Review By: Johanna Rothman
05/06/2003[ed. note: We asked one of the authors, Johanna Rothman, to write a brief synopsis and to tell us how this unique collection of essays came into being. She agreed and the result follows.]

Why AYE? The Genesis of Amplifying Your Effectiveness
© 2000 Johanna Rothman

“Consultants are people who borrow your watch and tell you what time it is, and then walk off with the watch.”
--Robert Townsend

We’re consultants. We don’t want to be the watch-borrowing kind of consultant. We want a deeper, richer, more effective experience with our clients. Unfortunately, at many conferences, we sometimes feel as if we’re not able to give people who come to our presentations as much value as we’d prefer. We decided to conduct a conference that would allow us to reach people in a different way than traditional conferences.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a “normal” conference; we aren’t particularly “normal” thinkers. We chose to do things differently: make all the sessions interactive and experiential, have team-led sessions, give each session up to three hours in duration.

We also decided we wouldn’t have typical conference proceedings. The papers and presentations at a conference are useful. However, participants find they can gain more insight and learn when they make connections before and after--not just during--the conference.

We wanted a way to start those connections with our attendees, so we decided to publish a book as our proceedings. Since the book has something from each of us, we could use the book to connect with attendees, no matter what year they decided to come to the conference.

When someone buys the book, they get valuable consulting advice, not a watch-borrower. The book has four parts: Empowering the Individual, Improving Interpersonal Interactions, Mastering Projects, and Changing the Organization.

One article in the individual empowerment section is James Bach’s “The Role of Testing.” James critically examines his evolving ideas about the role of testing in the organization, from finding problems to risk assessment to helping the entire project see what’s happening to the product in the context of running the business.

In the interpersonal section, Bob King addresses “Life as a Software Architect,” describing what it means to be a software architect, and how to judge his ongoing success on a project. His Visibility Ratio is the time spent with key people vs. the time needed with these people. The Conflict Metric is a measurement of the external emotions about the project--the project staff’s feelings. Bob has noticed that each project has a time of significant discussion and feelings. The Anxiety Metric is the amount of internal stress Bob feels while working on a project. Bob describes the warning signs when these measurements get out of balance.

In the Mastering Projects section, Eileen Strider describes her steps for “Recognizing a Runaway Project,” and some of the choices you can make. Sometimes we get caught up in projects, and can’t see that they are runaways. Eileen has nine symptoms for you to check against your project, to see if it is a runaway. Sometimes we can see runaway projects, but we may not feel as if we have choices. Eileen has five suggested choices for what to do about these projects, including both the choices to stay and work things out, and the choice to run away yourself!

In the change section, Steve Smith describes the Satir Change Model, a model of personal change. Change happens one person at a time, so if you know what a person is going through, you can choose how to continue your change efforts.

The other contributors to the book are Marie Benesh, Rick Brenner, Esther Derby, Kevin Fjelsted, Don Gray, Naomi Karten, Pat Medvick, Sharon Marsh Roberts, Ken Roberts, Johanna Rothman, Gerald M. Weinberg, and Becky Winant. James Bach, Naomi Karten, and Gerald M. Weinberg are our editors.