Unlock Effectiveness:

The Quick-Start Guide to Stephen R. Covey's 7 Habits

Reading time: about 5 minutes.

I consider “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” an absolute must-read. Stephen R. Covey structured the book to take the reader on a journey: starting with foundational, complex concepts like paradigm shifts and interdependence, before clearly laying out seven universal principles full of timeless wisdom. The author's credibility is undeniable, as his consulting work has served over 75% of the Fortune 500 companies.

Foundational Concepts

Before exploring the seven habits themselves, let's quickly clarify some of the foundational concepts Stephen R. Covey uses:

From Dependence to Independence

The first habits describe a way to not be reactive. Let us think about a small business owner – let us call him Markus. Markus faces shrinking profits due to external factors like regulatory costs, which he believes dictate his future. He exhibits dependence by spending energy complaining and waiting for the government to fix the national economy before he can innovate. This reactive makes him feel like a victim. But it is really the government that can improve his life? Is waiting here the best way?

At this part, the author uses the key-word independence to summarize the first central step of success - that includes following three sub-steps:

1. Be proactive
2. Start with the end
3. Do the important things first

Let us continue with our story: Markus waited a long time until the government clearly said that there would be no reduction in taxes for his company. He felt deceived and left alone. He had been waiting for so long, had not been taking any initiatives, and his sales went further down. What could he have done?

He could have been proactive – he could have used a paradigm shift to act within his own power and shift his focus to areas he could control directly. He could have explored new export markets and automated internal processes to cut costs or could have found some way to increase the value of his products, making them standing out from the rest. He would have moved from dependence to independence.

Stephen R. Covey also mentioned that all initiatives we take should start with the end in mind bringing up an example that if the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall, we can climb up as fast as we want, maybe we are more efficient, but the faster we climb up the stairs the faster we reach the wrong point. To explain that with another example, think not end-to-end is like using a city map of Frankfurt in Berlin when we want to reach the Brandenburger Tor. If we orient ourselves on the map of Frankfurt, we can run or drive as fast as we want, but we will just reach the wrong destination. Without thinking about the end-product, the end situation, we might be efficient, but not effective. Thus, summarizing, think about every initiative you take until the end. Imagine how it should look like. Feel it. Do not just think about the now.

Being proactive and thinking until the end are the first two steps, and the third step is: do the important things first. But for that we need to check first what the important things are. Is it the message in Teams that just appeared? Is it a call from your colleague? Is it an email that you should read? For that we want to take a look at the Eisenhower Matrix, which was invented by the 34th President of the United States, and has the axes of importance and urgency.

Let's examine the quadrants:

• Stephen R. Covey recommends setting the focus on the quadrant "Not Urgent" but "Important". The important things will contribute to the long-term goals and to life satisfaction. They are tasks that should be done such as socializing, relationship-management, sport, and learning new abilities, planning that will reduce tasks that are important and urgent.
• I call important and urgent tasks "survival tasks". Urgent and important things are usually things that distract from life-goals such as a direct deadline, crisis management or resolving errors in a process. You will not survive too many of them. Try to prevent them!
• Urgent and non-important tasks do not contribute to your goals, that might be unnecessary meetings, answers to e-mails – they give you the feeling of being busy, but you are actually effectively wasting your time.
• And then there are non-important and non-urgent tasks such as social media - at least that is how I see it. Spending too much time on trivial tasks such as cleaning everything twice, reading e-mails twice or overthinking. Throw them in the trash and avoid them in the future.

Independence to Interdependence

Once Markus achieved to be independent and act without being influenced from outer circumstances, he can go one step further to interdependence. Here Stephen R. Covey introduced three more sub-steps:

4. Win-Win-Thinking
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
6. Synergize

Let us continue with our example Markus. Markus likes to do things alone, he is selling his product, taking care of buying new material for production and at the same time is active in marketing. When he sees his competitors, he is often jealous when they bring a product to the market that has a different or even an outstanding new feature. The worst thing is that one of the producers is his own brother! Both have a terrible relationship – they seldom talk and if they do, it always ends up in a fight about who is right, which product is better and who sells more. That situation always makes him think a lot – how did it come to that situation? Since Markus was a child, he could not be happy when his brother succeeded in a football match, he was in reality jealous and felt neglected. He never had the abundance mentality – a mentality with the belief that the universe offers limitless resources and success for everyone. Instead of celebrating the wins of his brother, he felt threatened.

In another country there were two sisters growing up celebrating the wins of the others. The two sisters produce the same product as our business owner Markus, but have simply a tenfold revenue. They work hand-in-hand, work out solutions together and create products that are not identical but aim at different target audiences. Stephen R. Covey calls that Think Win-Win. But not only win-win-thinking creates the base for interdependence, but also something so simple as listening.

Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood – the fifth way – is a key in communication and project planning. It starts with effectively listening to a person with empathy! I mean here not the listening so that you find answers, not the listening to words, but the listening to the reason behind the words. The idea is to make a paradigm shift into the person's feelings. Put down your glasses and the points you disagree with, summarize what your communication partner says and ask him if you understood the things as he did. Express the emotions that he conveys, ask questions to understand his emotions – understand first, before you want to be understood.

Finally, everyone is different. I think that everyone has their unique talents and strengths that, when combined, something completely new can be achieved. Stephen R. Covey had this example that the synergy can be greater than its total, he said 1 + 1 = 3 or more.

How can you achieve synergy? Is it to create an atmosphere without judgment where everyone can present their solutions? Is it the great atmosphere some American enterprises have, where people cheer and applaud loudly if someone has achieved something? Or do you achieve synergy already by following the previous steps? Write me your comments by email: lucas.hoeppler@gmail.com.

Sharpen the Saw

Ok, there are six steps until now. But what is the seventh step?

7. Sharpen the Saw

The author brings up the example of the lumberjack. He wrote that in the traditional role with the sharp saw, the average time to cut a tree into several pieces was several hours of brutal force. As soon as the saw was dull, the procedure became very inefficient. Summarizing, we should always relax from time to time, to think about improvements and to sharpen the saw.

Conclusion

Did you like this article? Write me a mail to: lucas.hoeppler@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading.