FOREWORD
YOU CAN HAVE THE BEST technology, the most innovative marketing campaign, or the latest product that goes viral—and it can all disappear overnight like dying fireworks. It can all be copied by another competitor or become instantly obsolete in the wake of something new and better.
In this world, all business success is interim. If you’re a leader, the only competitive advantage you have is that combination of hearts and brains—yours and your people’s—that can produce success again and again. The only assets you can depend on are human beings. The air they live on is passion, high purpose, and psychological, and when they don’t get what they need, neither do you.
The fact is, people now need different things than they used to—particularly young people. They need to be leaders themselves. They need to make things happen. They deeply need to be able to trust.
They don’t need a career—they need a mission. A career is a profession; a mission is a cause. A career asks, “What’s in it for me?” A mission asks, “How can I make a difference?”
And your job now—your mission—is to ignite that kind of fire in yourself and your team. This book, written by my friends and colleagues, will help you ignite that fire. It’s about leaving behind an ash heap of assumptions that used to work but now produce stagnation, and moving on to new paradigms that will spark the passion of your people.
Stephen R. Covey, my father, used to say, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are—as we are conditioned to be.” As you read this book, you’ll be startled out of your old conditioning by a whole new set of possibilities. Instead of just being a leader, you can make everybody a leader. Instead of just doing more with less, you can do infinitely more with less. Instead of just “creating value” for customers, you can become the very key to their success.
There’s a lot to do in this book, but I challenge you to read it and start right away to identify at least one of the new practices (what we call the “jobs that you must do now”) and then create an action plan to improve your individual and team effectiveness in that area. Really work at it. See for yourself if it doesn’t transform your work and your business results. Thinking tools at the end of each chapter will help you.
But there’s more. If you take this book as a whole, it will help you install in your head a new “operating system” for effectiveness. An operating system is the software that makes your smartphone or laptop work. Most businesspeople have a terribly outdated mental operating system, so they lose efficiency, slow down, and—eventually—totally freeze up.
What you need is an operating system that never goes out of date, that you can rely on forever.
The operating system in this book is based on fundamental principles that are timeless and universal—principles such as proactivity, integrity, trustworthiness, empathy, and valuing diversity. These principles are embedded in my father’s bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you build on these principles, if you make them the unbreakable foundation of your life’s work, your success as a leader is guaranteed no matter what happens.
Is your culture working for you or against you? The actions you take today will prepare you to lead yourself, others, your team, and your organization effectively.