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Habit 8 is "Find Your Voice and Help Others to Find There Voice." This book makes a few passing references to the first seven where it makes sense, but its goal is different. Covey complements the book with a well put together online community website that provides additional resources and recommendations on how to make the most of the published material. The first seven habits are focused on how to run your life effectively, how to manage your relationships with others effectively and how to keep learning so you can maintain this effectiveness over time. Becoming effective is surely something to be desired, but what would it take to achieve greatness. In "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," Stephen Covey describes seven principles, that if established as habits, are key to leading an effective professional and personal life. We're using it to challenge people to become leaders of those around them. All of them are very well produced and appropriate for clarify the points in the chapters where they appear. The book doesn't come out and say it, but it analyzes characteristics of great leaders and how they are able to accomplish what others might say, "Can't be done." The book includes a DVD with videos to summarize and illustrate the points made in the book.
I am reading this book a second time and will soon be teaching it to others in the organization where I work. It discusses how to identify your chosen place in this world so you can best apply your skills, personal interests, and passion. In his book "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness Covey takes the idea a step further. It's more than just a book, but a lesson plan with study materials for growing yourself (and your team and organization possibly). It's wanting to help in the search for significance and how to apply your influence and leadership to that end. All these are intended to drive you to make a real difference in this world and more so if you can apply your influence and leadership to maximize the contribution made be those in your sphere of influence. It forms the basis of a good leadership program and, if facilitated right, can be used to improve teamwork and interaction. I'm sure I'll be writing more about this as I experience this content with others.
Sometimes follow up efforts by authors are better than their first book and sometimes they're worse; author Stephan Covey's book titled - "The 8th Habit" - falls somewhere in between those two extremes. The book centers on the premise that today's "Knowledge Worker" (not sure why the author gravitates toward such Orwellian descriptors) needs to find their own voice while helping others find theirs as well. His seminal work "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" was a truly revolutionary work that significantly advanced the school of thought around personal development. Unfortunately, it's difficult to duplicate that success and 8th Habit falls short. Soundview likes that concept but wishes there was a stronger quantitative link to its claim that this 8th Habit is the catalyst for anyone or any organization seeking to jump from being effective to great. Additionally, there is a lot of discussion of the previous 7 habits to set the appropriate context of the 8th habit - which makes it a decent read if this is the first time you've been exposed to Covey's concepts, but a bit slow for those of us who read it the first time.
But what is key to survival then. The proof is in the pudding old tricks no longer work and in my opinion S. It gives strategies for turning things around to success in a much more holistic way and it works.This book could be the subject of a PHD on changing the world and making organizations and communities successful.Here is one area and example I chose where this book applies (and there are many others): Managing and Leading Corporations.Today we are suffering either through lay offs or the dwindling of our savings from corporations run by CEOs bad at their jobs. However I think it is the best success book I have ever read.
Steven Covey's book in my opinion answers these questions. Corporations over a hundred years old are disappearing. So why is it happening. A Zen master once said:"You go to University and spend time studying hundreds of books, we prefer to spend all our time studying one book to get all the essence out of it". "Employees are on the forefront of our minds";- S. S. Ethics is a cornerstone of his principles and again this is an area where too many companies just play lip service to.
Nobody really wants this. Covey explains the importance of devising synergistic solutions. Covey explains how to motivate people;- S. People are demotivated in the workplace, only 5% of their capacities is used and no amount of top down initiatives can motivate them. Whilst First Things First and 7 habits are applicable to your daily life, this book is applicable to the world surrounding you: your community, your organization and your planet. So many companies are run through silos. The objective of one department is defeating the objective of another.- S. Covey explains the context: we have moved from an industrial era to a knowledge era.
It could be that capitalism is made of creation and destruction. As I said the book is very dense, but here are some highlights:- S. Ultimately whether Ethics is not applied or is just a PR job the company pays the price.And so on.extremely powerful concepts. If I had to choose one book that I would like to study again and again it would be this one.If you have read and applied Stephen Covey's previous books, then don't expect the 8th Habit to be similar as it is very dense, so not as easy to apply. Covey explains how you cannot change the laws of nature.
Covey outlines the importance of focus by limiting goals to 3 wildly important goals;- S. No amount of financial restructuring and marketing can make up for all these basic concepts.This book is to be put in the hands of all CEOs (and those who hire them :)), Presidents and Leaders (and we are all leaders). Covey should create a research community that brings the edge to these corporations and devises of simple ways of rolling them out. We can no longer be lead by specialists in Finance and PR jobs who play lip service to employees. Millions of people are suffering, including the CEOs and board members.
Covey's consulting services. He gives the key to turning around corporations to success in a more effective way than 6 Sigma processes, big 5 consulting reorganizations and all the hypes that come and go. This changes the rules of how success is achieved.- What is key now is people and leading them to get the best of them. More organizations should employ S. Covey has the secret.
If you have read the previous books in this series, like me, then you'll probably gradually fall asleep. Pathfinding relates to creating a common vision for which people are passionate.The third and fourth role are what he calls "execution". It continues to talk about the change from the industrial age to the knowledge worker age and how everyone needs to be deeply involved in their work. Its an important habit, though I didn't think the book was a very good read.The book is split in three parts.
Sometimes the linking of things seemed fairly arbitrary to me, which made me somewhat uncomfortable.All in all, I think the 8th habit was a huge disappointment. However, 8th habit is more abstract, still inspirational and. It extends the 7 habits with the 8th one which is called "Finding your voice and helping others to find theirs". It is not that the things he talks about are unimportant or that he doesn't use the Covey inspirational way of writing, its just that it takes too long and has too much repetition.The third part, by far the largest part of the book, talks about helping others to find it. The first one is aligning which relates to aligning the system and goals.
I don't think, in this case, he contributed very much, instead he tried to link everything together and squeeze it in his model of the world. I thought the first couple of chapters were great and looked forward to the rest of the book.The next part is "finding your voice" which isn't very large and largely repeats Coveys earlier work. Covey uses four "roles" to structure his work. It probably should have been a new chapter to the 8th habits instead.I wouldn't really recommend picking up the 8th habit.
8th Habit is another book in the Stephen Covey 7 Habits series. The last is empowering, which I guess is clear what it means. Most of the things Covey discusses are quite standard in leadership and organizational literature. His earlier work is concrete and inspirational. Modeling and pathfinding are part of what he calls "focus". It's probably better to look at Coveys older work (7 habits). The first part is an introduction part which is some chapters about how many people are currently lost in their job and their lives.
After reading these, this one is not worth reading. They are "modeling", "pathfinding", "aligning" and "empowering". Modeling refers to being a model for others. too long. It is not a bad book either thus 3 stars.
Covey looks at how you must first master your own leadership or "find your voice" and build outward to your organization ("help others find their voice"). The 7 Habits looks into becoming an effective person, while the 8th Habit explores becoming an effective leader. The book is a good companion to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The book itself is build around the concept of "the whole person" and I think he makes a convincing case for why this is a good way to approach people and lead your organization. What the 7 Habits is to personal organization and excellence, the 8th Habit is to leadership and organizational excellence. It is the same principles applied to your company or organization.Like the 7 Habit, the 8th Habit builds from the inside out. His focus on conscience and the need to serve a higher cause is inspiring and, I think, well stated.My only complaint about this book is that you will recognize many of the examples from the 7 Habits and this can feel a bit repetitive at times. The book includes a companion DVD, but I did not watch it due to the fact that this was a friend's book.
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