Tag Archives: Stephen R Covey”

Stretch yourself – be like Pregnancy Pants.

27 Friday Mar 2020

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“Sometimes things can go right only by first going very wrong.” Edward Tenner

And here we are. We exist at a time where the whole world has come to a grinding crawl, with the retail and hospitality industries taking a big hit. Which means that we, the citizens, denied our access to the dopamine of retail therapy and the opportunity to get away from it all suddenly find we have to find some other way of feeling good and ‘finding ourselves’.

Charles R Hobbs, of the original, non-Brian Tracy title TimePower, observed that when we go on holiday, the first thing we do on arrival is recreate the Comfort Zone that is home. First, we check the TV channels, and then we find out the wi-fi password. Is he right? Be honest.

Today, the comfort zones of shopping and the workplace have been denied to many, and to be fair that has resulted in a lot of imagination being utilised to cope with new challenges, which is arguably Mankind’s greatest skill. And as one esteemed philosopher put it, Mankind’s development has been the result of Challenge – Response.

The Challenge today is how to live in a confined space and feel happy, secure and productive for the period of the Lockdown. Of course, the nature of this lockdown is, shall we say, a bit like pregnancy trousers – there’s a bit of leeway that will expand and contract as needs demand.

Notwithstanding the ability or otherwise to do your paid work, we have a twenty-day window to:

  • Discover Kindle e-books, which can be in your lap in seconds and can feed your mind on a subject of interest to you.
  • Access on-line courses which can make you more employable.
  • Do all those jobs around the house that have needed doing. (My kitchen FINALLY looks organised.)
  • Talk to your partner and kids.
  • And your neighbours, whether they work for the NHS or not.
  • Telephone friends, neighbours and workmates using those unlimited minutes you’ve paid for.
  • (Personal favourite) Study The Seven Habits, First Things First and Principle-Centred Leadership and discover new ways of thinking – how to think, not what to think – an important distinction. All available on Kindle and, if you’re clever, very cheaply.
  • Read my blogs more often.

All of the above ideas, and any you can discover for yourself, will mean that you come out of the other side of this a better person, more organised, and possibly even more productive than before.

But, above all, doing something like those things will absolutely, unarguably and without fail MASSIVELY increase your sense of self-esteem – the value you place on yourself.

Go on – don’t just be a public hero like everyone else. Stretch yourself.

Win a Private Victory as well.

Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered. Or Beguiled?

23 Monday Mar 2020

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When I have promoted my works and offer training in the realms of personal development, I often find resistance not to the time or costs, but to the very idea of the material. I wrote in Police Time Management why I think this is in respect of that particular field of knowledge, but today I listened to a lecture by the late, great Jim Rohn and I think he hit the nail on the proverbial.

He spoke of the Sermon on the Mount and described how the response was reported in the Bible as being divided into three types – the perplexed, the mockers and the believers. Hence my title this morning.

Let’s have a think about all three, and their motivations.

The Perplexed. They don’t know what you’re talking about. These people are the ones in the Unconscious Incompetence bracket of Noel Burch’s model. They don’t know what they don’t know and are equally unable to comprehend that what they don’t know will serve them. They’ve likely already concluded it’s too hard to understand so they don’t bother trying.

The Mockers. These are the ones who know it all, or think they do. They don’t see that there is an alternative way of thinking to the one they’ve already decided is best. And rather than articulate that because they know it to be a stupid position or can’t face the work involved, they attack the idea. It’s easier than knuckling down and listening.

The Believers. Now, here we have to be careful because there are actually three strands. There are the Believers who believe regardless of the efficacy of the argument, so they’ll believe no matter what is said, if they are convinced by the speaker. Then there are Believers who are the Consciously Incompetent, who know that there is something that they don’t know – and want to know it. And the final subset are the ones who’ve had the training and have applied it to the degree that they know it to be good stuff.

That last set is very present on LinkedIn, but there’s something they could do that they aren’t doing. They aren’t letting anyone else know that the stuff is good.

Some possible reasons. They are naturally well-organised ‘time-managers’ and don’t realise that others need this input. Or perhaps they think it’s a great secret and don’t want anyone to know because it makes them appear really effective. Or they think that the cost of training their peers and staff in such material isn’t cost-effective.

