New York ? Prioritize, delegate, outsource. They’re all good management concepts for keeping businesses running smoothly. But can they help get the laundry done and put dinner on the table?

Absolutely, say life coaches. Heads of households should set goals, outsource tasks and review team performance at home just as business managers do.

“At work, for whatever reason we’ve applied more management tools than we have at home – which doesn’t make sense because a family is an organization,” said Patrick Lencioni, a management consultant in Alamo, Calif. “We’ve never recognized the incredible cost of winging it, which is what we do.”

Kathryn Sansone, a mother of 10 in St. Louis, Mo., said managing her home requires many of the same techniques she uses in running her corporate fitness business and Web site, shapeupmom.com. All the children, ages 3 to 20, are responsible for some chores and the family keeps a schedule of daily activities on a whiteboard and a separate schedule of sports activities so everybody knows what’s going on and when.

“I am running a business within my family,” she said. “I constantly have to delegate projects and keep deadlines.”

Ironically, many workers who leave clean desks and empty in-boxes at the office come home to chaos because they don’t apply the same skills to housecleaning and bill payment, said Lencioni, author of “The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family.”

Corporate tools

Some life coaches suggest using tools such as spreadsheets to keep track of chores and schedules, or calendar programs such as Outlook, which let members of a group enter appointments into a shared schedule.

If one person is the family manager, it helps to see the home as a series of departments, such as food, property and finances, said Kathy Peel, a family manager coach in Dallas.

“Initially it feels overwhelming, but it brings clarity to the job,” said Sarah Zeldman, a certified family manager in Toronto who trained with Peel. She applied what she learned in her own home when her husband had hip replacement surgery last December. Now they often have discussions about how the different departments of their home are going.

Good managers know which departments they can handle themselves and which they need help with through delegating, bartering and outsourcing, Peel explained in an e-mail. At home, the same rule applies: Delegate chores to different family members, barter household chores like cooking and decorating with friends and neighbors, or pay a responsible neighborhood teenager to run errands or walk the dog.

Sarah Rottenberg, a business consultant in Philadelphia and mother of twin 3-year-old boys, says she learned the benefits of outsourcing at her twins’ last birthday party, when she decided to bake the cake herself. It didn’t come out tasting as good as a store-bought cake, so she’s decided next year to buy a cake and spend more time at the party instead.

“Parents who work need to have that same mindset: What are the things that are important for me to do as an individual and what are the things that can be outsourced?”‘ she said.

Priority concepts

Setting priorities is crucial, say life coaches, who insist mission statements and long-term planning are not just for businesses. Michelle Woodward, a master certified coach in Arlington, Va., often asks her clients to develop long-term plans for getting household projects done.

“It doesn’t have to be a rigid, Stalin (regime) seven-year plan. But if you can have a plan that says ‘In 12 months I’m going to need to replace my refrigerator,’ if you have a plan you can execute it,” said Woodward.

Rottenberg and her husband, a Web editor, did some scenario planning about their lives as working parents before their children were born, much like companies do before launching a new project. They considered whether they would work longer hours, earning more but having less time at home, or shorter hours for less income.

Today, he works full time, while she works from home four days per week.

“We do have a lot of goal-setting conversations,” she said. “On a Friday we will sit down and ask what are our goals for the weekend.”

Family meetings

Indeed, meetings are another workplace reality that needs translating to the home. All the life coaches suggest parents check with each other and the children regularly to see how things are working and make adjustments.

Sansone and her husband, who works developing real estate, try to get the family together for dinner every night and a family meeting every quarter where all the children get a chance to say how they feel about their siblings.

“It’s like a company, you change things and go forward,” said Sansone. “We reorganize and reconvene and see what works.”

But to make it all work requires team-building skills, especially to bring the children into the loop.

“Family meetings take on a different quality when they get old enough to have their own opinion,” said Woodward. “Then you have to fall into your business skills to build consensus and build the team.”