There is power in numbers.
This strength increases quite a bit if the people that make up the numbers act like a team with a shared vision and motivations. Individual capacity gives way to collective ability and astonishing achievements usually follow.
What I say above might sound like a cliché. Please bear with me.
Perfectly oiled teams that do not have individual or collective issues and that do not suffer from any constraints are very rare to find. It gets even harder when there is an expectation that the team's vision will outweigh individual aspirations.
Fortunately, the last few months in our lives allowed us to be a part of an amazing team. My wife's loving family had extended a helping hand while we welcomed our son into this world. Their generosity extended beyond any expectations and their presence created an environment of calm and control (two things that I recommend very highly to new parents) in a household that would have struggled otherwise. There was a shared vision (make the first few months of the new mother as easy as possible) and a common mission (help each other out wherever and whenever needed).
Unfortunately the existence of this team was transitory. The last instance of familial generosity left a couple of weeks ago and we were left with, what on day 1 seemed like, a very big human resource challenge. Both of us work and between deadlines, dinners and diapers, our days seem to vanish without a trace.
Something had to be done about the current state of affairs. We sat down with intent and intelligence and after various state diagrams, flowcharts and work-flow documents realized something very enlightening. The presence of our family had allowed us to take our own time to learn the art of raising a child. Their patience and willingness to share years worth of experience, coupled with the birth and growth of multiple generations of cousins had allowed us a chance to learn and get good at the basics. We knew exactly how to handle things. Then it became a matter of prioritization and implementation and elevating the degree of efficiency associated with the tasks at hand.
In essence, our parents had become our mentors.
Our work lives is really not that different. Every day we meet people that share experiences and impart wisdom. With years of having done it before they can become much better teachers, with usually a more pragmatic sense of what works and what does not, than any book or school that we utilize.The expectation that we should have from ourselves at that point should be twofold:
Like Steve Jobs once said, great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people. I agree. This also holds true for good families.
This strength increases quite a bit if the people that make up the numbers act like a team with a shared vision and motivations. Individual capacity gives way to collective ability and astonishing achievements usually follow.
What I say above might sound like a cliché. Please bear with me.
Perfectly oiled teams that do not have individual or collective issues and that do not suffer from any constraints are very rare to find. It gets even harder when there is an expectation that the team's vision will outweigh individual aspirations.
Fortunately, the last few months in our lives allowed us to be a part of an amazing team. My wife's loving family had extended a helping hand while we welcomed our son into this world. Their generosity extended beyond any expectations and their presence created an environment of calm and control (two things that I recommend very highly to new parents) in a household that would have struggled otherwise. There was a shared vision (make the first few months of the new mother as easy as possible) and a common mission (help each other out wherever and whenever needed).
Unfortunately the existence of this team was transitory. The last instance of familial generosity left a couple of weeks ago and we were left with, what on day 1 seemed like, a very big human resource challenge. Both of us work and between deadlines, dinners and diapers, our days seem to vanish without a trace.
Something had to be done about the current state of affairs. We sat down with intent and intelligence and after various state diagrams, flowcharts and work-flow documents realized something very enlightening. The presence of our family had allowed us to take our own time to learn the art of raising a child. Their patience and willingness to share years worth of experience, coupled with the birth and growth of multiple generations of cousins had allowed us a chance to learn and get good at the basics. We knew exactly how to handle things. Then it became a matter of prioritization and implementation and elevating the degree of efficiency associated with the tasks at hand.
In essence, our parents had become our mentors.
Our work lives is really not that different. Every day we meet people that share experiences and impart wisdom. With years of having done it before they can become much better teachers, with usually a more pragmatic sense of what works and what does not, than any book or school that we utilize.The expectation that we should have from ourselves at that point should be twofold:
- Listen
- Filter out, at source, information that is not important.
Like Steve Jobs once said, great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people. I agree. This also holds true for good families.
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