Christopher Avery and Bill McCarley have developed The Responsibility Process™ over the past 20+ years – I’ve already blogged a bit about it in The Steps to Responsibility, and my talk at Lean Agile Scotland 2013 was based on this material.
Christopher has developed a further programme – which he calls The Leadership Gift™ programme – which builds on this. I have been part of this programme for the last year and it has made a huge difference to me. Christopher is now restarting the programme, with a couple of free previews next week. There’s no obligation, and you can sign up for the previews for free.
Here’s my experience of the programme.
A year ago I was struggling. I felt overwhelmed by problems and demands, I wasn’t happy with the direction my job was going, I was still unhappy about a failed dance society chairmanship, and I felt both my management and my team were expecting me to make all the decisions and take all the responsibility. In all areas of my life I had huge backlogs of things waiting to be done. I felt like a victim of circumstance, powerless and trapped.
I had worked with Gil Broza, reviewing his book “The Human Side of Agile”, and he suggested I might be interested in this programme. I had already encountered Christopher’s blog, and in particular a series of posts he made as a guest blogger for Rally (which have now been pulled together into a free eBook), so I decided to give it a try.
It’s not cheap. It was certainly on the pain threshold for me, so I agonised before signing up. But it was the right decision.
In the last year working with Christopher, I have worked out what matters to me and what I really want. I have cleared out, resolved or passed on a lot of things I am not interested in so I can focus on what I do care about. I am now taking my career the way I want rather than the way I thought my manager wanted. I have managed to give the team space to take responsibility and ownership for their delivery, and we are about to make our release imminently. I have found time to do more things which inspire me – I have published my first paper, given my first presentations at conferences. I have picked up several issues in the company which were affecting me and I am driving them to a conclusion. I have even found a different way to inspire people in the work of the dance society by teaching instead of administering, and I am enjoying it so much more. My family has noticed the difference in me, saying I’m much nicer to be with and they feel less worried blamed – when my wife and I were reviewing our finances recently, she insisted membership of this programme was well worth continuing.
As I said, Christopher is starting the programme again next week, with 2 free preview calls based on The Responsibility Process (on 22nd and 24th October). I’d really recommend attending one of them, and joining the programme. The programme itself takes the form of a fortnightly training call, and a Q&A call in the intervening weeks. All the sessions (except the mastery sessions where the digging into real problems happens) are recorded and available to members on the web site, so if you can’t make a call you can still catch up.
You can sign up for the preview at http://christopheravery.com/very-important-person?inf_custom_BonusCode=IBBLGP – he has given each current member a discount code, so if you do sign up, IBBLGP will get you a discount on the sign-up fee. (I get no commission on this – I just want to let you benefit too). He gives a 90-day money-back guarantee (by which time you would have got through more than half the training sessions), so there really is no risk other than the time you spend on the calls.
I’ve found it really useful. It feels really strange saying something has turned my life around, but I am really starting to feel it more and more. I hope you find it useful too.
Badger Taming 