are a parent, you know this well. Raising kids and managing employees leverages many of the same skillsets. The wonderful thing is the skills transfer to different areas of life very easily. While mom was never a corporate manager, she instinctively knew how to manage. 


You see, when I was in elementary school, one of the first things I remember learning is you always do your homework before you play. Really what mom was saying was prioritize. Not that I enjoyed it much when I was a kid, but it did teach me a few things that have helped me grow in life; and also grow my sales. Let’s take a look at a few of the lessons.

School work is more important than play = Prioritization: do the most important things first.


Check your assignment book for everything that needs to be completed = Organization: keep things neat and clear

Completed to mom’s satisfaction = Discipline: like it or not, it had to be done (mom’s way – or else…)

Let your desire for play motivate you = Incentives increase productive: desire to play increase speed of finishing homework

Okay, so there may be a few more “lessons” in there, but you get the point. Early on, in certainly different terms, mom taught me how to be a good employee. By learning these lessons as a child, then implementing them into my professional life, they can now be lessons that can be taught.   


As a manager, you cannot assume all employees already know how to prioritize, organize, and keep disciplined. Yes, at some levels you would expect that employees have already learned that. Unfortunately, lived experience taught me that is not the case. Like the time a Senior Vice President at a Billion-dollar firm asked for the agenda outline I consistently put together for our one-on-ones because he wanted to use that with his other direct reports. Shouldn’t he already have that??? 


You see, one of our key responsibilities as a manager is to help develop our team. Just as a mother develops her child(ren) as they grow. In the beginning you may need to prioritize with them, provide them tools to stay organized, or help them with their discipline on doing the important of not fun tasks of their role. By doing so, you empower them to maximize their achievements and grow. 


As you start this week, think about your direct reports and evaluate their strengths with respect to these skills. If you find they need some improvement, make sure to take the time to help them learn. Just like mom would. 


Radio poll

By Jeffrey Czajka • December 1, 2025
On the radio this morning, the daily call-in question was “would you rather have a raise or more feedback from you boss?”. They said their online poll had something like 65% of respondents say “feedback”, but a higher percentage of those calling in said “more pay”. Interesting…  While this question may spark good interaction with the radio show audience, it oversimplifies a very complex topic for all parties involved. There is base pay, variable compensation, bonuses, benefits, time flexibility, time off, and so many other things to consider when designing (or accepting) a compensation package which makes looking at the two radio options very situational. Personally, I’ve always found this topic very interesting and revealing when talking with owners/managers. Compensation policies explain a lot about employee retention, productivity, and customer service levels. It also requires the right person to be the in the right job. In the end, there are a ton of creative and impactful ways to attract, retain, and reward employees to achieve growth for everyone. As the radio poll suggest, it is not all about the money, but the money is important.

The Fallacy of Quality Over Quantity

By Jeffrey Czajka • November 1, 2025
During a recent conversation with one of my consulting clients today, they made a comment justifying their lack of activity this past week because they want to focus on quality over quantity. Immediately, my internal fallacy detector went off! It doesn’t matter what industry or profession you are in – you could be a financial advisor, business banker, loan officer, wholesaler, dentist, optometrist, family practice, psychologist, a lawyer, CPA, engineer, or any other service orientated profession that needs to build a client base while delivering their services to paying clients – this fallacy of quality over quantity applies to you. It’s a great point to dive into if we truly want to experience exponential growth.  There are so many impacts that we could discuss on this topic. To one extreme, focusing on too high of “quality” could turn you into a “whale hunter”. You might land the big one, but are you able to stay in business until it happens? Another extreme is, are you educated or experienced enough in your specific profession to be able to handle the “quality” you aspire to work with? Only seeking high “quality” clients typically goes with less but bigger clients. At this point in your career, are you okay with concentration risk? Each client is a larger percentage of your business and if your “quality” client leaves you, a larger percentage of your revenue leaves you too. One way to better understand this dilemma of quality and quantity is to look at building a client base from a game of numbers perspective. Each industry / profession (and person) will have different numbers, but no one is perfect. Not every prospect you meet with becomes a client. Whatever your ratio is, it applies to prospects of any quality level. If you need to get 10 prospects to gain 1 client, you can’t obtain 5 prospects and then justify it by saying “I’m focusing on quality over quantity”. Say what you want, but if you need 10 and get 5, at best you get half a client. Now since we are dealing with real people, you can’t get half, so reality says (more than likely) you round down and get zero. Another reason why people say such fallacy is they are mentally searching for justification of poor performance. On one hand, it might just be laziness. (We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and rule that one out.) More likely, it is poor execution skills. People may not know what to do. If they know what, they many do not know how. If they know both, they may not be very good at it. For many people this is a combination problem they need help solving. You may say, one “quality” client is better than 3 “inferior” clients. That may be true. No one would rightfully argue against quality control measures being in place. That said, if your object is exponential growth over a short period of time, you can never sacrifice one for the other in this equation. You must uphold your quality control AND do the quantity needed. If you deliver both quality and quantity at the targeted levels, the best thing that could happen is you arrive at your goal early. The worst thing that happens is you reach your goal on the intended deadline. If you miss the goal, you probably had the wrong metrics. Building a clientele is a professional exercise comprised of art, science, and execution. It is good to define your quality control measures, but you still need to do the appropriate amount of work to get the job done.
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