THE
8
TH HABIT Stephen R. Covey
FROM EFFECTIVENESS TO GREATNESS
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magine having a roadmap that could lead you from pain and anxiety to true fulfilment, success and contribution, not only in your business or career but in your entire life. This roadmap is now available to you in The 8th Habit. In spite of all the business theories, effectiveness seminars, time-management techniques, mission statements and talk about work-life balance, most of us are working harder than ever. And more than ever, we are disconnected from our work, cynical about our leaders and too stressed to truly enjoy what little leisure time we do have. A recent poll of employees in key industries revealed the following worrying statistics about how workers feel in today’s business world: • Only 37% of workers had a clear understanding of what their organisation is trying to achieve and why. • Only 1 in 5 workers were enthusiastic about their team or organisation’s goal. • Only 15% felt that their organisation fully empowers them to reach key goals. • Only 15% felt that they worked in a high-trust environment. • Only 17% felt their organisation fosters open communication that respects different viewpoints and results in improvement. • Only 20% trusted the organisation they worked for.
I N T H I S S U M M A RY
Industrial Age Blues
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Leadership Culture for the New Millennium
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Empowering the Information Age
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The 4 Disciplines of Execution
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• Only 10% felt that their organisation holds people accountable for results. The 8th Habit is your key to reversing these dangerous trends, and creating a new spirit of enthusiasm and commitment in your workforce. The world has changed dramatically since the acclaimed release of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in 1989. Being effective in today’s world is no longer optional it’s compulsory. But today we need more than effectiveness. Rising to the challenges of the new millennium will take a whole new mind-set, a new tool kit a new habit. The 8th Habit challenges you to find your voice and to inspire others to find theirs.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE INFORMATION AGE
Dr Stephen Covey is a world-renowned authority on leadership, business management, family issues, education and effectiveness. He has lectured to thousands and consulted to organisations across the globe.
And while industrial age organisations are still tied up in their own red tape, in the real world, everything has changed. The internet is the ultimate symbol of the new age we live in. Information is travelling around the world at the speed of light, the borders and restrictions of yesteryear, forgotten – rendered useless by technology.
His books The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle-Centred Leadership have been translated to dozens of languages and have sold millions of copies. He is the co-founder and vice-president of Franklin Covey Co, which promotes the ideals of Principle-Centred Leadership throughout the world. Stephen Covey lives with his wife and family in the Rocky Mountains of Utah. THE PROBLEM AND THE PAIN In today’s workforce, the pain is more apparent than ever. How many times have you heard statements like these: • I’m burned out. • I’m stuck in a rut. • I never seem to get ahead. • I just can’t make enough money to make ends meet. • I’m stressed out and constantly overwhelmed by the demands on my time. • Office politics, backstabbing and favouritism are driving me nuts! • My life lacks meaning. • My work doesn’t make a difference.
The internet has been nothing short of a communication revolution. Chaotic, unregulated, uncontrolled, it is the chorus of billions of human voices ringing out in millions of conversations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across the globe. NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESS The institutions and organisations of today were designed to deal with the challenges of the industrial age. And at this, they succeed incredibly well. But in the famous words of Albert Toynbee “Nothing fails like success”. The successful industrial age organisation in today’s world is like a dinosaur in a shopping mall – hopelessly ill equipped to understand and respond to the challenges of its new environment. The problem is that applying industrial age thinking to workers in the information age stops leaders from recognising and tapping into the true potential of their people. Workers feel alienated, insulted and misunderstood. There is low trust, low morale, poor performance and employee retention. And contrary to industrial age thinking, it costs today’s companies dearly.
• I don’t feel valued, needed or appreciated.
LOVE YOUR WORK – OR HATE IT?
These are the voices of thousands of people at work and home who feel increasingly unsatisfied by their working lives. Despite all our gains and advances in technology, we have created a business environment where people feel stressed, uninspired and unsatisfied.
People, unlike things, have choices. They can choose how much of themselves to invest in their work, depending on how they are treated and the opportunities they are given to express themselves as a whole person. Every day when you get up to go to work, which of these choices do you make?
Employees are under constant pressure to produce more for less, while being discouraged from using their natural talents and creativity. The result is a workforce full of stressed, suffering, unfulfilled and unproductive workers.