So they are Believers but not Advocates. I like the by-line I use for my LinkedIn page – Advocate of the Seven Habits – because it underlines my willingness to communicate something I believe in. I would ask others to do the same, but not only in terms of their chosen profession.

I would encourage people to look at the provision of training in the sub-skills of ‘work’ – sector specific or in a more general sense – like communications, self- and time-management, administration practices, even mindfulness (ugh) if it makes their staff more productive and less stressed.

As the greats have said (and I paraphrase) – Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll produce enough fish for his employer to sell at a massive profit through enhanced effectiveness and efficiencies.

Go on. Train your staff or just buy them a book about ‘stuff’. Many have, and many have benefited as a consequence.

Be the right kind of Believer.

Now, more than ever – Plan Your Future.

13 Friday Mar 2020

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Okay, yesterday I said I’d only do one pandemic post, but circumstances change and so does our approach. Here is take 2. It’s more important than yesterday’s.

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who was sent to the concentration camps in WWII. Famously, he was academically interested in why some people survived the camps, and others didn’t. notwithstanding the misfortunes of selection and random execution, the ones who weren’t so unfortunate either died, or they did not.

To cut a long story to the chase, Frankl concluded that the ones who lived were those who had a firm vision of their future. For Frankl himself it was a vision that he would teach what he’d learned to students, with a view to it never happening again.

Norman Cousins was a man who, according to Wikipedia, used his mental faculty to overcome a debilitating condition. It is said he made laughter one of his main medicines, along with a personal determination to overcome his personal, physical challenges – and he succeeded.

We live at a time when a virus threatens the existence of those physically unable to fight it. I’ll admit it plays on my mind, as I have what may be one of those pre-existing medical conditions. But it isn’t just about me – I have two beautiful grandchildren, four lovely kids and a beloved wife. I can’t conceive of life without any of them, particularly the young. But that also means if I’m gone, I don’t get to see them grow. So it is me, but it’s them too.

So now, more than ever, I think it is time to consider positivity, laughter, and a firmly envisioned plan for the future that will provide hope for us as individuals and, in the end, for all of us.

I have no doubt that despair does not serve the physical body, and I firmly believe that some people who died did so because they lacked hope, or a sense of purpose. They thought, “I’m done here.” Which in the case of the elderly may, for them, have a been some kind of satisfaction. It’s not cruel or judgemental to say that. If it was, then the person who thought of the term for the dying of ‘Blessed release’ is equally evil. It is just a belief, no more.

Anyway, like Hemingway, I want to die only when I am all used up, and that isn’t yet.

Today is the day I carry out my planning for the week, and part of that plan will be to consider my long term future. What do I want to create in this world, what legacy do I wish to leave for those kids? How am I going to achieve that? Not just in terms of tasks but in terms of the way I conduct myself – hopefully with integrity, with the fullest congruence between my values and my behaviours.

I’ll ask you all to do the same. Design your future as if all will pass as well as it can, for you.

At the same time, I will tie up my camel by ensuring that my immediate family is cared for, provided for, supplied and kept as healthy as they can so that if it does strike, they can be part of the 80% who just get a sniffle. But not, I hope, at the expense of anyone else. I will get enough for our needs, and no more. those who are stockpiling a year’s worth of soap for the 14 days they may have to stay at home are selfish. No question.

Plan a spectacular future. See it in your mind’s eye and start working towards achieving your dream and towards leaving your legacy. Review and recommit to your Mission. Frankl and Cousins need your support. And your health and welfare may depend on it.

And if fate should decide otherwise, let me face it with integrity and set a good example.

Age = Wisdom, Youth = Vitality. Let the young have both, instead.

12 Thursday Mar 2020

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A few weeks ago I wrote this blog on why I thought material of the kind espoused in The Seven Habits and my own book was ignored by so many for so long, suggesting that people tend to arrive at an age when they suddenly seek meaning rather than stuff.

Today, I put a new spin on this not by looking at why the older ‘do’, but on why the younger ‘do not’.

Reading Stephen Covey’s anthology of first drafts and first thoughts, from the book ‘Primary Greatness’, I read this sentence.

“I maintain that humility is the mother of all virtues, because humility helps us centre our lives on principles.”

