The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

[dhaughey]

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey identifies seven key principles that will lead to effective behaviour, whether at work or at home. These habits will help a person be more successful in his or her personal and professional relationships.

Covey's book is an acknowledged business classic, and a must read for any new or aspiring manager. His seven habits are applicable across all industries and professions. Each chapter is dedicated to one of the seven habits. This is what they mean for project managers:

1. Be Proactive: Identify and reduce risks. Actively involve stakeholders in projects. Take responsibility and get things done.
2. Begin with the End in Mind: Be goal driven, know what it is you want to achieve. Covey suggests drawing up a personal mission statement.
3. Put First Things First: Do the important work first, the "must have" items, finishing with the least important. If you put first things first, you are managing time and events according to project priorities.
4. Think Win/Win: Solve the greatest number of requirements with the least amount of effort possible. Be creative.
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood: Do not start thinking about solutions too early on in projects. Understand the business requirements first and then look at solutions. Listen and be truly influenced by your customers.
6. Synergize: Work as an effective team to achieve the maximum possible. The team as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
7. Sharpen the Saw: This is about renewal and staying fresh. Keep trying to learn and improve during every project. Sharpen your skills in order to achieve better results, and so you can continue to practice the other six habits well.

The seven habits are Covey's personal development blueprint for living with fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity. This book is powerful, highly recommended, and in today's high pace 24 hour culture more relevant than ever.

Duncan

[satisfactionuk]

Buggar you dhaughey, lol, now I have to buy and study this book, grrrr lol

Seriously, it sounds really interesting and I think it will be great reading. It will also make a great addition to my business reference library too.

Kind regards

Stephan Toth

[prince2sarah]

Hi there, I really like the sound of this book too... Think I may pop over to Amazon soon! I like self-help books that have some bearing on both your business life and personal life.
Thanks for the info,
PRINCE2 Sarah
What is PRINCE2? website

[kwalford]

This has definately got my interest and I can relate to the brief overview. Thanks Duncan, I will have to check this book me thinks!

[Mohamed.Benmerikhi]

Hi there,

Many thanks these comments have been very enlightening for me and I am seriously thinking of acquiring the book.
May I add a little personal thought on points 4 and 6.

4. Solve the greatest number of requirements with the least amount of effort possible. Be creative: Although this ia a reflection of a good piece of advice, it remains somewhat unclear. In real situations, requirements may be synonymous with problems. The remaining questions lead to how? type questions which necessitate a particular action, and this can either be individual or collective. The required action(s) targets "solving requirements" through the input of a particular type of effort whose quantity is irrelevant since the main concern is solving the requirement.

6. Work as an effective team to achieve the maximum possible. The team as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts: This rings true every time. Team effort always lead to greater outputs than individual efforts added seperately. This is commonly referred to in the management literature as emergence and is the result of the conmpoundng effect of interactions between team members.

Thanks again for the post
Mohamed Benmerikhi

[brods]

I think that book should be read. This would be quite interesting as many member here have suggested that. Will tell you soon about that.

[FGrayling]

I read this book as part of a leader development programme I attended!

It's certainly a good book but be aware that it's very longwinded, quite repetitive and a tad boring at times! Not one i'd recommend for bedtime reading - it's also pretty heavy (not good when it's hitting you on the head from falling asleep whilst reading it).

It's also full of things that I would have classed as common sense. I'm not sure how much it helped me from a PM point of view but certainly was highly regarded from an operational team manager point of view.