• Creative excitement • Heartfelt commitment • Cheerful co-operation
INDUSTRIAL AGE BLUES
• Willing compliance
In the industrial age, the prime movers of industry were assets and capital – objects. People – the human capital – were necessary but replaceable. Organisations could churn through workers with little consequence. People were used like objects – pushed for increased productivity and managed for efficiency. People were just able bodies – their minds, hearts and spirits were neither engaged, nor wanted.
• Malicious obedience
Many modern management techniques still work from the assumption that people are just another kind of ‘thing’; an asset to be managed, controlled and optimised. Even our accounting practices which treat employees as expenses and machines as assets derives from an industrial age mindset. The same mindset that gave us centralised budgeting, hierarchies, bureaucracies and micromanagement.
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• Rebel or quit! If you want to bring out the best in people – inspiring them to creative excitement and heartfelt commitment – you have to respect their humanity. That means respecting your workers – body, mind, heart and spirit. THE WHOLE PERSON PARADIGM In the information age, there is one fundamental reason why so many people remain unsatisfied with their work and so many organisations fail to bring out the best in talented and creative people. The legacy of unfulfilled
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workers and faltering organisations stems from a basic misunderstanding of human nature. Human beings are four-dimensional and only by appealing to all four elements of human nature can you create a truly inspired workforce. • The Body – the physical/economic dimension – fair pay and conditions • The Mind – the learning/rational dimension – creative challenges • The Heart – the social/emotional dimension – kind and considerate treatment
“There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come” Victor Hugo If you study the lives of all the great achievers in history, you will find a pattern. Those who have accomplished the most amazing things and created history had certain things in common. Through persistent efforts and personal struggle, they developed their four human capacities to the highest level. The Power of the Mind – Vision
• The Spirit – the meaning/conscience dimension – serving human needs in principled ways
Vision is the ability to imagine what is possible in people, enterprises, organisations and opportunities. When we make a connection between a need and a possibility we create a vision for the future.
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
The Power of the Body – Discipline
Each of us chooses 1 of 2 roads in life. One is the wide open road to mediocrity, and the other is the narrow, rocky road to greatness and meaning. The path to mediocrity straitjackets our potential and stifles our creativity. The road to greatness unleashes our magnificent capacity to rise to any challenge.
Discipline is the price we pay to bring our vision into reality. It’s the discipline of dealing with the hard facts, and buckling down to the hard work that is the key to any successful venture.
Every one of us has it in our power to live not just a good, but a great life. No matter how long we have been walking down the wrong path, we can always make a different choice. It’s not too late. There’s still time to find your voice. DISCOVER YOUR VOICE
The Power of the Heart – Passion Passion is the desire, the fuel that fires us, the strength that sustains us through the discipline it takes to achieve the vision. Passion is born when need meets human talent. The Power of the Spirit – Conscience Conscience is our inner sense of what is right, and our drive to leave a meaningful legacy. It is the guiding force behind our vision, discipline and passion. Spirit shapes the contribution we want to make to the world.
The key to finding your voice lies in your natural gifts – 3 natural capacities each of us is given as our birthright. These 3 gifts are:
Talent
1. Our freedom of choice 2. The natural laws and principles governing all of our lives 3. Our natural capacities – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. In order to develop a creative synergy of our 3 natural gifts which can lead us toward our dreams, we must first understand what it is that is most important to us.
Passion
VOICE
Need
Conscience
To discover what truly moves you consider this: • Imagine you’ve had a heart attack – now live accordingly. • Imagine your career has a half-life of only two years – now live accordingly. • Imagine everything you say about another, they can hear – now live accordingly. • Imagine you have a visit from the Almighty every three months – now live accordingly. These questions will inspire you to dig deep and understand what is important to you on the most fundamental level. When you know what matters most to you, you can truly start to find your voice. When you combine your natural gifts with your deepest values, your newfound voice will ring out loud and clear.
Voice is discovered at the intersection of passion, talent, conscience and need. Your voice is your unique personal significance, your own contribution to the world, your soul’s code. Your voice is what you find when you bring together your passion and talent and apply it conscientiously to meeting the world’s needs. COMMON ORGANISATIONAL DISEASES AND THEIR SYMPTOMS Just like our bodies, organisations can suffer from two kinds of disorders – acute or chronic: • Chronic – underlying, causal, continuing disorders. • Acute – painful, symptomatic, debilitating disorders.