Young people are – or want to appear to be – confident individuals. They are fit, recently educated, fashionable, invincible. They tend, therefore and without judgment on my part, to be incredibly egotistic. They are finding their way and have yet to realise that life isn’t one long party – or that if it is a party, it eventually ends when they discover the responsibilities they didn’t possess in their teens and twenties.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Perhaps later wisdom is intended to be delayed until people are ready for it, or until their proverbial wild oats are sown. I have no idea, because I am not the font of all wisdom. By any stretch!

This is why, perhaps, the young resist the wisdom literature. They don’t need it because they know better. They see things ‘as they are’ through interested, open eyes – whereas we old fuddy-duddies see things through experience gained by making mistakes. And having made mistakes we older ones seek to redress them, whereas the young are still learning from theirs.

But imagine if the young were taught that you can be humble and still have fun? That you can leave a legacy of forty or fifty years foundation rather than just for that night or weekend? That they are still learning, and that they could direct and control that learning if they just gave more thought to the longer-term. To their whole lives instead of the now.

Covey goes on to add, “I would then say that courage is the father of all virtues.”

Of course, another influence on the young is the peer group. Which means that Covey’s second quote reveals something which the young tend to lack. Not physical courage – they seem to have that in abundance, as a rule. But courage born of a properly considered and congruent values system, where they act in accordance with their conscience and what they know, deeply, to be true – and yet what those around them are trying to convince them is just ‘boring old stuff’.

This is what should be taught in school, not environmentalism and ‘social justice’ and ‘rights of the individual’ (without responsibilities of and towards the individual).

Kids need to be shown that courage does not mean lack of consideration. That wisdom is not a downer but a path to ‘better’. There are schools out there that do this, but they’ve had to initiate and fund this training themselves.

Wouldn’t it be better if it was a state-funded part of the curriculum? Instead of Welsh.

Principles – the Greatest Lens Cleaner.

09 Monday Mar 2020

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“You never find yourself until you face the truth.” Pearl Bailey

I have probably listened to or read Stephen Covey on Paradigms a million and three times. (How specific is that?) For any new readers, a paradigm is the way we see things and this view can be easily influenced by our upbringing, and our beliefs.

Which is why, today, I announce a new learning despite all that previous study.

In the shed where I store the world’s cr4p and my spin-cycle (why do people buy Peloton when they can do it for free), I was sat astride the offending clothes-horse as part of my Private Victory and re-watching an oft-watched video in which the Good Doctor Covey was espousing about Centres. He reminded me about how we see things through our Centres – if we are spouse centred we put their needs before others, including work: if we are work-centred she can bog off. You get the idea?

To be true to ‘life’, he advised that instead of seeing life through centres such as spouse, family, work, money, church, possessions, friends, enemy and self, we should instead see life through principles. Got that? Good.

He then suggested some principles, such as truth, contribution, integrity, and so on. He opined that seeing life through principles rather than centres provides for a more holistic, objective and effective way of living. So when it’s a choice between wife and work, we don’t just plump for ‘work’ because we always do – we look at the situation and make an objective, right decision. Got it so far? Marvellous.

But today, for the first time, I heard him address his audience and say, “Right now, you are even looking at principles through the paradigm of your centres.” AHA!

In other words, he said we look at Principles and ask, “What would my wife think?”: “How can I make this fit work?”: “Is this a way to make money?”: “What is in this for me?”

This is a default position for most people, and that includes you and me. Now, it may not always be a default acted upon, because context also has an influence on our decision-making, but it made me think.

Do I/we often make choices based on convenience, to avoid conflict, to make a fast buck and so on, when we could make better decisions if we just gave the situation a little more thought? Of course we do. We do it all the time. We know this because now and then we regret the decision we made, and not because the situation changed but because something happened that we could have known if we’d given thought to it, or which we did know about but we ignored in the moment because we weren’t being objective.

Yesterday, The Guardian published a cartoon of an Asian politician, depicting her as a pig with horns. They probably, in the moment, thought it would be funny. They looked at the situation through their Left-Wing ideology, concluded that all things Right-Wing are evil, and printed away.

