Many MGE: Management Experts clients are in fact married couples who work together in the office. They both might be doctors, or one’s the doctor and the other the office manager or hygienist and so on. This arrangement is, as I said, fairly common. It also happens to work out for the most part pretty well.

I thought I’d post something about this, as I’ve heard (quite a few times) from our clients that the consultant they worked with before MGE recommended that they not work together - for no other reason than the fact they were married. For that matter, if you search the internet, you’ll find loads of articles on the pros and cons of working together and how it might adversely affect your relationship outside the office.

Now, whether you decide to work with your spouse or not is up to you (and of course…your spouse. I happen to work with my spouse here at MGE. As our most highly trained “trainer” she’s in charge of all MGE technical delivery. Like many of our clients who are married and work together, we also work quite well together – and believe it or not it has nothing to do with our personalities.

Personally, I find two things that make a set-up like this uniformly work: 1 A standard management system, and 2)leaving the office at the office.

By a standard management system, I mean a system that is truly a system. We manage using statistics; people are promoted on the basis of performance, as opposed to “who you know.” We also have a standardized organizational structure, so everyone knows where they stand, who they report to, and what their responsibilities are. I say this as I’ve seen plenty of cases where a husband or wife is given a job that they a) don’t like, or b) have trouble performing. If you make your spouse an executive in your business, then they have to be able to fulfill the functions of that job. They shouldn’t just be an executive because they are your spouse, because this creates personnel repercussions and could induce resentment from the staff. Clients trained on the MGE Power Program learn a system that sets them up to avoid problems like this – and succeed.

Leaving the office at the office is paramount and is where I see most problems in this type of a relationship develop. Example: Wife (who is husband’s boss) gives him an earful for messing up on a project at work. They go home and an argument ensues over this work-related issue. Or, wife starts talking about issues related to their office while she and her husband are getting ready for bed. They get stressed out, fight and decide that maybe working together is not such a good idea.

In life we wear many different “hats:” husband, wife, father, brother, boss, softball coach, etc. Best to wear the appropriate “hat” at the appropriate time. My wife and I, years ago, decided that when we leave work – we’ve left work. We’re now just us, a married couple, and we focus on whatever we need or want to focus on. Work just doesn’t come home. We consciously don’t discuss it.

When we first started with this, we used to have to catch each other when the line of conversation became work-related. Now, it’s second nature. We found that just doing this reduced marital disagreements about 99%!

Whether you go this route or not is, as I said, up to you (and of course…your spouse). If you guys do decide to work together, keep the two points above in mind. They can make for a happier life, both at work and at home.

Jeffrey Blumberg is the CEO of MGE: Management Experts, Inc., a management training and seminar company for health care professionals. To read more of his blog articles, visit MGE: Management Experts Inc.