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Not every chronic problem has acute symptoms. A person or an organisation can live with a chronic disorder for years without suffering serious pain or debilitating symptoms. But just because you can’t see the problems doesn’t mean they’re not there. And as soon as the organisation is under stress, the chronic problems will become acute and may threaten its survival. If we look more closely at the whole-person paradigm, and how industrial age organisations operate, we will start to recognise some problems that are widespread in today’s corporations. By neglecting essential aspects of the whole-person paradigm, organisations set themselves up to suffer and to undermine their own success. And even when they become aware of the problems, Industrial Age solutions, like medieval medicine, just make the affliction worse.
from initiative and trust • Controlling management style that stifles creativity and ferments resentment ‘HEART’ DISORDERS And finally, what happens when organisations neglect the heart? When there is no passion, no emotional connection, no feeling for the goals or the work? People can’t be managed into giving their best. Their true voice, passion and enthusiasm must be volunteered. Organisations with heart disease exhibit the following symptoms: • Profoundly disempowered workforce • Moonlighting, daydreaming and boredom • Low morale, high absenteeism and turnover
‘SPIRITUAL’ DISORDERS
• Anger, fear, apathy and malicious obedience
If an organisation neglects the spirit, or the conscience, what happens? Exactly the same thing that happens to our relationships when we conduct them without conscience, honesty and integrity. There’s a fundamental loss of trust that pervades the organisation or the relationship. The acute manifestations of low trust are:
The prognosis for all these disorders is the acute pain of failure in the marketplace, negative cash flow, poor quality, inflated costs, inflexibility, slow response time and a culture of blame.
• Backbiting • In-fighting • Playing the victim • Defensiveness • Information hoarding • Protective communication ‘MENTAL’ DISORDERS What about when an organisation overlooks the mind or fails to create a shared vision? Where there is no shared value system, and common vision, these symptoms will begin to emerge: • Hidden agendas • Political games
THE LEADERSHIP SOLUTION – BECOME AN INSPIRATION True leadership – the kind that endures, inspires and creates great organisations and people – is like a beacon. Most people believe that unless they hold a senior position in an organisation, they can’t be a leader. But the truth is very different. No matter what your position in the company, through your behaviour, your actions and your integrity, you can become a leader and inspire others to give their best.
“Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.” To become a leader you’ll have to be prepared to do things differently. You’ll have to be strong enough to go against the grain. It will be a daily challenge. But you’ll be surprised at the difference one person can make to some of the most typical problems of today’s companies.
• Inconsistent decision making • Ambiguous and chaotic environment ‘PHYSICAL’ DISORDERS When there is a widespread lack of discipline within an organisation, it is neglecting the body of the organisation. Instead of understanding, trust and initiative; rules, bureaucracy and intrusive management take over in an attempt to impose control. But controlling people never brings out their best. When there is no execution or systemic support for the values of the organisation – if it even knows what they are – you will begin to see: • Misalignment of goals, structures, systems, processes and culture • Ineffective communication, recruitment, accountability, compensation and information systems • Bureaucracy, hierarchies, rules and regulations take over
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LEADERSHIP CULTURE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM Every person who has found their voice has the power to rewrite the Industrial Age culture of “boss, rules, efficiency and control”. Through the Four Roles of Leadership, you will create a new culture for the information age. If you hold a formal position of authority, you may see these four roles as a challenging but natural way of fulfilling your stewardship. But they are not just roles for senior executives – that is the culture of a bygone age. These roles are for everyone, at every level, in every organisation. THE FOUR ROLES OF LEADERSHIP 1. Modelling This role requires you to set a good example for those you
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work with – and that includes everyone from the cleaner to the CEO. It takes character, integrity, honesty and good habits. As a leader you can help build these strengths at every level of the organisation. 2. Pathfinding Pathfinding is all about vision. And for a vision to be wholeheartedly embraced, it must be truly shared. In concert with your colleagues, set the course. Seeing the bigger picture, and envisioning and sharing a bold and powerful strategy, are the essence of this role.
• Change comes only from the leadership. • The role of the leader is to impose strategy, set direction and enforce compliance. In the new leadership paradigm, we develop a culture of trust through modelling honesty and integrity. Communication channels open. It becomes natural for your team to be involved in creating and developing the vision. They become passionate advocates, committed to a shared future.
3. Aligning
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
This role revolves around creating structures, systems and disciplines that bring your vision into reality. Making sure the systems continue to support your corporate values and achieve your goals is an ongoing challenge.
