I know you have all been there. You are trucking along, executing the plan, with everything organized in a routine. You fly from meeting to meeting with ease. Everything is prepped in advance. You can put your finger on the data, just as someone asks for it. People are in awe at how together you are. You swoop into an open parking spot in front of the preschool and retrieve your kids in plenty of time. Teacher appreciation week – no sweat – you have bought gifts in advance and you get the kids to make sweet cards as a pre-dinner activity. Even a sick child doesn’t derail you – you have planned for this and your backup care system kicks in. You even have crayons in your purse when there is a meltdown at the supermarket. Your energy level is high and endless. You are in the groove, together, polished (like your finger nails, which you have somehow managed to keep manicured.) Other moms hate you because you secretly wear the superwoman cape.

That was me three weeks ago – in the groove, working it. Then someone must have handed me the mommy kryptonite.

For the past two weeks I have been without my Mother’s Assistant due to an unexpected personal emergency. At first reliable, my backup daycare plan has now crumbled as well. My kids’ schools are in the annual wind-down, which you probably know means countless end-of-year parties, trips, and boondoggles – all of which require far too much parental involvement. Additionally, work has gone crazy, mostly due to the endless energy I put into it three weeks ago.

Me, I’m a wreck. I showed up at a meeting today mismatched, with a black purse, brown shoes, and no agenda or notes. I had to hide my chipped fingernails under the conference table while I scrambled to recall the salient points of my presentation. Usually calm, positive, and friendly, I barked at the attendance monitor when she called to inform me my child was tardy this morning. (“I KNOW that, I’m the one who made him tardy!) Yesterday I drove around the block four times waiting for a parking spot in front of the preschool, then had the dubious honor of being the last parent to pick up. “Where have you been, Mommy? And what’s for dinner?” Oh crap, I forgot about dinner.

Where did it all go wrong? What part of my utility belt is broken?

Applying business principles for a moment, let’s start with the plan. Was it realistic? Did I do enough competitive research? Maybe I need to expand my scenario planning model? Or, is it the execution? Do I have the right people, in the right place, at the right time?

I think one of my biggest faults is the tendency to over-commit, especially when things are going well. I forget that life, like the market, has cycles and I am not always going to be at the top. Three weeks ago when I was scaling tall buildings in a single bound, it was probably a bad idea to schedule five days in a row of back to back meetings. Moreover, when my son’s school asked for help for the end-of-year picnic, I should have resisted the temptation to volunteer my time to pick up ice cream. Now, in addition to being a wreck, I feel GUILTY because I don’t want to let everyone else down.

A good friend advised me today to decline every new request, both work and personal, from now until my assistant returns next week. I need to lean on others and ask them for help; my husband, my friends, my coworkers. This is generally hard for me to do. She also reminded me to live fully in the moment with each action I take between now and then, so that instead of a worried, distracted, and stressed mother/leader/friend, I am the person everyone needs me to be. It is sound advice and I know it will take everything I have to muster the discipline to follow it.

Ahhhh. Maybe I should invest in a new invisible airplane, just in case.

This past weekend I joined 20 other women for our semi-annual scrapbook retreat. We leave our families for two nights and drives four hours away to a gorgeous bed and breakfast where we are pampered, fed gourmet meals, and sleep in luxurious surroundings. While we mostly talk about our families as we paste photos of them in our albums, we also bond, share girl-talk, and celebrate milestones of womanhood. (“Celebrate” is a loose term.)

In most cases our husbands call only a few times to ask where the toothbrushes are kept or to determine the exact moment of our expected re-entry to the real world. My husband is really good – he usually doesn’t call at all, so when he does, I know something big happened. On Saturday morning I got a note on my Blackberry that my youngest daughter had a fever of 103.4 degrees. He just wanted me to know they had already administered Motrin and he was going to keep a chart of her temperature throughout the day. Some of my colleagues reacted. “Wow, that’s amazing. He is really a great husband to look after three kids like that, especially with one so sick. Are you sure you don’t need to leave the retreat? My husband would be panicking, etc. etc. etc.”

Now, pardon for a moment the rant I am about to have. WHAT?????? Attention women everywhere – we do NOT have an exclusively female gene for raising kids, cooking, cleaning, and taking temperatures. Nowhere on the second x-chromosome is there an indication for making beds, brushing children’s teeth, checking homework, sending thank you notes, or arranging play dates. And husbands who do these things are not miracles or genetic mutations who need to be showered with accolades for simultaneously wiping chocolate off a preschooler while picking legos out of the dog’s bowl. (Sorry, babe!) These are things all men can do, though they may not readily volunteer like we do.

We all need to understand that when husbands screw up something to do with child-rearing it is intentional. It is called, “feigned incompetence” and it is effective both in the workplace and at home for getting out of doing anything dirty, demeaning in its appearance, or just plain not fun. They also seem to have a much better perspective than we do about what is truly important and what is only considered “necessary” because we want to look better than someone else or meet someone’s ideal of the “perfect mother”. (What is that, anyway?)

