Stephen R. Coveys «The 7 Habits» (3/8): Begin with the End in Mind

Stephen R. Covey's «The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People» isn't a quick read. It doesn't want to be either. For Covey, success is based on habitual formation of the character - comparable to the cycle of sowing and harvesting and about as time-consuming.

In this eight-part series, I'm going to present the key concepts of the book and what I've learned from them. This is Part 3 of the series.

[Note: If you happen to be a follower of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD), the chapter discussed in this posting will show you an interesting approach to defining goals in your life from the 50,000 feet perspective. If you're more interested in the lower levels, this posting probably isn't for you.]

An overview of the series can be found here.

Leadership vs. management

It is easier to learn management than to learn leadership. Leadership is about developing an inner compass, whereas management is about going into the direction suggested by that compass. Leadership is about being effective (knowing and reaching your goals, at all), management is about reaching your goals as efficiently as possible.

Among other examples, Covey uses the ladder analogy: leadership must determine against which wall to lean a ladder; management is then about climbing up as efficiently as possible. If the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall, even excellent management is bound to arrive at disappointment. Before the physical creation of success (management), there must be the mental creation. Everything is created twice: first in the mind, and second in reality. Beginning with the end in mind means to do the first creation well, to develop a leadership habit.

Leadership is harder to learn than management because it is harder to discover your own center instead of simply centering oneself the agenda of others, bowing in to «circumstances» or overcoming old habits. Your center is where your security, guidance, wisdom and power flow from. Bogus centers tie your life-support factors of security, guidance, wisdom and power to external things and events and thus turn you over to manipulative forces. Examples of bogus centers are

• your spouse
• your family
• money
• work
• possessions (physical and immaterial, like prestige)
• pleasure
• friend-or-foe thinking
• churches
• selfishness

Some of these centers of life look quite common and innocent. What's wrong, e.g. with centering your life around your family? Covey says it introduces a strong dependency. If our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from family traditions, family culture or family reputation, our feeling of security depends on that and is threatened by the same things, too. You don't even need to consider mafia-style family bonds to see why wisdom and good guidance don't necessarily flow from family traditions. Finally: when you happen to be separated from your family for a while, where does your power come from? Similar conclusions apply to the other bogus centers as well.

Your center should instead be based on principles, and Covey shows a way how to find and define your own center. It starts with becoming aware of the roles you play in life, of the responsibilities and the goals related to them: father or mother, neighbor, professional roles, and so on.

As a thought experiment, Covey suggests that you imagine your own funeral ceremony. Imagine the people attending it. They have come to know you as somebody who fulfills one or more roles in their lives. What do you want them to say about you, in the end? About your character, your contributions, your achievements? Write your own eulogy. Use your imagination to get in touch with your values.

The personal mission statement

As soon as you know you what you want others to say about you when they look back on your life, you are ready to define your center. It's easier to do when the result is a personal mission statement - security, guidance, wisdom and power are needed most for actions, less for static pondering. Use affirmative statements:

• be personal: there is no use in talking about othersor mankind in general.
• be positive: your mission statement is not about what you want to avoid, but about what you want to achieve.
• be present: talk about what you want to do now, not what you should have done in the past or will do, «some day».
• be visual: your mission statement shall inspire you, so use words that fuel your imagination. and give you a foretaste of success.
• be emotional: your mission statement shall be uplifting.

Think broadly about your roles. Wherever you repeatedly encounter various people, a role can be detected. Assume you'd only have one more year to live. Imagine things like wedding anniversaries, retirement scenarios and other milestones in life and you'll find even more to think about: what would you like to be able to say about yourself, by then?

The resulting personal mission statement will be the script you wrote for your life, superseding any other scripts that you've come to accept so far, be it from your parents, environment, genetics or from society.

My impression

When you want to think about your goals and purpose in life, it's helpful to widen your perspective by thinking in roles. Covey somewhat overstretched it, though: he suggests that you extend this approach to your family and to whole companies. It's quite common, e.g. to write down mission statements for companies, but they're hardly effective. I'm neither convinced that two or more people really understand a shared mission statement in the exact same way, nor that they follow its path over a longer time.

That being said, it's fun to try out the Mission Statement Builder.

Next

See the next part of the series: Stephen R. Coveys «The 7 Habits» (4/8): Put First Things First. An overview of the series can be found here.