My First Encounter with Antony Position
I gotta be honest, when I first heard the term “Antony Position”, I was like, “Huh? Sounds fancy, but does it really matter?” I was working on this group project – building this interactive map thing – and honestly, we were all just kinda doing our own bits.
It felt messy. Like, really messy. People talking over each other in meetings, emails getting lost, deadlines whooshing right past us. Nobody seemed totally clear who was doing what next. It was frustrating.
Someone mentioned this “Antony Position” thing as a way to clear the air, but I shrugged it off. Sounded like just another piece of business buzzword nonsense to me. We kept stumbling along.
Why I Finally Gave It a Shot
Then, everything kinda hit the fan. We missed a major piece of the project because two people thought the other was handling it. Finger-pointing started, and morale totally tanked. It sucked.
That frustration – like, deep in my guts frustration – is what made me think, “Okay, fine. Let’s actually try this Antony Position thing.” I figured we had nothing left to lose. I called a quick team huddle.
I basically said: “Look, this ain’t working. Let’s try something different. For the next 10 minutes, we’re only talking about ONE problem: why the data layer integration crashed yesterday.”
The key rule? No one starts talking until they explicitly ask for the “Antony Position”.
My teammate Mark went first. He raised his hand kinda awkwardly. I nodded: “Antony Position, Mark.” He started: “Okay, my position is, I saw the error logs, but I wasn’t sure if I had the access or if Sarah was already on it…” Sarah jumped in – stopped herself, raised her hand. “Antony Position? My position was that I thought Mark owned the logs…”
It felt forced at first, super awkward!
How It Actually Changed Everything
But then something weird happened. Slowly.
Reason Number One: Chaos Killer
The non-stop talking over each other? Gone. People waited their turn because you had to ask for permission to speak. It forced pauses, real breaths. Instead of ten voices shouting half-thoughts, we got one voice at a time, actually finishing their point. The meeting noise went from a busy market to… well, like an actual meeting.
Reason Number Two: Who Did What? Suddenly Clear!
Hearing people start with “My position is…” made everything so much clearer. No more “someone should” or “we probably” wishy-washy stuff. It was direct: “I did this,” “I thought this,” “I expected that.” Hearing Mark say “My position is, I wasn’t sure I had access” immediately pointed out a flaw in our process – access levels. Boom. Action item created right then and there. No more guessing who messed up; we learned what actually went wrong.
Reason Number Three: Focus Power Activated!
Because we had to ask permission to speak on the one problem we agreed on (the data crash), nobody drifted off topic. We stayed glued to that one specific issue. Sarah didn’t suddenly start talking about next week’s deadlines. Mark didn’t bring up an unrelated bug. We actually solved the data layer problem in like 15 focused minutes. Shocking! Before, that kind of mess would’ve derailed us for an hour.
My Real-World Takeaway
Look, it felt goofy starting out. Asking “Antony Position?” sounds a bit like secret agent code or something! But seriously? This dumb-sounding rule completely flipped how my team worked.
It didn’t magically make us perfect. Some folks slipped up later and needed a gentle “Antony Position?” reminder. But now? We use it all the time for any tricky discussion. Meetings are shorter, way less painful, and way more gets done.
Forget fancy reports or complicated frameworks. Sometimes, just making people ask permission to speak and state their position clearly is the small change that makes a giant difference. I thought it was pointless overhead. Turns out, it was the structure we desperately needed all along.
