Thanksgiving Day can be a real bitch for whoever hosts the meal, and Kim Severson has written a kind of embarrassing article for the New York Times, telling Thanksgiving hosts to act like the CEO of Thanksgiving Dinner before their brains become skin to sausage stuffing. Consulting two leadership experts, Severson writes, “Great Thanksgiving leadership, they said, starts with a vision.” Thanksgiving leadership? A vision? It’s a family meal that needs to be organized, not a seventy-two story skyscraper.

Severson writes:

With a vision firmly carved out, the next task is what business leaders would call engaging key stakeholders and identifying their performance expectations. That means figuring out who are the most important people to you at the Thanksgiving table and asking what they really want from the day and from you, the host…

Armed with a clear vision and a handle on stakeholder expectations, the well-prepared Thanksgiving C.E.O. must then choose a management style.

Dr. Edmondson presents two alternatives. The first is “organizing to execute,” a command-and-control approach defined by strict project management and a clear plan for achieving the end goal, which is an error-free meal.

A host following this style would send e-mail messages containing specific recipes for guests who want to bring a dish. The host would also institute quality control checks, tasting all dishes before serving them. This executive would keep a tight hand on the seating chart, too, so that the people guaranteed to send someone running from the table in tears are kept far from the emotionally vulnerable.

That’s not a management style, so much as being an OCD domestic freak. Furthermore, what does Severson mean by “figuring out who are the most important people?” Considering Thanksgiving generally involves family members, shouldn’t they be on a pretty level playing field? Severson needs to get a grip and remember that Thanksgiving is best when it involves family and food, not business practices.