It's Not a Legacy, It's Just Me

At the end of 2024, I spent three months living in Europe — based in the Netherlands, working part-time, and using every free weekend to explore. From Greece to Portugal, Italy to Belgium, every city left its mark. But Amsterdam, with its canals and crooked charm, taught me something I’ll never forget.

It was late autumn. The air was damp, the sky heavy with rain, and golden leaves clung stubbornly to the trees lining the canals. As I walked along the narrow streets, I kept noticing the houses: tall, slim, and leaning slightly forward, as if bowing to the water.

On a walking tour, I learned why. The houses weren’t sinking or poorly built. Their tilt was intentional. For centuries, merchants hauled goods from boats straight up into the upper floors using pulleys. By building the houses to lean forward, they kept heavy cargo from scraping the façades. What looked like imperfection was, in fact, ingenious design.

That detail stayed with me.

Because in leadership, just like in engineering, not everything that looks “off” is a flaw. Sometimes it’s adaptation — a creative solution born from constraints. From the outside, it may seem unusual. From the inside, it’s what makes the system work.

Amsterdam itself is resilience in stone and water. Built on wooden piles sunk deep into marshy ground, woven with canals that double as defense and connection, the city embodies ingenuity under pressure.

Leadership works the same way.

• We tilt our strategies to protect what matters.
• We design processes that may look unconventional but solve real problems.
• We adapt not by resisting constraints, but by using them.

Amsterdam’s leaning houses aren’t mistakes. They’re symbols of resilience — proof that what endures doesn’t always look symmetrical, but always stands with intention.

And that’s what I carried home from Amsterdam: resilience isn’t about perfection. It’s about designing with purpose, even if the result looks a little different than expected.