Then some other people reminded them that they were supposed to be an anti-racism publication and depicting a Moslem as a pig was highly offensive: and, given the Guardian’s claim to be accepting of all races and ardently pro-diversity – clearly racist.

Looked at through a left-wing ideological paradigm, this was ‘good’. Looked at it from another paradigm, it was ‘bad’.

Looked at from a Principled Paradigm, it was plainly unnecessary.

Look through a Principle Centre – take a moment, think about what you’re about to decide, and then commit to principled action.

Because your Paradigms are a two-way lens – people can see the real you through them, too.

Serve – but don’t be selfish.

05 Thursday Mar 2020

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“The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention.” Duguet.

Having done time management to death for a wee while, I am reverting to promotion of the effective tenets of The Three Resolutions as I have reviewed, amended, added to and then re-published the book of the same name, available in paperback or Kindle.

The Three Resolutions propose that there are three commitments an individual can make in an effort to live a principled life. Those three commitments build upon each other, and while some may say they are common sense my response would be that ‘common sense is not common practice’, which is not me being clever, it was Stephen Covey who said it to me first.

Others may look at the subject matter and contents page and say, “I’m doing that already.” I know. Lots of people on LinkedIn are ‘doing’ a lot of that stuff. But I bet they aren’t doing it all, any more than I am. Yes, folks, I hereby acknowledge the imperfection in my dedication to applied common sense.

Ultimately, and without going through the whole Three Resolutions process, the end objective of the The Three Resolutions commitment is service to others, hence my quote. If i was to ask you the names of people who dedicate themselves to the service of others I am positive you would identify many a celebrity or other ‘name’ who clearly do serve in a charitable fashion.

But when I talk of service to others I am not focused solely on people who get great public acknowledgment (and publicity) for their efforts. I also mean the old lady in the charity shop: the man on a motorbike delivering blood: the lollipop man or woman interrupting their day to keep children safe: the administrator whose accurate records and good memory detects a murder (did happen): and many more unsung providers of service to others.

I’m often amused how someone at the top of their game being paid many thousands of pounds gets a medal for their service to their profession when the lower ranks who work harder, physically, get diddly squat. Their service is just as, if not arguably more, valuable than the knight’s.

The principle, for me, is this – service provided, whether for payment or for free, is service. There are no levels of superiority of service. However, there are services provided purely out of self-interest that I do NOT consider to be service at all. There is no harm in application of a ‘What’s In It For Me’ approach, because the answer could merely be ‘It’s the right thing to do and in keeping with my values system’, but when the question is asked and answered wholly in a ‘if there’s not enough in it for me I’m not interested’ manner – service it ain’t.

Going above and beyond the call, is service. Being paid for and doing a good, professional job, is service. Anything done completely out of self-interest, is not.

That is selfishness.

It’s just occasionally annoying how selfish people get rewarded, but they never said life is fair.

To paraphrase Mother Teresa, “Life is sometimes unrewarding: serve anyway.”

What will you do today, to serve?

 

For more on the subject, buy m’book on Kindle or hardcopy through the above links.

Book Cover Front

Use your intelligence – all four of it.

04 Wednesday Mar 2020

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“I have to live with myself, so I want to be fit for myself to know.” Edgar A. Guest

If we accept the Four Intelligences, specifically Physical, Emotional, Intelligence and Spiritual, then we must also acknowledge that the optimum way to live would be to have all four of them as fit for purpose as possible. Unfortunately, as I see so many people sweating themselves silly in gymnasia (at a time when sweating in a crowd is potentially harmful), what I see is a focus on the physical by people whose ‘other’ fitnesses are being neglected.

The gym bunny who spends as much gym time in front of the mirror as he does on the weights: the runner who is watching ‘Loose Women’ when she could be listening to a good book: the keen jogger who follows their session with a pie: the exerciser who interacts with no-one unless they have to.

All will be physically fit, but how much effort to they put into training their other endowments?

Don’t misunderstand me – there will also be people at the gym who do exercise their whole person. In the main, however, I’m guessing that the vast majority of us don’t exercise in all four areas as much as we could, although we do exercise 2 or 3 endowments to a reasonable extent.

I bemoan the fact that I am unwilling to exercise like a trainee Royal Marine, but I do read a lot, love my family and have a sense of what I want to contribute. Three out of four ain’t bad. And those three, along with the fourth, could benefit from more attention, occasionally.

