Our Vision
The Marriage Development Company aims to be a positive influence in providing the pragmatic frameworks and foundation for couples to work together better as a team both day-to-day and longer term. This, in turn, will allow couples to grow together building stronger families, and ultimately better communities.
Be Together. Work Together. Grow Together.
Be Together. Work Together. Grow Together.
The Inspiration
Inspiration for The Marriage Development Company was driven in the first instance out of necessity. Within a span of a year we were engaged, bought a home, married and pregnant with our first child, all against the backdrop of each of us being in leadership roles within our respective organisations. There was a natural gravitation for us to use our business skills in managing this exciting change at home.
We used the business knowledge, tools and frameworks we learned from running businesses with increasing rigour and frequency at home and recognised that they helped us to communicate and kept our life running smoothly.
As we shared our observations and our approach with friends, family and business associates, we were interested how many couples thought it was a good idea but that few had already adopted a similar practice on their own. We were inspired to research, develop and fine-tune our approaches even further based on our extensive business experience in global corporations, start-ups, consulting, and academia.
We used the business knowledge, tools and frameworks we learned from running businesses with increasing rigour and frequency at home and recognised that they helped us to communicate and kept our life running smoothly.
As we shared our observations and our approach with friends, family and business associates, we were interested how many couples thought it was a good idea but that few had already adopted a similar practice on their own. We were inspired to research, develop and fine-tune our approaches even further based on our extensive business experience in global corporations, start-ups, consulting, and academia.
Our Insights
We were struck by the following insights:
- Professionals work incredibly hard at building their careers, continually looking at how to become more efficient and effective. Career Development is the norm. And, tracing back even earlier, most of our educational system is geared towards preparing us for the "work" world.
- This is in stark contrast to our married lives where, in general, there is little structured preparation or tendency towards pragmatic and proactive "marriage development". The behaviour seems to be to wait until an emotional "crisis point" has been reached and the last resort is to then call on counsellors or, in some instances, to part ways.
- Often successful professionals are less "successful" in their personal lives - there must be a way to translate strengths and learnings from professional lives to home life.
- The metrics of how one measures your life in terms of success appear to be shifting towards a more balanced view of personal fullfillment/social impact alongside career achievement.
- Lack of Communication seems to be a prime reason why many marriages fail.