Cathy Greenberg and Barrett Avigdor authors of "What Happy Working Mothers Know: How NewFindings in Positive Psychology Can Lead to a Healthy and Happy Work/LifeBalance," (Wiley, $19.95, 2009, 256 pp.) will be two of the keynote speakers at the Pennsylvania Governor's Conference for Women on Thursday, Sept. 17, at The Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.

Barrett S. Avigdor, J.D., is the director of legal talent strategy at Accenture, a position she created in 2007. In this role she strives to maximize the productivity, creativity and engagement of the 400 legal professionals at Accenture around the world. Avigdor spent much of her legal career as a senior executive in the legal group at Accenture, though she's also a certified career coach and an advocate for happiness. Avigdor writes and speaks to audiences around the globe on the subject of finding happiness by working to your strengths and aligning your time to your values. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and a former Fulbright Scholar to Brazil.

Cathy L. Greenberg's books include "Global Leadership: Next Generation," with Marshall Goldsmith, which ranked No. 1 in leadership on Amazon.com. She is cited as an authority on leadership behavior by all major business and financial newsorganizations, as well as by popular media outlets such as Glamour, Oprah Magazine and Martha Stewart Living Radio. Named a "Top 100 Leadership Coach" byExecutive Excellence Magazine (2008), she is a business talk show host on "Voice America" and founder of h2c, LLC Happy Companies Healthy People, a beacon for successful leaders.

Click here for more information about the Pennsylvania Governor's Conference for Women.

Every attendee will receive a free copy of "What Happy Working Mothers Know."

Could your family benefit from being run like a business?

That's the premise behind author Patrick Lencioni's latest, "The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable ... About restoring Sanity to the Most Important Organization in Your Life," (Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, 2008, $24.95, 208 pp.) (I favorably reviewed Lencioni's book "The Three Signs of a Miserable Job" in January 2008 -- check that review out here.)

While this book is labeled in the "family & relationship/parenting" category, it certainly doesn't hurt to look at it from a business perspective.

Much as he did in "The Three Signs of a Miserable Job," Lencioni uses a simple tale to communicate what might be to some a complicated business concept -- or in this case, an idea for improving family time.

A father of four and business consultant/bestselling author who's often on the road, Lencioni said he tested out his model in his own home. After all, if your family is the most important organization in your life, why wouldn't a business executive apply the tools they use at work to improve the way his/her family functions?

"Family chaos is just a part of life, and so we accept levels of confusion and disorganization and craziness at home that we would not tolerate at work," Lencioni states in the book's introduction. Less chaos, for most families, including a few extremely busy young families I know, would be good.

Lencioni said he and his wife have found benefits to applying a few simple strategic concepts to managing his own family.

"The vast majority of families I know - including my own - wold admit that one or more of the following adjectives apply to them: reactive, scattered, frantic chaotic, stressed," he writes. "And if you were to ask them if they were living their lives with the sense of purpose and intentionality that they want, every last one of them would look at you like you were mocking them and say 'Are you kidding?'"

And so Lencioni has come up with this easy-to-understand fable about a couple who are struggling to keep on top of three kids, school and church obligations, sports and other extracurriculars, and simply finding time to hang out as a family.

The book opens with a frustrated husband, Jude making the following (rather loaded) statement to his stay-at-home wife, Theresa: "If my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they'd be out of business!" After taking some time to get over her initial indignation, the wife proceeds to investigate that claim.

It all boils down to these three questions a family can live by to restore sanity and clarity. I'll tell you the questions, but it will be in very simplistic and out-of-context form. They're better illustrated by reading this little fable, which you could easily do in a night or two (no matter how busy you are).

1) What makes your family unique? Basically, what makes you you and differentiates you from everyone else on the block.

2) What's your family's top priority (aka rallying cry) right now? That would be your main goal over the next 2 to 6 months, and it could be something like carve out more family time or it could be something like moving to a bigger house. It's the main thing that drives you as a family at this time.

3) How do you talk about and use the answers to these questions? What are you doing to implement the first two questions. Holding weekly family meetings? Keeping a spreadsheet?