Whew! Thanks for that. But seriously, if we are going to be successful as executive mothers we all need to expect our husbands to equally match what we do in the home. My husband and I recently came to the realization that our frustrations with the workload had to do with the workload and not so much with how much each one of us was doing. The reality is that, in our household, there is more work than two people can do. So, fighting over who wasn’t doing 50% was counterproductive: Neither of us was capable of doing 50%! At that point we seriously looked at our goals, what we were willing to let go, what absolutely needed to get done, and what we could outsource. In addition to our gardeners and housekeeper, we hired a “Household Assistant” who runs errands, mails packages, make doctor’s appointments, buys groceries, and shuttles the kids to their after-school activities. We also know we can back each other up on any task at any time, if necessary, because there are no exclusively “boy jobs” or “girl jobs”. I can take out garbage and he can brush the kids’ hair like a pro. We both still work like crazy and fall asleep exhausted, but it is comforting to know if something ever happened to me, my family is in good hands.

The crazy thing is that we mothers are often the enablers. We contribute to the problem by creating the magic black box that is mothering, and we belittle men whenever they attempt to participate in the process. My sister recently chastised her husband because she felt he was holding their firstborn infant incorrectly – how on earth would she know any better than he does? We then perpetuate the problem of husbands feigning incompetence by letting them off the hook. Instead we should hold the line and if it is truly important, they will step up. They aren’t going to do something that puts their family in danger, at the end of the day. Finally, we absolve them of their fair share of the work when we reward insignificant contributions. “Oh, good job for changing a poopy diaper! Nice work matching that pink shirt with those butterfly pants! Isn’t he awesome for administering cough medicine!” If men are smart enough to be at our level in the workplace, they are certainly capable of figuring out how to pull a Cheerio out of someone’s nose. I don’t know how insecure we must be if we feel the need to differentiate ourselves from men by being self-appointed household experts. But, if we want to be successful as equals in the workplace, then it’s time for us all to expect more equality at home.

Most professional women get to a point in their careers where the majority of their peers, and bosses, are men. Only 16% of corporate executives are female, so chances are high if you sit in the corner office, you are the only woman on your floor. This can make asking for, and getting, work flexibility difficult. As compelling as the business case for flexibility is, you have to convince your male boss you are as good as your peers (or better) and that your effectiveness will be enhanced by increased flexibility. If it is granted, you have to work like crazy to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

It is understandably challenging for a guy who probably has a wife at home full time raising the family, who always has clean, pressed clothes ready and available for work, who has food prepared and ready to eat, and who can work crazy hours without guilt to understand you and give you an audience. So if you have a women boss, at least she should be more willing to provide you some flexibility, right? You would think she would be able to empathize with how difficult it can be to work those same hours when you also make all of the babysitting/daycare/housekeeping/laundry arrangements, ensure food is available and cooked when the family needs to eat, coordinate and arrange all school functions, Halloween costumes, doctors appointments, and birthday parties, not to mention arrange social engagements, family outings, vacations, and date nights.

Surprisingly, many people find they have it even worse with a female boss. A friend of mine once applied for a Friday off to take her family skiing after a long period of intense work with long hours. Her big deadline was to end at 9am that morning and she felt confident she could have all of her team’s deliverables done by the previous night so there would be no issue. Her boss declined and reminded her about company policy for vacations during busy time. So, she dutifully went to work that day, hoping that she could at least leave early once the project was delivered. She submitted the project at 9am and received a “thanks for your hard work” pat on the back by her boss, who then booked an appointment on her calendar to meet about a completely unrelated and irrelevant discussion for 4:45pm that day. Her boss coyly commented, “Oh, I know you probably were hoping to get an early start on that weekend with your family, but it is the only available time I have today.”

I also have known many executive moms who resist allowing part time employees or telecommuters and demand even more hours from their teams than their male counterparts.

Why is this? I think there are several reasons. First, I think executive moms often feel they had to work so hard to get there without the flexibility they needed, that they almost resent those who ask for breaks they didn’t get. Second, I think some female executives had to sacrifice having a family or being their perfect ideal of a mother to get where they were, so they are jealous of anyone trying to have it all. Third, many professional mothers have stay-at-home husbands, which makes them as well-supported and un-sympathetic as their peers.

So, my sisters, I make of you this request: Use your executive power to change the world. We cannot alter what went before us and how people have treated us in the past. However, work flexibility won’t happen unless those in charge make it happen. So, it is our responsibility, as executive moms, to do our part. Suppressing our jealousy of younger women and offering them options we never had is hard, but knowing we made a difference, even in small ways, can be very personally rewarding. Also, statistics show flexibility makes people more productive and increases employee retention, so it’s good for your business. And to those who do “Pay It Forward”, I salute you. You are the pioneers that will give women and men of the future a better place to work.