How about you?

Are you exercising in one or two areas while neglecting the others? If so, it’s never too late to begin addressing your other needs to a degree that you will benefit.

Physical – just eat and drink less or more wisely, and park further away from your home. 😮

Mental – read widely, not just professionally. Good fiction, informative historical articles, and the like.

Social – get out more, contribute rather than just attend. Write a personal journal.

Spiritual – find some meaning on what you do day by day, write a personal mission statement and fully live in congruence with your values.

It is harder than ‘just living’ but the rewards in terms of self-esteem and, I would suggest, the respect from others that follow, are well worth the effort.

But be careful not to get caught up with false prophets and doom-cults! Make sure that what you learn and what you do are positive in terms of content and intent.

If you’ve noticed, a lot of successful people do all of those things. Perhaps they’re on to something?

 

Save your children!

19 Wednesday Feb 2020

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Dearly beloved, today’s lesson comes from the Book of Principle-Centred Leadership, Chapter 12, pages whatever (Kindle doesn’t paginate).

Don’t you just love it when you think a profound thought – and then read a book by a great writer who expresses exactly the same idea? Maybe with better prose, but identifying the same concept, nevertheless?

I have suggested in the past that success is basically the result of excellent time management and effective communication, and in the aforesaid book, Stephen Covey suggested that a successful family life is the result of those two skills. Okay, he adds problem-solving as a third competence but two out of three ain’t bad.

Covey proposes that time management, or rather the ability to lead and manage ourselves in the context of the time available and our relationships, is essential if we aren’t to waste time NOT doing those things that create what we define as success. He proposes that the ability to be clear in communication is also key – clearly saying what we mean, ensuring that we understand what others mean, and even getting so good at communication that we hardly have to speak at all. And developing the skill to solve problems, which is based on asking four questions.

  1. Where are we now?
  2. Where do we want to be?
  3. How will we get there?
  4. How will we know we’ve got there?

Which, to be frank and to return ‘his’ three skills back to matching my two and making me feel smug all over again, is basically the formula for setting a Goal – in this case, setting the Goal of Solving the Problem. And goal setting firmly comes under the time management heading. So there.

Can you think of any problem that isn’t solved by asking those four questions? Even if the problem is solved in three seconds flat, the solver undergoes that process even if they don’t realise it.

David Allen, in his book ‘Getting Things Done’ also outlines how we unconsciously undergo a ‘Natural Planning Method’ when we plan even the simplest of projects, which scientists have analysed into Project Management ‘science’. Everything complicated started out as something simple. We just make it harder because we’re sooooo clever. Which might explain why, in 2021, it takes years to implement any idea that used to take weeks. Discuss.

Given that Stephen Covey and I are so clever, one has to ask (as a client, employer or individual):

Why don’t they teach time management, communication and generic problem solving to young people in school?

Imagine an organised student able to express him- or herself with patient sentence construction, who has a plan to achieve what is expected of them as well as what they want to achieve as a person, who sees a problem as a relatively simple A to B issue that s/he has time and resources to solve. Instead of just telling them stuff we want them to regurgitate in December and May.

It seems strange how we expect people to know this stuff without teaching it.

Buy this book and give it to your kids!

7HT

 

Half a Life. That’s all you have left….. if you aren’t careful.

14 Friday Feb 2020

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The Half-Life. A physics term identifying how long a radioactive element/isotope takes to lose half its mass through decay. For example, the half life of uranium being from 159,200 years to 4.5 billion years, one kg of uranium will become 500g in 159,200 years or so (!), but that 500g will only become 250g in the next 159,200 years. Simples.

But there is another HalfLife, the one proposed by Stephen Covey, who opined that the Half Life of a career is as little as 2 years, and what he meant was that in just 2 years the currency of your professional knowledge is reduced by half if you don’t maintain competence (Second Resolution). I know from my own experience, after returning to work after an 18-month post-retirement absence, that a lot of new mnemonics and practices had been created while I was gone. I was still competent to do a lot of stuff but I would have needed some retraining to get back up to full speed. Which is why, when it was appropriate, I chased up the training I required.

