The Gift of Time is a collection of stories from people who have been using the work of Gerald “Jerry” M. Weinberg. It gives an impression how his ideas have helped them, and how they were able to support organizations, and make a difference. The book was edited by Fiona Charles, who collected seventeen stories to celebrate the 75th birthday of Jerry Weinberg.

Jerry Weinberg is a well known writer and consultant, and he gives workshops on leadership, consulting skills and writing. His 1971 publication, The Psychology of Computer Programming, described his view on programming, which focused on human issues. This was much different from the technical view that most authors had at that time. He's been writing (and still is!) on many topics.

Many of his books and articles are about human issues, and this is also a recurring theme in The Gift of Time. An example is the contribution of Michael Bolton in the book. He mentions a question that Jerry often uses, “compared to what”, which makes you aware that all things are relative. You need to talk to your customer to find out what he really needs, and why, in stead of assuming that it is “one solution” or “one best way”. But checking your assumptions is not as easy as it sound, a first step is to become aware that you are actually assuming things! Another example is the contribution on “Congruent Feedback” described by Esther Derby; this is so very important and still so many organizations and people are struggling with it. She describes how Jerry helped people to become aware of incongruence, and how they can use it to get a deeper insight in issues and be able to come up with better solutions to solve them.

Changing organizations implies changing the behaviour of people, and The Gift of Time contains several articles on this subject. Like the contribution of Judah Mogilensky about behaviour and process improvement, which describes the patterns of behaviour at the different maturity levels. Being aware of these patterns results in a better understanding of how and an organization is handling issues, and helps you to provide findings and advice that they are able to implement.

One of Jerry’s favorite topics is writing, and Johanna Rothman shares a story on writing as a way to avoid a writers block. Say again? Yes, this is a marvellous example of how Jeerry helped her to looki differently at a problem, which lead to another set of solutions then the usual ones. Johanna descibes how techniques like story telling can help you to get some text on paper, and how you build a text by just writing things related to the subject that pop up, and later organize those nuggets to build the complete text.

Jerry has a knack to discover what people do, how they do it, and build a picture to show them how that is important for the people that they work with. At the same time he makes you aware of things that you can improve to deliver even more value. When I first met Jerry, I was impressed how he showed me how I contributed to the organisations and the people that I worked with. By asking questions and providing feedback I helped people to reflect on their way of working, a thing that they rarely did unless I triggered them to do it. I learned to enhance this by developing techniques to manage reflection moments, resulting in continuous improvement, with (small but) valuable steps. A reflection moment can be a short talk at the coffee machine, a daily stand up, frequent retrospectives or an audit or root cause analysis, depending on the situation at hand and the expected learning’s and potential benefits. Jerry helping me to look at my way of working, and improve it to deliver more value to the people that I am working with.

Making this book has probably been a great challenge. Many people have been influenced by the ideas of Jerry, and Fiona Charles has done everyone who admires Jerry a big favour, by making a selection of authors, and collect their stories into this great book. The diversity of the stories in the book shows that Jerry’s ideas can and have been used in many ways. The authors describe in their stories how Jerry has helped them to make a difference, and this book can help you to do the same. It is an inspiring book, and I am sure that several stories will make you look at things from a new angle, and discover ways to improve yourself, and deliver more value to the people that you work with.
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