Preface to the Second Edition

It has been almost a decade now since I first wrote Stepping Up. The idea was simple, but I hoped profound, that taking responsibility changes EVERYTHING! Over this past decade I have given over five hundred keynote speeches on Stepping Up, and my team has conducted several thousand workshops challenging people to step up to see the power of personal responsibility in life and work.

Although I have authored or coauthored a total of eight books, this is the first time I made the choice to write a second edition of a book. So I thought it would be valuable to tell you why I made that choice as well as the changes I chose to make.

It seems to me that there are only two reasons to publish a new edition of a book. First, because the book and its ideas are having a real impact on readers and those exposed to the ideas and new examples can extend the life of that impact. Second, because the author has something new to add that was not available when the book was written. These were the two reasons I took the time to create this second edition.

The book and the ideas presented in it have proven to be of great value to both individuals and the organizations that have adopted its principles. Hundreds of organizations are now using the ideas from the book, and some of them, like Qantas Airlines, have put thousands of people through training experiences to shift them to stepping up to 100 percent responsibility. I have witnessed personally the profound shift that occurs when people choose to see themselves as agents of change and when organizations create a climate for stepping up.

While there are many examples that come to mind, let me illustrate two—one personal and one organizational. About two years after the book was published, I was doing a series of leadership speaking events for Northrop Grumman, the aerospace company. Leaders were given copies of the book to read ahead of our sessions. At one of the sessions a woman in her forties told me that she had to apologize for not reading the book. Her sixteen-year-old son had seen the book lying around and started reading it. She went on to tell me he loved it so much he had refused to surrender it until he was finished. She then said, “I’ve seen a huge positive shift in him over the last few weeks.”

The second story is what happened when we put almost twenty thousand team members at Qantas Airlines through a program on stepping up over a several-year period. Over that period, we got to witness a shift in the culture of an entire organization toward focusing on what each person can do to make things better. People went from pointing the finger out at others to looking in the mirror. The then CEO of the domestic airline division, Lyell Strambi, said “For the first time, when we went through a crisis it felt like we were on the same side.”

This mirrors the hundreds of companies around the world that are using the 100/0 Principle that is featured in the book. Most months I get emails from companies all over the world that have adopted this simple idea with profound impact.

My first motivation for a new edition was to update the book with new examples of people who stepped up and to update those from the first edition. I hope this will bring a fresh coat of paint to what have turned out to be enduring ideas.

The second reason to do a new edition is because there is something new to be said. Since the time I wrote the book a decade ago, my colleagues and I have had the opportunity to learn a great deal of what it means to step up. People often ask us, How do I know when I am stepping up?

So one of the big additions is a new chapter titled “Stepping Up or Stepping Back—How to Know the Difference.” Since the first edition we have identified five behavioral markers to know when we are stepping up. This new chapter makes clear what it means to step up and what it means to step back. It helps each of us decide, moment to moment, what it means to be in a place of 100 percent responsibility.

I have also added two self-assessments. The first helps us assess whether we are in a place of self-responsibility personally, and the second helps leaders assess whether we are creating a culture conducive to responsibility in our organization or team. Both of these tools have proven to be valuable to our clients.

Finally, I am even more convinced now than I was in 2010 about the crying need for personal responsibility in society and the power of it in our personal lives. In my talks and workshops around the globe, I often ask people this binary question: “Over the last decade, do you think we have become more of a society of ‘innies’ and personal responsibility or a society of ‘outies’ where we mostly blame others and the outside world for our circumstances?” I ask for a show of hands. Across the many countries and types of audiences I speak to, about 90 percent of hands vote for a shift away from personal responsibility. The need for this book and its core ideas is greater than ever. Now more than ever, we need to take 100 percent responsibility to solve the challenges of our time and pursue the opportunities in our own lives.