“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit”
The 7 habits of highly effective people is one of the best self development books written till today. This amazing piece written by Stephen R. Covey, an American author. In this book, Stephen discussed 7 habits that can help you to win in your personal life and also in your social life. But before starting Stephen gave an amazing view of the paradigm. I like this part very much. He has emphasized a lot on the different paradigms of people on the same topic. “The way you see the problem, is the problem”. He has given some examples but I liked the Old lady and young lady example. In this example Stephen showed how one picture can be seen as a young lady for someone and can be seen as an old lady for the others. It all depends on how you are scripted!
He also talked about the P/PC ration. P is the production I want and PC is the production capability. To be effective – we have to maintain this P/PC ratio very well. Stephen has given one example of Goose and golden eggs. If you want good production (golden eggs), you have to maintain the Goose as well. If you focus too much on the eggs only, the goose will be sick. If you focus too much on the goose only, you will end up with no target of how many eggs you need which will help you to starve with your food! So, the perfect one is to maintain a good balance between P and PC.
The first three chapters of the book are called habits for personal victory. These habits are – Be proactive, Begin with the end in mind and Put first things first. I loved the first chapter – Be proactive. I agree with Stephen that Proactivity is a new term in our thinking and even in all the dictionaries you are not going to find this word! But this is really something we need these days for an effective lifestyle. He brought a good picture of the circle of concern and the circle of influence. The proactive people increase their circle of Influence with their proactivity.
The next three chapters are about public victory. They are Think win-win, Seek first to understand & then to be understood and synergize. I love the Think Win – Win Chapter most. Stephen here again brought some amazing examples of thinking win-win. In most of the cases people are not comfortable with it because they always think of a deal as a zero sum game. That means if I win, you will lose. They think it’s not possible to win both people in the same deal. Sometimes it’s possible to lose both parties but not possible to win for both parties. But this is a completely wrong concept. I believe the same. It’s tough to find a win-win deal, but it’s not impossible. If two persons are proposing two different proposals in a deal and going with one’s proposal doesn’t bring a win for the other one, try to find a third solution which will be better than both the solutions. Stephen also suggested if you can’t find a win win deal, then end up with No Deal. He introduced us with an experience where one of the presidents of one software company got a good result by going with no deal. The example is like his software company built software for another company. But in that company, the president bought this software without talking with his employees. As a result employees were not motivated to use this software. As the president bought it, they couldn’t oppose it. After a few months the president of that company changed. The new president came and saw that nobody was motivated to use this software. So this president requested the software company’s president that he was not interested in taking this software. He explained the reason as well. On that time taking back the software and giving back the money was like a financial suicide for the software company. But still the president decided to do that as it was not a win – win deal between the client and software company. He returned the money 84K USD. It was a hard call for him for sure. The miracle happened after few months when the new president of that company came to the software company again and asked to make a deal of 240K USD! Just because he has enough trust in the software company that they always think win win!
The chapter seek first to understand and then to be understood is also a good one. Here Stephen put some weightage on the listening as well. He said rightly that, from our childhood we learn how to read, how to write and how to speak. But we don’t learn how to listen. When listening is a very important communication mode. We don’t listen with an intent to understand, we listen with an intent to reply.
The last chapter was sharpen the saw. To sharpen these 6 habits and sustain them.