Christopher Avery's Responsibility eTips

What's Your Personal Agility Quotient?

My observations on "personal agility" published in recent days by Agile University and the Cutter Consortium (alternate access to the Cutter article) have people begging for more (so they can make up their mind about attending Knowledge Team Leadership of course!), so let's speculate about what comprises your Personal Agility Quotient . . .

Here are four candidates for indicators of your Personal Agility Quotient. Rate yourself on the following from low = 1 to high = 5, then let me know what you would change.

1. Responsibility Practice

Score yourself a 1 (Low) if all problems, barriers, failures and anything else that's not quite right around you can be attributed to the incompetence, dysfunction, or extenuating circumstances that surround you.

Score yourself a 2 if problems, barriers, failures and anything else that's not quite right around you can be attributed to your own poor choices or to your hands being tied, i.e., limited choices.

Score yourself a 3 or a 4 if others say you are a responsible person with whom they like to work.

Score yourself a 5 (High) only if you have an active personal responsibility practice where you continuously catch your thoughts of blame, justify, shame, obligation, or quit and confront yourself about how you chose, created, or attracted this upset and how you can be more resourceful in dealing effectively with it.

I think I'm a 5 on this one. How about you? _________

2. Thought and Action Experiments

Score yourself a 1 if you've pretty much got the world figured out and can readily classify most concepts, ideas, opinions, and people as clearly smart or stupid, right or wrong.

Score yourself a 2 if you continuously beat your head against the wall for being such a slow learner in the face of overwhelming evidence that you weren't willing to see. I.e., if you stand in the pantry looking straight at (but not seeing because you don't really expect to see) the baked beans while yelling "Honey, where are the baked beans? We don't seem to have any."

Score yourself a 3 if you are continually amazed at how stupid you were just two weeks ago (a 4 if you are continuously amazed at how stupid you were just a few days ago).

Score yourself a 5 if you are continually testing your assumptions and hypotheses about what you think reality is or might be, not to be right or wrong, or paralyzed by inaction, but to be completely blown away by how much and how quickly you learn.

I'm a 3 on this one trying to be a 5 (and my family will tell you I'm a solid 1.5). How about you? ________

3. Isolate or Integrate?

Score yourself a 1 if you view others as obstacles to be resisted, dominated, or avoided, or if you despise allowing anyone around you to enjoy a win.

Score yourself a 2 if you'd really rather just be given a solo assignment and be left alone and not have to deal with people, feedback, input, or meetings.

Score yourself a 3 or 4 if you are trying to figure out how to be more valuable to those around you.

Score yourself a 5 only if you view all peers, superiors, subordinates, customers and clients as current or potential partners through whom you can leverage your knowledge and skills and thus amplify your collective and individual value, i.e., you ask yourself "how many wins can my interactions create?"

I confess that in the past I've been a 1 in a 3's body (why do you think I needed to learn so much about personal responsibility and teamwork?). But the more time I spend with 5s the better I get.

Final answer? I'm a 3. How about you? _______

4. Shared Responsibility

Score yourself a 1 if you seem always to get put on a bad team.

Score yourself a 2 if you do your best to be a good participant on teams.

Score yourself a 3 if you consider yourself an angel for not being as resistant as others often are on teams.

Score yourself a 4 if you opt-in and engage in collective efforts.

Score yourself a 5 if you are always striving to understand —and help others clearly understand—what the group has to accomplish that is bigger than any of you, requires all of you, and none of you can claim individual victory until you get there.

You would expect me to say that I'm a 5 since I wrote the book on teamwork as an individual skill. And I think I still have room to grow, so I'm a 4 here. How about you? _______

Iteration 1 of the Personal Agility Quotient

So, if these four are decent indicators of personal agility, I score a 15 out of 20. My personal agility quotient could be better. How about yours?

What other indicators of personal agility would you add to this list? Offer your entry or other comment at my blog and be sure to include some behavior-based ideas (i.e., "Score yourself a 1 if . . .") about how to score against your indicator.