In order to be effective in the pathfinding role, it’s essential to come to grips with 4 realities:
4. Empowering To truly bring out the best in your people you have to empower them. And that means igniting their passion and trusting them to use their initiative to achieve the vision you have created together. Just as a child must learn to walk before she can run, and crawl before she can walk, it’s essential to find your own authentic voice before trying to inspire others to find theirs. The 8th Habit is not a quick fix. It’s not about making changes from the outside in. It’s not about blaming others or looking for external solutions. It’s a sequential process that works from the inside out. It’s a process that begins and ends with you.
Reality 1. Market Forces How does your business see the marketplace? What is the economic, political and technological context? What about industry trends and cycles? What are the major threats from competition? Could a technological breakthrough revolutionise the industry – or render it obsolete? Reality 2. Core Competencies Look at your unique strengths. Ask yourself these four questions: 1. What are you really good at – is there any area in which you could truly excel? 2. What are you deeply passionate about? 3. What are the strengths that people will pay for? 4. What does your conscience counsel?
MANAGEMENT – FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW Back in the heyday of new-age management techniques, flashy seminars were all the rage. Managers brainstormed, workshopped and role-played organisational problems. They did team-building exercises, worked on themselves emotionally, and learned conflict resolution techniques. ‘Mission Statements’ and ‘Vision Statements’ were generated, facilitated by highly-paid consultants who had never even visited the office.
In the search for answers to these questions, you have a whole-person approach to finding your voice. Apply the process first to yourself as an individual, and then to your organisation. Reality 3. Stakeholder Interests From the customers, to the shareholders, employees, and their families, any sizable organisation affects many, many lives. Find out who the stakeholders are – customers, employees, shareholders, community groups.
The conferences wrapped up with tears and hugging and neatly framed statements of feel-good visions with no connection to the daily realities of the company. When the consultants packed up their whiteboards and went home, the Mission Statements were hung up on the walls, where they gathered dust, unread.
Identify their interests – what do they want and need? What are the market realities surrounding their financial lives? How is your organisation affecting stakeholders and how could it enhance the positive and beneficial effects it brings?
The employees, who had no involvement in the process, or identification with the executive’s statements, were then expected to carry out missions they didn’t believe in, and achieve visions they couldn’t see. Meanwhile, the old problems continued without a hiccup.
What is the central purpose of the organisation? What are its values? How do these match up with your own, with those of the most senior management, and those of the many people affected by the organisation? What will the company stand for?
This is a common symptom of the old paradigm of leadership that tells us:
Pathfinding is the ultimate challenge – it requires you to deal with an amazing diversity of personalities, agendas, perceptions, abilities and egos. That’s why modelling integrity and creating trust are the foundation of leadership. If there is no trust in the leader, there will be no commitment, no identification and the results will be dysfunctional at best – and disastrous at worst.
• Leadership comes from the top down. • Leadership comes from a position of formal authority. • Only those in formal authority have a voice.
Reality 4. Values
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ALIGNMENT – THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE EXECUTION We used to believe that the right vision, the right mission statement, would solve all our organisational problems. It wasn’t until this naïve belief began to flounder on the rocks of reality that we became aware that the problems went much deeper than such superficial methods could reach. The old problems didn’t persist just because nobody noticed them, or cared enough to change anything. They persisted because the systems, structures and culture of the organisation promoted, encouraged and perpetuated them. All the fancy words in the world couldn’t change that. In order to achieve lasting change, the systems which built the problem into the very fabric of the organisation need to be uprooted – and replaced with healthy foundations. ALIGNMENT – TRUST IN THE SYSTEM A recent survey of executives shows that there is a disturbing “trust gap” in organisations. Less than half the executives surveyed believed that their organisations lived up to the values they claimed to represent. And where trustworthy people work with systems that are not aligned with integrity, the untrustworthy systems will win every time. Alignment is about institutionalising trustworthiness. It’s about creating systems, procedures and cultures that nurture and develop trust, by operating transparently and fairly. Just like a gardener, you must water what you want to grow. There is no point saying that you want to create a culture of trust and co-operation, if you reward competition, encourage factionalism and play favourites. If you genuinely want co-operation, it must be generated, encouraged and rewarded by the company’s systems and culture. Systems will override the rhetoric of good intentions every time. There’s little point playing beautiful classical music to your garden if you have planted your seeds in toxic soil. Alignment is a never-ending process. You’re dealing with constantly shifting realities in a fast-paced marketplace. Systems and processes need to be flexible so they can adapt to the changing environment. Yet they must also be founded on principle – unchanging and timeless principles.
