Last week my daughter peeked into my home office to ask me to open a can of tomatoes. The pandemic meant she was being home schooled (or rather, was home schooling herself), and her home ec assignment was to cook tomato soup from scratch.
Both her, my wife and I were working from home, so I don't know whether she had tried to ask my wife first. Had my wife been available, I'm sure she would have taken the can, opened it, handed it back to our daughter and continued working, as any sane person would.
With me, asking for help is usually a little more complicated, as my daughter knows by now.
When she handed me the can, I noticed that it had already been partially opened. From that I induced that she had made an attempt to open the can herself, but was either unable to completely remove the lid, or was concerned that she wasn't doing it right.
My next thought was the fact that I was surrounded by computer equipment. If I were to open the can right there at my desk, and it did not go as I'd hoped, I would risk getting tomato juice all over the electronics.
Building on that, I took the can and led my daughter back to the kitchen in order to show her how to open the can over the sink. During my walk there I thought about why my daughter feelt the need to aquire my assistance, and what the purpose of her tomato soup assignment was.
Later that day, after she explained that cooking the tomato soup had taken her three hours, leaving her unable to finish homework in time, I told her that allthough the purpose of the assignment probably was to learn general cooking skills, she also might find it useful to know that tomato soup can be prepared from a bag in 5 minutes in case she enjoyed the taste, but not the work.
In some respects, putting that much thought into a question about can opening seems crazy. And to some extent it might be. But the point that I'm trying to make is not.
Whenever someone hands me an assignment or asks me for assistance, my default operating mode is to ask myself three questions:
I belive there are several reasons why I've come to automate this critical way of thinking over the years.
For the past 20 years I've been a leader. First in my own company, and later as a parent. During those years I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the role of leadership involves. And without going into too much detail, I would argue that one of the primary responsibilties of a leader is to multiply effect for the organization.
In a company, that means that I should spend as little time as possible working in the business completing tasks and as much time as possible working on the business designing how work should be done.
In context of the tomato can example, it means that my job is not to open a can of tomatoes, but rather to enable everyone in the family to be able to open cans of tomatoes.
Or better yet, to enable everyone to cook.
Or better yet, to make sure that everyone knows how to provide their friends and family with delicous and nutritious meals.
I've been running my own company since my 18th birthday. That means that I've always been in a position to design how the organization I'm working in should operate. And as I've grown more experienced, I've been careful to design a workday where everyone (myself included) have the time to engage in focused work, affording us the opportunity to properly understand and produce the best possible outcome to the problems we are responsible for.
My belief is that a clear understanding of ones responsibilities and the time to think deeply about those responsibilities are the most important factors I, both as a leader and a parent, can teach and provide to my coworkers and children.
In the chapters to come I'll lay out how I've come to belive this, and how I go about designing such an environment for myself and those around me.