My personal experience is the opposite. I feel like dysfunctional couples need a lot more talking and planning and negotiating than more functional couples.

"Hey, do you mind helping me clean the kitchen?" "Sure."

Also, my favorite working environments have been similar to a family of peers.

"Hey, do you mind pushing your changes this morning?" "Sure."

I feel like many men sometimes aren't aware of how little they help around the house with chores and taking care of the children, so I am proactive and plan stuff with my wife. I don't wait for her to ask me. That isn't dysfunctional.

There's also a lot of process in families. Some you can automate now, like paying the bills. Some processes are routines. Getting up, getting our child dressed, walking her to school, picking her up, taking her to her after school activities. Doing her homework with her.

There's also process with checking things around the house. Checking the fire alarms regularly, scheduling dentist appointments, making plans for seeing family. These are all processes.

The whole original article came off as ignorance and out of touch. As someone with an academic background in Anthropology and Sociology the author doesn't seem to understand what culture is or how hierarchy and unbalanced power relationships in the office place work. It's not a very sophisticated treatment of the topic in any regard. And in that vein, my opinion is that as long as the times are good and you're not hiring a bunch of dickhead managers your culture will be fine. If you take your culture to mean don't hire old people because they don't play the video games your 20 somethings do then your shit is fucked. In the end, when things go bad in the business, culture will sour.

There's a difference between process and discipline. A lot of what you're describing is discipline: you have an internal compass that keeps you oriented on the stuff that matters: helping your wife with the house and kids, doing home maintenance, and taking care of periodic tasks. Basically, you make a to-do list and execute on it.

Process, at least in the corporate context, is about a bunch of stuff you do regularly to check on whether on not the stuff that matters is being attended to. Getting your kid dressed is not a good analog to the 'process' that is being referred to in this sense. Process is a tax on hiring people that don't have that internal compass, or on operating in an environment that stifles that internal compass. If the to-do list isn't there, isn't being followed, or doesn't work in some other way, process exists to find out that there's a problem so everyone can sit down and talk about what to do to fix it.

Put simply: you're defining a culture in your household that is healthy. It's exactly what the author hopes for in a company, and that's not process, it's discipline.

Process isn't about stifling the internal compass, it's about making sure that everyone's compass aligns. I've known many engineering teams where individually everybody is incredibly smart, hard-working, dedicated, and focused on what matters, but what matters is different to every person. As a result, the team got nowhere. Process is essentially shared discipline: it's getting everybody aligned so that when they focus and work hard, they get somewhere as a group instead of undoing each others' work.

I'd be really curious then to get your opinion on a new managerless structure I've been developing. My contact info's in my profile if you're interested.

Some couples need some process and others don't. I wouldn't say they're dysfunctional because of this. I'm guessing the ones that come from similar backgrounds don't need as much process (when growing up everyone helped clean the kitchen).

Its not about a lack of rules, customs or processes, its that those rules, customs and processes must be of the people and by the people. You don't need a manager to strictly codify the "rules for the grocery planning meeting" when you have to competent motivated people who will find a way to organize their shopping trip with or without such rules. The problem with excessive rules is that people become not so much unique individuals, but simply "rule implementers."

Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1. 11: The New Idol

>Where there are still peoples, the state is not understood, and is hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.

>This sign I give to you: every people speaks its own language of good and evil, which its neighbor does not understand. It has created its own language of laws and customs.

>But the state lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies; and whatever it has it has stolen.

You're comparing someone single to someone in a relationship. Two people need "process" to get along, whereas a person on their own does not.

An analogy fitting to OP's point is comparing two people from Hollywood and Ethiopia living in the same apartment versus one of the cohabiting couples you're talking about. In one case, you'll need expressed rules for each to abide by since they're culturally quite different. Comparatively the other case will have very few rules, because of the cultural similarity. The cohabiting couple will more naturally work towards similar goals without painstakingly negotiating them and laying them out.

The word "process" is used in the article, and in this thread, with many different meanings.

Humanistic Psychology defines process similar to how the author describes 'culture'. [1]

Take ceramics, for example. "Process" is working wet clay on a wheel with one's hands. It extends to the atmosphere of the studio – the mood that the artist creates in their environment (what music do they listen to, what is the lighting like?).

Humanistic Psychology posits the most beautiful products will emerge out of situations in which the artist is fully immersed in their process. The process itself is the goal, the products are 'by-products' whose quality is determined by the level of joy and concentration the artist brings to the process.

Tribal dynamics, also mentioned here and in the article fit into this model as well. According to Phil Jackson, NBA coach with eleven championship rings, a beautiful system (or process) is the key to success. [2][3] In the case of the Bulls and Lakers, this consisted not only of the triangle offense, a system that promoted a pure style of basketball playing which involves the entire team, eschewing traditional 'plays', but also extended to the way the team practiced, meditated together, had fun together. In this sense, process and culture become the same thing.

1: The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Farther_Reaches_of_H...

2: Eleven Rings, Phil Jackson http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eleven-rings-phil-jackson/11...

3: Tribal Leadership, Logan, King, Fischer-Wright http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061251321/ref=as_li_qf_sp_...

I think 'process' in this context is more about mindless bureaucratic processes rather than organized effort. Running a household requires tight organization, but it would be weird if I required my wife to submit TPS reports to me on a weekly basis.

We have a family culture that makes it possible for a lot of 'rules' to go unwritten and unmentioned, I think primarily because we're on the same page. We don't need an employee handbook, or weekly meetings, but we're an efficient organization.

My own anecdata suggests that while there may be a lot of back-and-forth, it's very free-form, rather than strictly codified and formalized. I assumed this was what was meant.