42 architecturalist papers: filling a glass with water is easy, building a glass is hard.

So my dad is one of those legendary figures in modern science. His H-index is 70+. His research transformed what we think of as hospital medicine, from a series of narrowly scoped disciplines to a systems theory of the human body where the center was critical care of key systems. And along the way, he transformed medicine in at least two countries, Canada and Greece, with his tireless advocacy and work to improve the medical systems either directly or through the people and institutions he built.

Whenever I need humility, I talk to him.

I mean, I have done a lot of big things in my life, but no, I didn’t change the fundamental way we think about how we die (body first, brain last).

In oh-so-many meetings, I stand in front of a large number of engineers and product managers and engineering managers and say, “see this impossible hill; we will climb it.”

And there is a natural inclination, “how?” And “how fast?” And “we have so much insanely hard work to do!”

For most of my professional life, I view that as an affront. That the person asking the question was dismissing the solution because it was too hard. As if there was some easier path that I had deliberately chosen to ignore. I thought they were saying you came up with the wrong answer. And I would get angry, and pissed off, and frustrated.

Recently I took this EQi test. And a key element of that test was how much you used reality to make judgments. And, well, I scored poorly.

And that got me thinking, why? Because I tend to look at reality not as immutable but as mutable.

As someone who has seen how the future changed because of what individuals like my dad did, and more modestly I did, my opinion of the relentless forces of nature and history is that I will always be willing to use my living hand to challenge any invisible or dead hand.

So once again, I was in a meeting where someone said, “this is the moral equivalent of scaling the North Face in a snowstorm.”

And I was like — “Man, you and I are so different, in a world that is 70% water, I look at an empty glass and think how easy it is to fill it.”

And, of course, that went down poorly. Because that person felt I was dismissing their observation. And, to be honest, I was.

And so I told this to my dad. My dad goes, “blah. Filling a glass with water is easy. Go to a lake or the sea. Finding a glass is easy. Go to any store. But make the right kind of glass that fits in the right place. That’s what’s hard.”

And he then looked at me with that look, “Good you can do hard things, I am proud of you.” My dad was never one for recognition, etc. H was always about the next hill to climb. And then we spent the rest of the time talking about how filling that glass is so damned hard.

And it got me thinking a lot about how strategic software architecture is about finding that right glass. And that is hard. And when I find that glass, I am excited, and all I can see is how we could achieve miracles if we just filled it.

But the work has barely begun for everyone else.

And filling that glass with water is hard.

And being dismissive of the challenge and not recognizing that the work has barely begun is critical. And when people tell you, “dude, I am not climbing the North Face in a snowstorm unless you break this down a little bit more,” I shouldn’t get angry; I should be delighted. Any sane person would be like — “good luck.”

Next time, I’ll not stand waiting for the applause and get annoyed that everyone isn’t admiring my achievement of identifying the right glass.

So let me adjust my thinking.

When I find a glass, I know we can fill it with water. The effort to fill it with water in a timely fashion will make the finding of the glass feel like a trivial subtask.

And to ask people to be happy for me for finding the glass is kind of like the tenor asking for applause for clearing his voice. I’m asking them to trust me that I know where the safe path up the North Face is. Maybe, instead of asking them to applaud, I should start preparing for the climb and be grateful that they might follow me.

Originally published at https://wrongtool.kostadis.com on April 10, 2021.