Accept failure, some risks and raise your kids like start-ups

Let's embrace the concept of minimum viable parenting — and not expect perfection from the start.

- Serene Ong

I still remember the day, six years ago, when I got The Call. I was in the middle of back-to-back meetings while juggling a critical pitch, and I was exhausted.

At that point, I was a global head of sales for a multinational corporation, while co-founder of a pre-school with my husband. Life was hectic, and that week especially so.

My then 14-year-old son had got into trouble in school for the second time in less than a week, warranting a call from the discipline master and a request for me to visit the school.

I had no time to think, only react. I dropped everything, rescheduled my meetings and calls, and checked in with my son.

I was working on autopilot, pivoting quickly and adapting to what life threw at me.

And that was when I realised: I was parenting in much the same way as I ran my start-up business.

In my experience scaling my business, I realised how, in the world of start-ups, we celebrate risk. We praise the pivot. We reward those who fall fast and get back up faster.

But when it comes to parenting, the narrative changes, especially in high-achieving societies like ours. Suddenly, there's no room for mistakes. Children must perform, parents must plan, and everything, from pre-school to piano classes, must be perfectly optimised.

Perhaps we feel this need for perfection because it gives us a sense of control and we want to protect our children from pain. But in business, we accept that imperfection is part of the journey to success.

We treat raising children like managing a flawless product launch — with zero tolerance for failure and all eyes on the outcome. But what if we raised our kids the way we build start-ups?

This may sound controversial, but hear me out.

MINIMUM VIABLE PARENTING

When a start-up launches a product, it doesn't aim for perfection. It rolls out a minimum viable product, which is something good enough to gather feedback, learn from quickly and evolve.