Renowned author and management guru Stephen Covey checked into the Grand Hyatt hotel in Denver on Monday evening and lost his battle with a candy bar.
He’d been on the road for hours. He was tired. He was hungry. And there it was in the minibar.
“Sometimes, that’s all it takes,’ he confessed. “I should not have done it. I am trying to lose 20 pounds, and I know I should not eat at night, but I was so starved.’
So much for “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.’ At 72, Covey still has more not-so-effective moments than he cares to count.
“I blow it all the time,’ he told me during an interview in his hotel room Tuesday afternoon. “I procrastinate.’
Covey had just come off stage in the ballroom downstairs where more than 500 people paid as much as $359 a ticket to hear him speak. He’d stripped off his suit like an actor jumping out of a costume, and jumped into baggy, blue sweats.
For Walt Disney, it all started with a mouse. But for Covey, a former management professor at Brigham Young University, it all started with a book.
His “7 Habits’ has sold more than 15 million copies since it was first released in 1989. It’s often called one of the most influential business books ever written. It has spawned a multimillion-dollar industry of sequels, spin-off products, seminars and consulting contracts for Covey’s Salt Lake City-based company, FranklinCovey.
At Park Meadows in Douglas County, and more than 100 other retail centers across the country, there are FranklinCovey stores selling everything from day planners to posters with inspirational messages and strategies. And Covey’s organization counts 75 percent of all Fortune 500 companies as clients.
Covey is a Mormon who preaches moral authority.
“There’s nothing in it that is uniquely Mormon,’ he said. “I work hard at that because other people will think you have a hidden agenda of trying to get people into your church.
“I’m basically dealing with simple principles like fairness, kindness, integrity, developing talents, empowering people, getting people on the same page, having open, transparent accountability and letting light be the greatest disinfectant in the organization.
“I believe God is a source of these principles. That is about as far as I go,’ he said. “And I can teach all this material from the Koran or the Bhagavad-Gita.’
Covey has been teaching this material to corporate leaders for decades. It hasn’t saved the world from scandals, bankruptcies and megalomaniac bosses.
Covey says much of the business world is stuck in a command-and-control, industrial-age mind-set, when it should be moving to a knowledge-and- wisdom-based mind-set. He has written a new book, “The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness,’ to lead the way.
Since its release in November, it has sold more than 450,000 copies.
It’s astonishing that business is so dysfunctional that these sorts of themes resonate. Put people on teams, and suddenly everybody stabs each other in the back until the human resources people bring in the “leadership’ wonks.
“It appeals to people’s personal narcissism rather than any actual trends or values,’ said E.L. Kersten. “People love hearing that they are worth being infatuated with themselves.’
Kersten, who once worked for a technology company that he said cheated him out of stock options, has started a website called Despair.com.
It is the antithesis of motivational speakers such as Covey. It sells calendars, coffee mugs, screen savers and posters with “demotivational’ messages such as “Potential: Not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up’ or “Dreams are like rainbows. Only idiots chase them.’
The idea is to capitalize on people’s contempt for platitude peddlers, he said.
“Much of what happens in the motivational industry is simply an appeal to the cult of self,’ he said. “People want to believe they are all bound for greatness independent of the fact that they have no skills or very little talent.’
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-820-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