How did Theresa and Jude answer these questions and implement the answers? They're "rallying cry" was to spend more time together as a family. That meant Theresa had to said no to taking on a time-consuming post at church. Jude and Theresa decided to cut back on their kids' extracurriculars. They cut back on social activities as well as TV-watching. They made family vacations a priority. And, lastly, Jude decided to cut back in his business travel for the overall benefit of the family.

Then they met weekly for 10 minutes to keep up with it all and adjust as needed. They kept a whiteboard in the kitchen as a reminder of the "rallying cry" and what was needed to achieve it. And, lo and behold, it worked. And they were on to their next "rallying cry," which had to do with helping one of their kids with an attention deficit.

To further illustrate the concept, Lencioni goes through several other "families" and their experiences with the "three big questions." He also notes that his own family is far from picture perfect:

"Well, I have to tell you that the Lencioni family continues to experience its fair share of stress, and we don't expect that to go away anytime soon. But I am glad to report that by answering the questions laid out here, we have begun to channel that stress in a general direction and obtain a sense of progress," he writes.

A good deal of chaos remains, he admits, but "we're being more purposeful now about which chaos to tolerate and which to squash."

I really like his wife's comment at the end of the book:

"When something is part of a bigger goal that I know we're going to be talking about every week, it's harder for me to let it get pushed aside by those pesky, tactical, and artificially urgent things that distract us from what really matters. Now I can let some things go that I would have felt guilty about ignoring in the past when everything was equally important."

Working together toward a pre-determined common goal: Not a novel concept, but one that might help some stressed out family-type folks I know.

Reviewed: “Escape the Mid-Career Doldrums: What to Do Next When You’re Bored, Burned Out, Retired or Fired,” by Marcia L. Worthing and Charles A. Buck, Wiley, Nov. 2007, $18.95, 204 pages.

If your feel like you’re stuck in a job you have no passion for, uncertain how to make your escape — you’re not alone.

When I graduated from college with my bright, shiny journalism degree and no job, I went to work as a secretary in a chemical company. Frankly, I worried what the dangerous chemicals stored nearby were doing to my health, but it paid the bills. Every day, counting the minutes until my lunch break or until quitting time, I plotted my exit from this occupation.

While the job that “saved” me from the chemical company wasn’t my career salvation (I sold custom-made furniture on a commission-only basis, and was not terribly good at it), it was a stepping stone that helped me to see where my natural abilities did not lie. And, on the bright side, I now know how to accessorize a room.

Those were, no question, the wrong jobs for me, and I knew they were temporary. But even the right job — the right career — can become wrong for you.

Written by a career consultant and a career coach, Marcia L. Worthing and Charles A. Buck, “Escape the Mid-Career Doldrums: What to Do Next When You’re Bored, Burned Out, Retired or Fired,” is a handy reference designed for those who are established in a career and yearn to make a move or for those who are forced out by way of layoffs or who choose retirement but aren’t ready to leave the workforce.

“Escape the Mid-Career Doldrums” offers practical advice and soul-searching exercises to those stuck in what the authors call the “BBRF Syndrome” (bored, burned out, retired or fired). The goal is to get them back on track.

One caveat is that the intended audience is a narrow group: extremely successful business professionals. So, while those of you who are not high-level executives may find some pearls of wisdom, you may be a little put off by the hoity-toity real-life “examples” given.

Here’s one: “Richard, a highly successful human resources executive for a top corporation, had over 200 employees reporting to him and a high-level executive role that allowed him to take on strategic and planning responsibilities. Despite a great salary and other perks, Richard was bored.”

They lost me even before “great salary.” Poor Richard. So misunderstood.

But, I accept that even top-level, high-paid executives get bored. And certainly, in the wake of the economic rollercoaster ride we’ve been on of late, many highly-trained professionals are being abruptly laid off or forced into early retirement.

If you’re a mid-career professional and find yourself out of job, as painful as that may be, the authors say it’s important to keep an open mind. Consider going back to school, starting a consultancy, working part-time or volunteering or working for a nonprofit organization that might benefit from your expertise.

