What if we could adopt an Agile and Lean approach to grow our children, and to support teens and adults to live a better life in harmony with others?
RAD (Resolve, Amplify, and Deploy) is a model of individual growth, that can be used with individuals from 6 and above.

RAD helps to do more with less, and to develop a positive attitude with life, by leveraging our strengths, and minimizing our weaknesses. RAD try to balance holistic values that are fundamental to every human being, and it's independent by social status, race or culture.

RAD was developed by a Team of psychologists and Agile experts at Fempton Institute, based on Agile and Lean principles. Today these principles are applied in many industries, including: Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, IT, Human Resources, and Software development.
Each individual is complex and different, and RAD address only few primary aspects, so that it can stay generic enough to be applied to a broad range of individuals.


Assumptions
The main assumption of RAD is that the mental structure of the individual is able to support a positive, non-destructive progress.
Although this may seems obvious, it may not be the case for individuals that have suffered extremely distressing experiences, or are suffering mental disorders, or have used drugs that impact their cognitive ability.


In essence the main steps of RAD are discussed below.

Resolve
The first step in personal growth focus on finding and Removing what prevent us to perform, to become what we'd like to be.
This step must be followed by measurable results, which we can use to measure our progress.
Most of the impediments are internal, while some are related to the environment.
For example, if our impediment is that Maths doesn't make sense to us, we'd try to discuss it with someone who can explain what is Maths, and how we can use it to resolve practical problems.


Internal impediments can result from trauma or distressing experiences. Fear, Desires and Insecurity may reduce our ability to relate with others, may distort our perception of the environment, and create anxiety.
Different forms of insecurity are common in teenagers, often related with their changing body.
Fear is the main trigger of violence, and the individual need to understand why it happen in order to overcome it.
The inability to relate with others at the same level, may also lead to different types of depression. Depression can vary from very light forms to more serious ones that require professional advice, and is one of the main mental disorders, according to the World Health Organization.
Overall, the individual can try to remove impediments by finding trust in himself, by developing a positive attitude in life, by seeking inspiration at how other individuals navigated their life among critical difficulties, and by looking at impediments as an opportunity to improve.
Negative actions like blaming others or sabotaging our life with negative behavior, should be removed from the mind.
Among these are the use of substances that sabotage our health, including excessive alcohol, and tobacco.

External impediments may include racial discrimination, social and economic status, human rights violations, and many contradictions typical of our society. These factors can be a threat to our mental health if we're not able to find a way out, so it's important to seek help, and to develop the internal strength required to overcome these obstacles, as much as we can.


Human Values play an important part.
If we want to resolve, remove, or change something, we usually need to hold on to something else.
We need a point of reference that help us to understand, and to move forward from A to B. It's at this step that we need to understand what is the human nature, what values brought us here, and how these values helped us to evolve on this planet. By looking at these values, we'd also try to understand how they apply to other beings, not only humans. [6]
Among these values we find the Agile values of Tolerance, Respect and speaking the Truth. These values support a positive attitude towards life, and help us to reduce fear and desires. Fear and desires can lead to violence when they grow out of control. [1]
It's essential at this step to develop the ability to recognize strong and weak qualities, since in the present age these are usually confused with each another.
While human values help to develop strong qualities like Respect, and Tolerance; Fear and Desires tend to develop weak qualities like: anger, anxiety, depression, and violence in all its forms.


Nutrition and Lifestyle also play an essential part on Resolve our impediments. According to Ayurveda and other holistic system of medicine, our body is a transformation of the food we eat. But food is not only what enters our mouth, but what enters through our senses. This means that what we see, what we hear, touch, taste, and smell contribute to form and body-mind complex. [7]



Amplify
Motivational theories can be used to explain different behaviors of the individual.
According to psychologists and researchers, these theories try to explain what motivate us, and knowing that, can help us to leverage our own resources, and to express ourselves. [2][3]
Amplification is a dynamic process of increasing something. It's not taking something static, and keep it as is. Each individual has a potential to grow into something, and like for a seed, this process implies a growth into something bigger. The growing rate become measurable, and help the individual to stay focused, by minimizing other distractions.

The main point of this step is to find what motivate us, and by contrast what demotivate.
It's important to realize that what motivate us should align with the human values we briefly explored before. If we amplify negative thoughts we'll diverge, and sabotage ourselves with toxic desires and fears. Rather than trying to blame others, we'd try to turn all challenges to our own advantage, as opportunities to improve. The ability of non-judging others is important at this step.
Human nature is soft and tender, but the environment and other factors can transform and move it away from the human values that we initially set as a reference. So we'd always measure where we're going, and make sure we maintain a positive direction towards our life and others.

While we amplify our motivations, we'd also consider the implications of our choices, and develop an economic view of the various options available. To do that effectively we should seek the help of who has been there before us.
For example, we could seek what suggestions could give as an accomplished artist, if we want to follow that path.
This approach could save us from unnecessary pain, if we take a decision that is likely to become a challenge for us.



Deploy
While deployment in software development means making a software available to others, in this context we use this word to make ourselves available to others, by expressing our full potential.
Self expression is the goal of this deployment. As defined by Maslow, self actualization refers to the realization of one's full potential. [3]

In RAD this step follows the previous 2, and the approach is to use the Pareto rule in order to maximize results and minimize efforts. The 80-20 rule can be used here to ensure our efforts will balance work, and our personal life. [4]
Too much work, can disrupt our personal life, and too little will not help to achieve our goals.
If we're motivated in what we do, it will require just a little effort to self-express ourselves.

For example, if we're motivated by poetry, we'll develop dedication on this matter, so that we'll be able to express our feelings through poetry.
Conversely, if we're more interested in cooking food, we could learn from other chefs, and maybe take classes, in order to develop our skills, and express our self.
If we're motivated to become a medical doctor, we'll try our best to understand those topics that we like less, for example Mathematics or Physics. The idea is that once we're motivated, we only need to add a relatively little effort, say 20%, to achieve 80% of our goals.

The bottom line of RAD, is to grow and give back to the community, to express ourselves and help others doing the same.
This principle is aligned with the Agile manifesto, [5] and the human values that we can use as a reference for our development.




[1] https://www.who.int/mental_health/en/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_theory
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
[5] https://agilemanifesto.org
[6] https://www.fempton.com/uxton/human-values

[7] https://www.sivananda.eu/en/diet.html