David Woodle, a business leader who served as Chairman and CEO, delivered a commencement address at Penn State University structured around the acronym TEAM — Thinking strategically, Empowering employees, Acting responsively, and Making success happen. He used this classic parable to illustrate his first principle: thinking strategically. The parable's power lies in the fact that both men are doing identical physical work — chipping stones — but they experience completely different realities because one sees only the task in front of him while the other sees the larger purpose. Woodle used this to argue that understanding how your daily work connects to a larger vision transforms not just your effectiveness but your experience of the work itself. For engineering graduates entering their first jobs, where they might spend months on small components of much larger systems, the lesson was immediately practical. The engineer who understands the cathedral — the product, the mission, the customer — brings a fundamentally different quality of attention to the stone wall than the one who sees only specifications and deadlines.