On building a cathedral
Nov 30, 2024
Originally based on the story of the three bricklayers, this tale has many different versions. People often take different meaning from it, but I am going to use it to describe how I think about leading a product team.
The story goes…
An architect was visiting the project site and loved to interact with those doing the work and approached three bricklayers. He asked them each individually, “what are you doing?”.
The first bricklayer replied, “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working hard to lay bricks to earn money so I can feed my family.” The man seemed tired and wasn’t as far along with his work as the others.
The second bricklayer says, “I’m a builder. I’m building the finest, strongest wall. This wall will be a foundation for this building and will protect everyone who is inside.”
The third bricklayer replied with energy and a light in his eye, “I’m a cathedral builder. I’m building a great cathedral, where people can gather together, pray and celebrate the almighty.”
The story illustrates how having a sense of purpose in the shared final goal when building something can have tremendous effects. Not only can it improve our drive to work, but it even allows us to do a better job in the actual process of building.
I always try to incorporate this sense of togetherness and alignment into my processes. If I am designing a dashboard, I show where my thoughts are headed, how we can get there, and where we are at now. If I am making a custom component, I'll show how it works, what changes when we interact with it, and how it scales and works with the rest of our system.
This is why when I am starting from scratch on a new product or feature, I might stay in low-fi or even written media to work through ideas and concepts. When the team has reviewed, discussed, and worked through any edge cases, then we can proceed into higher fidelity designs.