pendulum has swung back the other way – now product costs are around 70% knowledge and 30% materials. Now just about every worker is a knowledge worker. Industrial age management was a very mechanical process. People were controlled, managed, poked, prodded and bawled out into performing. Unfortunately, people don’t respond well to this kind of treatment. Not only does it stifle creativity and initiative, it generates hostility between staff and management which disrupts the smooth flow of communication and execution of strategy at every level of the organisation. As we moved into the Information Age, the terrible consequences of this management style became all too clear. High turnover, low morale, poor output and declining market performance crippled previously successful companies. As the information age took hold, the greatest cost of this outdated management style began to crystallise. It was the lost knowledge of the workers who were walking away in droves from companies that didn’t understand and empower them to be their best. Companies just can’t afford to lose the precious knowledge of their best people. And high turnover is no longer a small cost. It is becoming a massive haemorrhage that threatens their continued survival.
EMPOWERING THE INFORMATION AGE In the 90’s, empowerment was a favourite buzzword of the management gurus of the day. Yet all their high-sounding rhetoric seemed to fall on deaf ears. And while there was plenty of hot air, there was no common vision, no discipline, no passion and definitely no commitment. A lot of anger and cynicism were generated by the lip service paid to the concept of empowerment during the nineties management boom. Empowerment can’t be enforced; it can only be encouraged to grow by creating a nurturing environment. True empowerment is the fruit of effective modelling, pathfinding and alignment. EXECUTION – THE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
The process of adjusting systems so they continue to align with the corporate values and mission is a daily challenge, and one which must be shared by everyone at all levels of the company.
It’s a profound truth that “to know and not to do is really not to know”. In the Information Age, all the vision in the world won’t save the company that can’t execute its goal. Execution is the great unaddressed issue of today’s organisations.
Successful organisations do not depend on the personality of a single leader. They depend on systems and cultures that generate, encourage and reward success – first for the individual, then for the team, then for the organisation.
“The difference between what we’re doing and what we’re capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems”
Then leadership doesn’t just come from the top – every single person in your organisation has the opportunity to become a leader. THAT WAS THEN… THIS IS NOW In the industrial age, product costs were roughly 80% materials and 20% knowledge. In the information age the
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Mahatma Ghandi There are six primary drivers behind execution, and failures of execution usually indicate a breakdown in one of these areas. 1. Clarity – people don’t know the goals or priorities of their organisation.
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2. Commitment – people don’t internalise the company’s goals. 3. Translation – people don’t know what they need to do to help the team achieve its goals. 4. Enabling – structures, systems and cultures don’t give people the freedom to do their best. 5. Synergy – people don’t get along or struggle to work together. 6. Accountability – there are no systems to institutionalise accountability.
“Most ailing organisations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects. They are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems, but because they cannot see their problems.” John Gardner
Think about a warm-up game of football, soccer or basketball. People are having a laugh and a joke, taking it easy. But once the match starts there’s a new intensity. Teams huddle. The play takes on a new sense of urgency and importance. It’s the same in our work. Without clear measures of success, people are never really sure of the goal – and how close they might be to victory – or defeat. Without some way to measure success in achieving our goals, everyone in the organisation will have different ideas about what’s important. According to our research on executives, only about one in three workers can identify clear, accurate measures to gauge their progress towards key goals. And only about three in ten believe that rewards will follow performance against measurable goals. That’s where the scoreboard comes in. It must be compelling, visible and accessible to all.
THE 4 DISCIPLINES OF EXECUTION
THE SCOREBOARD
Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important
1. List your top priorities – your ‘wildly important goals’ – those your team simply must achieve.
People are naturally wired to focus on one thing at a time (or at best a very few). Imagine you have an 80% chance of achieving a single goal with excellence. Add a second goal and the chance of achieving both slips to 64%. Juggle five goals and your chance of achieving excellence on all five goals has plunged to just 33%. The reality is, most of us try to do far too many things at once. To achieve results with excellence you must focus your energies on what is wildly important. Like an air traffic controller, we need to focus on doing one thing at a time, perfectly. Some goals are more important than others. We have to learn the difference between what is wildly important and what is mildly important. Failure to achieve a wildly important goal carries serious consequences – and may render all other achievements more or less irrelevant. To separate the wildly from the mildly important, you need to put your company’s goals through a series of filters that will separate out the true imperatives. • The Stakeholder Filter How does this goal impact the company’s stakeholders? • The Strategic Filter How does this goal fit in to the overall corporate strategy? • The Economic Filter How does this goal affect the bottom line? By using these filters you should be able to isolate the two or three top priorities you need to focus on. To practice this discipline successfully you must clarify your team’s wildly important goals and craft them in alignment with the organisation’s top priorities. Discipline 2: Create a Compelling ScoreBoard People play differently when they’re keeping score.
