The Covey phenomenon can offend. Covey converts, for instance, can be insufferable. ("You'd like people to jump on the bandwagon and be a zealot like you," admits Sanders of Yarnell's; he has to remind himself to go easy on his wife, whose own devotion is lukewarm.) A vein of rigid, almost puritanical thinking runs through the master's worldview. ("Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing . . . gradually wastes a life," Covey writes in The Seven Habits.) In person Covey projects smugness; and despite his denials, his writing conveys the sense that he really does believe he has a lock on the truth -- as in this selection from The Seven Habits: "We must be certain that we do not submit ourselves to any programming that is not in harmony with . . . anything other than correct principles."
"It's the use of that word correct that really pisses me off," says Ron Heifetz, director of the Leadership Education Project at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "Who does he think he is? There is no respect for diversity of perspectives with the use of that kind of language."
Whenever Covey hears criticism like that (and he hears it all the time), he just smiles, shrugs, and says, "Don't get hung up on my language." But language matters, and Covey's can be scary. In Las Vegas, talking about what happens when a company commits to Covey training, he warned that some people -- he calls them "flakes" -- always resist. Managers needn't worry, though. "Those people would gradually leave the company," Covey said, "because they'd be purified out."
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Which makes Covey . . . what? a fraud? a hypocrite? A devil in a blue suit? All of the above? None? Does it matter? What clearly matters is the effect Covey has on the people and organizations that read his books. That effect, more often than not, is positive, even inspiring.
Look, for example, at Vicki Gullion. She got her Covey training at Shell Oil, where she worked for 20 years. Shell is one of those companies that may be guilty of stroking their employees with one hand (at least 25% have taken the Seven Habits course) while showing them the door with the other (total employment is down by more than 30% since 1990). But that's not really an issue for Gullion. Because of Covey, she made this promise to herself: "I'm going to enjoy the rest of my life and be happy, and if I'm not, I will quit and do something else." Because of that promise, she quit her job at Shell, left her home in Denver City, Tex., moved to Dallas, got a job selling cars (something she'd always wanted to do) at an Acura dealership, and became top producer her first year on the lot. Today Gullion is a changed woman, charged up about her new life and career, and deeply thankful to Covey. "Suddenly, it dawned on me that I had a choice," she says.
Look at Northstar Industries of Jonesboro, Ark., a $17-million metal fabricator. Before discovering Covey, says CEO Jim Markley, "we were involved in four different markets, and we were bad at all four." Northstar was formed in 1986 by the merger of two companies, one a manufacturer, the other a marketer and distributor. The management was searching for common ground. "We had all come from backgrounds where there were unwritten agendas," says Markley. "I always found out the hard way that I wasn't living up to someone's expectations." Covey helped get everybody at Northstar on the same page and helped the employees define a clear mission for the company. Today Markley identifies Covey as a "significant factor" in helping Northstar focus on one market (expandable conveyors for loading and unloading trucks); blow away its rivals ("Five years ago we had three competitors and 0% of the market. Now two have disappeared, one is struggling, and we have 80% of the market."); and triple its sales.
And look at Searcy Industrial Laundry. Covey's influence is everywhere: in the dog-eared paperback copies of The Seven Habits everyone keeps close by; in the "personal mission statements" people tape above their desks; in the Covey phrases ("emotional bank account," "abundance mentality," "private victory," and so forth) on everybody's lips; and most of all in the spirit of earnest self-improvement that seems to have settled over the plant like a rose-colored cloud. Richard Stocks, the company's self-taught computer expert, says, "Anytime you can take in knowledge and become aware of your weakness, you're always going to be a better individual, whether it's for the company or the family. Criticism used to bother me a lot. Now I find myself asking, 'Is there anything I can improve on?"
Everything Giezeman has done to make Searcy Industrial Laundry stronger in the past two years he talks about in a Covey context. For example, Covey posits an ideal he calls a "Quadrant II manager" -- someone who makes time for tasks that are important but not urgent. Seeing the wisdom in that ideal gave Giezeman the courage, after years of living exclusively in Quadrant I (in which everything is deemed important and urgent), to reassign two members of his management team to long-term projects. One went to work on a thorough analysis of garment costs, which took 18 months but led to a 50% reduction in the company's second-largest expense category. The other devised a system for determining profitability by account, the Holy Grail of the uniform-rental industry. "The payoffs have been incredibly high," says Giezeman. "I think our ability to compete right now as well as in the future is much higher because of it."
In his continuing search for help, Giezeman in 1985 had assembled a board of directors with full corporate power. He got rid of it in 1991, though, because "they were so much in awe of our success that they always rubber-stamped what we did." After reading Covey, Giezeman decided to appoint five top-level managers to an internal board. Together with the Giezemans the board rewrote the company mission statement, replacing a document Giezeman had drawn up by himself years before. As Covey's influence spread throughout the company the board matured, gradually exercising more power and initiative. Then one day last fall, at an off-site board meeting, the members welcomed Giezeman back from a break with this blunt message, delivered by Lester Allen: "We've decided to fire you, Joe."