A surprising number of people object to on-the-job training and to attending courses. I know that some of their reluctance is down to a perceived interruption to the work that they are already doing, that mounts up inexorably while they are away and, occasionally, the belief that the training is unnecessary and irrelevant. We had a saying in the police:

“That was a three-week course crammed into six.”

But if we are to stay relevant, if we are to provide the best possible service, we have to keep up with developments within our selected professions if we aren’t to become redundant-but-still-present.

The problem with being redundant-but-still-present is that it can all too quickly turn into ‘just’ redundant. Being on top of your game and staying on top of your game aren’t distinct processes – they are the same thing. What’s more, by properly engaging in the training you are offered, you start to develop the ability to influence that training – to make sure it IS relevant and appropriate rather than a tick-box exercise.

I do chuckle at CPD that requires ticking a box that you read something. Who actually reads something if all you have to do is declare you read it? Well, the ethical do, but that isn’t all of us, is it?

Look upon training as a development opportunity, and opportunity to ask questions, and an opportunity to have a bit of a rest from the daily grind of that real work you’re worried will come back and bite you.

Of course, the ability to do the latter, to relax during a course while other work isn’t getting done, requires that you apply some of the time management advice of the kind I promote.

So welcome training, seek it out, maximise its effectiveness and utilise what you learn as quickly after the training as is possible.

Or that career you thought you had for ever might just be half as long as you expected.

 

Time Management Training is available HERE.

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From Manly Macho Man to Man of Meaning. Why take so long?

13 Thursday Feb 2020

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I am a Man. I’d go as far as to say I am a Manly Man, insofar as I try to be the stoic man-of-action when/if the situation demands. I have had fights and car chases ‘in the name of the law’ although I’ve never asked anyone to stop for that reason. (I did hear someone do that, once, and I cringed.) I have climbed cliffs, done a racing driver’s course, served in HM Forces, and I have experienced many other things that one might associate with the term ‘macho’.

I still, occasionally, would like to do some of that stuff again. I am 58.

Yet just lately, my cultural tastes have changed. Despite all that manliness (I have an exceptionally hairy chest – and back – and I’ll leave you with that image), I no longer seek out war films, I have exceptional problems with the end of E.T., and am in bits when Private Ryan, U.S. Army (Retd.) asks, “Have I been a good man? at the end of the film bearing his name.

And one of the nicest films I have seen of late was ‘The Way’, which was about Martin Sheen walking a religiously significant route across El camino de Santiago, in the Pyrenees. The plot revolves around how his son is killed on the first day of his walk along the route, and Dad elects to take his son’s ashes along the walk for him. Hardly ‘The Dambusters’ (man film, obligatory viewing for all male children – and why didn’t MS Word recognise that term? WHY??).

The truth is that like most ‘blokes’, I suspect that as we mature we start to see that all the fun we had doing blokey stuff was just that – fun – and it’s time to think about more important things like family, legacy, principles and so on.

Which is why I think that many people in the machismo/action ‘field’, and men in particular, seem to dismiss and resist the idea of reading books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People until they are middle-aged. Which is a waste of about 30 years.

When you start to get a bit older, you get a little more mature, mentally. For some sooner than others, I might add. And you start to realise that there is more to existence than just you. Your children stop being funny little human puppies and start needing serious help in their lives. You start to notice how people do stupid things on our roads and admit that you used to do them. You stop worrying about spending your hard-earned cash and start thinking about how it will benefit your spouse and kids. You volunteer to be designated driver and you question the future hearing capability of the teenager driving past you with the ‘BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP’ so loud inside the car that it actually drowns out the ‘BRRRRRRAAAAAPPPPPP’ coming from the excessively large exhaust.

You suddenly realise that the life of living has turned to a desire to have a life of meaning. And you also realise that time is running out.

Instead of waiting until you’re 50 to discover what you’ve missed, try reading this book, or ones like it, early enough to be able to have fun while living a life of meaning. Have you noticed that the ‘better’ celebrities do that? They have fun and still contribute, while some (the a-holes) just have fun, and they soon become figures of hate and derision.

That book in particular, and many others like it, are valuable reading when you reach that ‘age of maturity’ that differs for all of us.

But wouldn’t it be great if the contents were routinely taught in school?