Have you ever had a business meeting that felt like the attendees were eight-year-olds? Well, I did, and it was awesome!

Each year my wife and I sit down and have our own strategic planning session. Neither of us are big fans of the New Year's Resolution, but realistically we want to set some goals for the coming year.

This year, we added a twist. We included our eight-year-old twins, Jason Andrew and Ainsley Grace.

Believe it or not, in a little over an hour, we brainstormed ideas, developed goals, and created action steps with 100% enthusiasm from everyone involved. By far, it was the most successful business meeting I've ever had the privilege of running.

Here's what I learned while strategic planning with eight-year-olds...

Brainstorm like eight-year-olds -- During the idea generation phase of strategic planning, we tell our clients "no idea is a bad idea". Unfortunately, people self-censor during many of these sessions. They hold back an idea from the group out of fear of rolling eyes or worse. Usually, the ideas they hold back are bad. But, occasionally, a streak of brilliance never becomes fleshed out to the detriment of the group because someone held it back.

Remember back in 1992, you said to yourself "someone should invent a blanket with sleeves", then you self-censored the idea before presenting it. Now you see the commercial for "Snuggie" and think, "I could've been rich!"

My eight-year-olds took brainstorming to heart. In less than 10 minutes we had more ideas than I've ever gotten from a group of executives. Some were bad, but five or six of them were unique, solid ideas that my wife and I never would've had without our kids.

Mushing -- I told the kids we would take our ideas and consolidate them into measurable, practical, achievable objectives. They looked at me like I was speaking an alien language.

I described the process a little bit, and my daughter said "Oh, we're just gonna 'mush' them a little." Making the universal hand gesture of squishing stuff. Exactly! She had it.

We took our 50 or so index cards with ideas, pared them and mushed them into nine very realistic goals to improve our family life.

No Vacation -- I asked my family to take these nine realistic goals and choose four to work on this year. I explained that with our limited resources, any of these goals was doable, however all of them weren't.

"Planning and going on family vacation" was one of the index cards. My children surprised me. Both of them eliminated this goal. You see, one of our goals was to be more environmentally friendly. Another goal was to become more responsible with our spending and savings. While these two goals went hand-in-hand, the family vacation would use more money, gasoline, and we were likely to buy things we don't need, such as souvenirs.

Because my kids were focused on the process rather than emotionally involved with a particular goal, it was clear that taking a family vacation wasn't a great idea this year.

Too often we see an individual emotionally tied to an objective, even if that objective, while worthy in and of itself, doesn't fit with other organizational objectives. Unfortunately, at this phase of the process, we don't want anyone taking ownership of a particular idea. By disowning the idea we alienate the individual.

Had Kristen and I done our planning separately and come to the same conclusion "No Family Vacation" our kids would've probably been angry. Not only did they understand, but they embraced the idea.

Create Responsibility -- I've always been pretty good at developing responsibility in my children. This is out of necessity, being disabled. My children take care of me and their pets. They clean up after themselves (most of the time) and they're not afraid to speak to grown-ups if they need help.

Once we narrowed our four goals, we created some action steps. Ainsley and Jason both were eager to take responsibility in any way they could. Sometimes we had to create responsibility. Ainsley has the official job of "coupon clipper" and Jason is responsible for updating our monthly "savings report". In this way, they each can be involved with achieving our family financial goals.

It's not enough to create enthusiasm for your company objectives. You need to create accountability and responsibility for every action along the way. Create an environment where team members freely participate and you'll have them begging for more responsibility.

Our Strategic Objectives for 2011

You may be interested in seeing our results. Our mission was simple. We wanted to find ways to "make our family life better". Here's what we will do:

Healthy Family Fun Night -- Each week one of the four of us will choose a special activity for our family. Each activity must include at least one of the following: healthy eating, exercise for the body, exercise for the brain. Jason was very excited that we may be having baseball practice in February. Brrrrr...

Clean Sweep -- Each month we are going to work together to clean out one room of our house. Stuff we don't need... gone. Stuff we need... organized. Additionally, we tie this into our dedication to a greener planet. We look at ways to save energy, eliminate plastic, and recycle. One room at a time, our home will be dramatically improved by year's end.

New Church -- My kids love to go to church with grandma and grandpa. My wife and I are looking for a change. We developed a plan to find a new church home and still let the kids see their friends, cousins and grandparents regularly.

Financial Freedom -- If you haven't noticed, kids are expensive and they aren't getting any cheaper. We created a weekly and monthly process that is, in a nutshell, "buy less, earn more, save more, give more". Seems simple. Surprisingly, it is.

Three Things to Take Home

Something new for 2011. I'm going to try to summarize each issue of Private Duty Today with three things to take home, three ideas or insights that you can apply during the next two weeks.

This week's topic is Strategic Planning.

1. Brainstorm like an eight-year-old -- the only bad ideas are ones that are never spoken.

2. Trust the process -- a good planning process and facilitator yields great results.

3. Keep it simple -- the best ideas, goals and actions should be very clear, concise, and simple.

Our firm is committed to helping home health care and private duty home care companies grow and get ready for the future. We have lots planned for 2011. To begin with, we will be conducting our Academy for Private Duty Home Care in eight cities across the country.  Then, we'll be kicking off our Advanced Academy, for graduates and advanced private duty owners.  We've got a couple of other exciting new programs and services coming your way in 2011.  Stay tuned to Private Duty Today every other Wednesday for all the details.