The Responsibility Company explores and advances Responsibility*-thinking using The Responsibility Process® and related tools.

(*Capital R Responsibility  — used throughout our writing — indicates our brand of responsibility which we define as owning one’s power and ability to create, choose, and attract one’s reality. The brand promise is that this way of thinking always translates to ever-increasing freedom, choice, and power for self and others.

Freedom means freedom from stuckness, coping, and self-torment.

Choice means experiencing abundance as opposed to lack.

Power means self-empowerment, i.e., the ability to be, do, and have what you want.)

Why?

So everyone who wants to experience greater freedom, power, and choice can do so. And so the impacts can spread to teams, communities, families, friends, and organizations.

Foundation

Here are brief statements of our

• purpose,
• vision,
• values,
• mission (these four come from the excellent research-based Built to Last framework), plus,
• strategy.

Purpose

Our never-ending reason for being is to awaken freedom, choice, and power in people everywhere by altering how they think about personal responsibility.

Vision

We envision a world where all leaders lead themselves with The Responsibility Process. It is the world’s #1 leadership tool.

That means The Responsibility Process poster hangs in every office, home, school, and church in the world, where people put it to use in their thoughts and actions.

Values

Our three guiding stars:

Responsibility. We own our power and ability to create, choose, and attract our reality.

We demonstrate this in everything we do — and respond to — every day. It is our prime directive.

Service. We are in service to you and to each other. We earn your business by serving first.

Love. Growth, change, and healing accrue fastest under conditions of loving-kindness and compassion.

Mission

Our current focus is to make a huge dent in the leadership space by showing that leadership is Responsibility. (More, more, and even more.)

How many Responsibility practitioners in our community will it take to achieve this? 10,000,000? 100,000,000?

Strategy

Create happy customers and earn superfans.

Our core tactic for doing this is creating valuable content for you at no cost to you.

Our Big Why

Most elements of society teach good people the opposite of true freedom.

Too many people in this world don’t feel in charge of their life. I’m not referring to the under-privileged and down-trodden. I mean solid, smart, motivated people. People with “good” careers, jobs, homes, credit, and savings.

A scarce few are aware that our life could be so much better.

However many, perhaps most, aren’t aware. We’ve been taught to believe “that’s just the way it is.”

And so we believe that’s just the way it is.

I’m talking about good-wage-earning successful-on-the-outside people who are wearing their “be-cool” mask while suffering on the inside.

Pop Quiz: Right now, are you feeling 97-100% GREAT about things? Are you feeling free, powerful, and full of amazing options most of your waking minutes? Or are you hoping that there is “more”, that your “luck” will turn, that an external circumstance will change so you can stop struggling?

(You aren’t alone. And I hope you don’t take solace in that.)

How much of the time do you put on your be-cool mask? And for whom? Your family. Your colleagues. People you say that you don’t even care about?

How about those around you? Most aren’t 97-100% GREAT for the bulk of their waking minutes either.

No. They are struggling. They too feel trapped in a life that they don’t want and don’t know how to change. They cope.

Hundreds of millions of us (more likely billions). Trapped (but looking good on the outside).

(You may ask: “Why is it this way? Where did well-intended parents and schools and society get off the rails?”

The short answer is that most of us are raised to be “good”, not to actually be self-aware, self-empowered, and free.

Hence being a good responsible citizen is not the same as taking 100% Responsibility for your life. This is described as the cultural trance in the introductory chapter of The Responsibility Process: Unlocking Your Natural Ability to Live and Lead with Power.

My own work with The Responsibility Process, and thousands of students, teaches that we need not remain trapped. We can tap into our natural ability to live and lead with power.)

This (i.e., being trapped and thinking “that’s just the way it is”) negatively impacts their

• own life and humanity,
• potential and their real contribution,
• relationships, and
• teams, communities, jobs, neighborhoods, careers, and organizations.

Responding to problems large and small

One of our mottos is Lead Yourself First. We differentiate ourselves in the world of leadership development (and coach development) by taking the stand that leadership is responsibility. Period.

What this means is that we value understanding and demonstrating Responsibility more than we value all the current focus on leadership traits and skills. I’ve spoken out about how misguided I believe the leadership development industry is.

Leadership is the by-product of taking ownership for an initiative, problem, or opportunity bigger than you, and attracting help to get it done.

Leadership is not title, role, status, style, or even behavior. Leadership is a natural self-expression. It’s a consequence of pursuing a purpose larger than oneself.

If, in such an undertaking, you practice Responsibility-thinking, and clearly demonstrate your beliefs, values, and principles, then it should not be a surprise at all to see people lining up to help — i.e., team with, follow — you.

Thus, studying, committing to, and practicing Responsibility-thinking is the foundation for developing oneself as a leader.

That’s why I don’t profess to teach leadership. I just teach Responsibility-thinking so you can lead yourself to greater expressions of freedom, power, and choice.

A Choice Point (and COVID endnote)

This Declaration of Intention was prompted by The Responsibility Company’s second major  COVID pivot in 2020. While the declaration is meant to state what has always been true, it is compelling to assess this declaration through the current lenses of change.

These current world crises (you know what they are — from pandemic to economics to poverty to climate change…) present millions of opportunities for individuals to step up to new initiatives, problems, and opportunities. These exist in every facet of society in every country, province, state, town, and neighborhood.

And I don’t know anything that can make a greater impact than bringing Responsibility-thinking to work in your life, team, communities, and organizations.

While the crises have brought so much harm to so many, they have also taught us that perhaps the rat race that we were blindly running pre-COVID isn’t so important — not so satisfying after all. Merely addicting.

We may just have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to develop new normals. New normals that support

• healthier mindsets, cultures, and behaviors,
• much more humane values and standards,
• greater freedom,
• real empowerment,
• higher consciousness,
• evolved and enlightened leadership, and
• far more Responsibility.

If you are looking for a return to an old normal. I get it.

But do you want to return to a normal of the same old rat race? Your conversations with me and your reports to the media say not.

You’ve enjoyed lots of the changes from March to December of 2020, for example,

• less traffic,
• no commute,
• cleaner environment,
• the restoration of nature,
• more time with those you love, and
• more time for yourself.

Recently, my friend, colleague, and customer Susan Price asked me a question as I was hiking in a beautiful park while we were catching up. “Christopher, if before COVID-19 began you were told ‘for the better part of a year, maybe longer, you won’t step foot on an airplane and your speaking and workshop business will be gutted’ would you have accepted it?”

My answer was “no.”

And yet here we were, Susan and I, carrying on about how much we were — are! — enjoying life — designing our lives, and not waiting for someone or something external to make things better for us.

I’m betting that millions of enlightened* leaders and coaches (our largest audiences) prefer to create new and enlightened normals instead of returning to the old unenlightened normals.

What about you?

(* By enlightened I don’t mean that you are all-knowing and have arrived atop the mountain complete “woke”. I mean that you know there is more. More light. More humanity. More expression of self. More freedom, choice, and power.)

Let’s make the world a place of greater freedom, choice, and power.