2. Your scoreboard needs the following elements: • The current results – where are we now? • The target results – where do we want to go? • The deadline – when do we want to get there? The scoreboard can take the form of a bar graph, a trend line, a pie chart. It could look like a thermometer, a speedometer or scales. Don’t forget to make it visible, dynamic and accessible. 3. Ask people to review the scoreboard daily or weekly. Discuss it, meet over it, and resolve issues as they come up. Discipline 3: Translate Lofty Goals into Specific Actions To achieve goals you’ve never achieved before, you need to do things you’ve never done before. It’s one thing to come up with a new strategy, but turning that strategy into action is another matter entirely. Just because the leaders understand the goals and priorities, doesn’t mean that the people in the front line, who have to bring the vision into reality, know what to do about them. Goals will never be achieved until everyone understands what the goals are and what they can do to help make them a reality. Always remember, the front line creates the bottom line. To practice this discipline successfully, your team must be creative in finding new and better behaviours to push you towards your goals. Then they must translate them into concrete daily and weekly tasks at all levels of the organisation. Discipline 4: Hold Each Other Accountable – Always Everyone on the team must hold all members accountable – all the time!
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The most effective teams meet weekly or even daily to discuss the scoreboard, resolve issues and account for their commitments. Self-empowering teams focus and re-focus through these accountability sessions. Accountability Sessions
FINAL THOUGHTS
“Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” Ambrose Redmoon
Effective Accountability Sessions
Typical Staff Meetings
Quick reporting of vital issues
“Death March” around the room where people feel pressured to talk while others tune out.
Review of scoreboard
No measures of progress
Follow-up
No follow-up
Mutual accountability
Only manager holds people accountable
People openly report struggles and failures
People hide their mistakes and problems
Celebration of success
Exclusive focus on problems
Energetic, synergistic problem solving
All talk, no action
New and better ideas are created
No time or environment for creative dialogue. Enforced consensus or compromise.
Wisdom of the group
The key to learning the 8th Habit is the whole-person paradigm. To achieve our potential, we have to respect each of the four elements of ourselves – body, mind, heart and spirit. If we want to get the best out of the people we work with, we have to respect them as whole people and honour each aspect of them. 4 Intelligences
4 Attributes
Body
Physical Intelligence
Vision
4 Roles Modelling
Mind
IQ (Intellectual Intelligence)
Discipline
Pathfinding
The “lone genius”
A stroke of the pen for me eliminates hours of work for you
Getting stuck because of barriers you can’t overcome alone
Heart
EQ (Emotional Intelligence)
Passion
Aligning
We’re in this together
You’re on your own
Spirit
Spiritual Intelligence
Conscience
Empowering
Admitting you need help and asking for it
Being afraid to admit you need help
The 3 keys to effective accountability sessions are: 1. Triage Reporting In triage reporting, everyone reports quickly on the vital few issues, leaving less important matters aside. They focus on key results, critical problems and high-level issues. It means that only important subjects are raised – whether they are urgent or not.
Through this process we will each find our own authentic voice and inspire others to find theirs. Like the 7 Habits before it, the 8th Habit will spread through the business world – this time at the speed of high-speed broadband internet connection. And as it does, it will bring out the leader in each and every one of us.
2. Finding Third Alternatives Effective accountability sessions create an intense focus on how to achieve the key goals. Communication should seek to find a truly creative solution, through a synergy of different viewpoints. This is a ‘third alternative’; a true middle path – not a compromise, but a better solution arrived at through genuine collaboration. 3. Clearing the Path Effective leadership should open the way for people to do their best work. Some of a leader’s most crucial acts involve clearing the path and removing the obstacles that prevent people giving their best. And of course it’s not just the managers or those in formal positions of authority who can clear the path – it’s everyone’s job. By practicing the four disciplines, execution will no longer be a matter of luck. It will become institutionalised – part of the very fabric of your organisation.
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Personal Greatness Vision, Discipline, Passion, Conscience
ACN 097185825
The 8th Habit The Four Disciplines
Leadership Greatness Modelling, Pathfinding, Aligning, Empowering
Organisation Greatness Vision, Mission, Values
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PRINCIPLE CENTRED FOCUS & EXECUTION
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