Before doing anything, Worthing and Buck advise readers to get to the bottom of why you were bored with your job, or why you were fired.

“When you don’t know the real cause behind your boredom, burnout, retirement or firing, you can’t respond to it effectively. Your false belief about why something happened will prevent you from emerging from your career blues and discover what you really want to do for the next 10, 20, or 30 years,” they write.

The reality, they say, is that there are “plenty” of opportunities for the mid-career professional, “but a variety of factors make it seem like few opportunities exist.”

Making a change won’t be easy, and just as when I began my career search, you may start out going one direction, only to find it’s not the right path.

“Be open to new opportunities. Just because you had a plan to start your own business or to divide your time between part-time work and travel doesn’t mean you can’t adjust this plan,” the authors write.

Thoughtfully, they remind the reader: If you’re mid-career at 50, you technically have another 25 working years ahead of you.

Reviewed: “The True Cost of Happiness,” by Stacey Tisdale and Paula Boyer Kennedy, Wiley, 2007, $24.95, 288 pages.

How your parents handled money influences the way you handle your finances, according to “The True Cost of Happiness,” a book co-authored by business journalist Stacey Tisdale and financial planner Paula Boyer Kennedy.

Readers are encouraged to take a look at the role family dynamics play in their financial behavior.“I’m talking about the ways in which the first lessons we learned about money as children affect our decision about making and spending it as adults,” writes Tisdale, who penned the first half of the book, which focuses on self-awareness.

In my family, my father managed the money. My mom took care of the house and three kids. The bills and the bank account were the man’s job. When my father died at age 58, losing a 13-year battle with cancer, my mother was thrust into a position of total financial responsibility — a role no one had prepared her for. When my mom was growing up, her father took care of the household finances. She learned at an early age that money was the man’s job. And that was the norm of the time, and it worked out OK for my mom. Until circumstances in her adult life necessitated a crash-course in paying bills.

Learned financial behaviors are what Tisdale and Boyer Kennedy call “money scripts.” Leaving room for you to write down your thoughts, they ask you to explore your own “money scripts” learned in childhood, and look at how they play a part in your financial attitudes as an adult.“Think about those money scripts that are limiting you. Imagine your life without those messages. How would your actions be different?” the authors write.

If your behavior isn’t leading you to your financial goals, then you need to take a new tack, they say. They walk you through ways to make those changes. One fun exercise, that I’m sure each of us has indulged in some variation, is:

•Imagine that you have all the money you will ever need. Decide what you would do with it, your life and your time.

•Next, change that picture. Now you only have 5 to 10 years to live. How will you change your life? What will you do with the time you have left?

•Lastly, imagine the changes you’ll wish you had made if you only have 24 hours to live.“The question is not what you would do with the time you have left, but what are your regrets?” the authors ask. That last scenario, they say, “cuts deepest of all. It becomes clear which issues in life are superficial and which are central. Sometimes this exercise delivers a … longing or wish that has never before surfaced.” It’s a thought-provoking way of getting to your big picture goals.

For instance, I have a desire to travel, but I feel like with my current monthly bills (mortgage!) I don’t have enough money to go anywhere. Per the authors’ advice, I can afford a trip to, say, Italy, if I make a budget and start setting aside a small sum every month.

Those who dislike the “getting in touch with your financial feelings” part of the book may be more comfortable with the second half of the book, which focuses on numbers. Basically, it tells you how to make a budget — something a lot of people simply don’t do. “We think having to literally face your values and your barriers each time you look at your finances will be an important factor in keeping your financial decisions aligned with your priorities,“ writes Boyer Kennedy, who handles the numbers-focused latter half of the book.

In other words, make a budget and stick to it and you may be able to save some money for a trip abroad … or retirement!

While the authors offer some very sound, practical advice, they also suggest that readers visit a financial planning professional to help you figure it all out.“The True Cost of Happiness” helps readers to determine why they spend/save as they do and what they could do better to meet certain goals.

Michelle Karas is The Mercury’s business editor.