Lessons for a father - What Are You Building?

Wisdom is a very powerful trait to have. It requires one to have foresight and usually comes with an experience of dealing with a lot in life. In that sense, Jan Rutherford* is a very wise man. His wisdom, however, can be very demanding for people around him sometimes.  That is because his questions, shrouded in simple English language, are usually deep and require "a bit" of processing and intentional thought.

So when, and for a few times now, Jan asks "What are you working on?", answers like "a new software module" or "the new network security architecture" or even a "new n-tier plan for the network operations center", as logical as they sound, might not be the right answers. The question entails answering another question (a classic leadership quote): Are you laying bricks or building a cathedral?

As a new father, and someone who has the privilege to work with leaders like Jan, these questions hold a very unique value to me. My answers to the questions have to include both my professional and personal life. My team, at work, and my son at home, both require nurturing and encouragement. What they also need, sometimes, are restrictions and rules: without the rules, my son would want to crawl all the way to India. The effort that I put in always has a "work in progress" status attached, which brings me back to the original question.

So, what I am I working on?

I am working on solving problems. My passion lies with making things simple. Both at home and work, my idea of a good solution includes not just the technical toolkit at my disposal, but also the people that are going to benefit from the solution that I create. That could include a process simplifying system like a whole new ERP** or building an infant learning system for my child at home. The idea of creating anything should be rooted in two very simple rules:

1. the people that we are solving the problem for should consider it to be just that - a solution.
2. what we create should add true value to people's lives.

While solving problems, for the foreseeable future,  and hopefully continuing to get better at it, I am also trying to learn continuously and contribute to the growth of my son and my team.

As for the second question, I am not building just any odd cathedral, Mr. Rutherford. I am working on creating the cathedral.

What about you? What cathedral are you building?

*Jan Rutherford writes about Self-Reliant Leadership on his site http://janrutherford.com/

**ERP: Enterprise resource planning is a cross-functional enterprise system driven by an integrated suite of software modules that supports the basic internal business processes of a company (source: Wikipedia)