Habits that determine success or failure in life

Habits that determine success or failure in life

By Arif Suryobuwono

JAKARTA (JP): Two points make a line, three a field. These two basic geometric postulates once surprised me. Why on earth should a stereology book tell high school students about such clear, fundamental common sense?

This question struck me again at the Covey Leadership Center Indonesia course on Stephen Covey's 1989 book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People early last month. The 385-page book has sold over five million copies and is still vying to top The New York Times best-seller list of self-help paperbacks.

The habits are all as logical as the geometric postulates. For instance, habit two: Begin with the end in mind. How can anyone begin a journey if they don't know where to go?

The habits are about how emotional intelligence and the (re)organization of private lives and work can make anyone more effective.

Covey pitches his work on the seven habits as a synergistic product of many minds. He says he reviewed 200 years of American writings on success to write the book. Because Covey is a devout Mormon, it isn't surprising to find biblical foundations to his habits.

The habits are commonplace. They are so common that most people naturally ignore them. Their powerful rediscovery and reintroduction makes the US$860 three-day course inspiring.

One of the seven habits, "think win/win," is the least universal because it avoids competition, which is normal for, and encouraged by, most of us.

"Put first things first", focusing on things which are important but not urgent (Covey calls it Q2), is not ordinary either because we usually place things which are both important and urgent first (Q1 in Covey's term). His time management scheme is powerful because Q2 provides the infrastructure for Q1.

Since most participants work as managers or leaders, the course emphasizes how to be effective at work, typically how to solve communication troubles at work.

Human relations

The course makes it clear that the key to effectiveness is human relations (or as Thomas A. Harris put it, "I'm O.K., you're O.K."). This is crystal clear. Irrespective of how clever, skilled or competent employees are, if they don't have a good relationship with their boss and colleagues, they cannot be effective at work.

Organizational politics advises how to please career-busting bosses, even the nastiest ones. Avoid doing what they dislike, know what they expect and then meet their expectations. If necessary, try to impress them by volunteering for assignments that nobody else will take.

All these sacrifices (or "deposits" in Covey's Emotional Bank Account concept) will pay in time. Blunders (nobody's perfect), will be generously forgiven. Chances are that even the worst boss will forgive mistakes.

Good behavior makes it hard for a boss to rebuke subordinate. Employees that behave well usually are thought of first for promotion.

Covey's proactive concept (or locus of control in Steve Altman's 1985 Organizational Behavior) is essentially political. However, Covey never urges anyone to become a yes-man.

Following his advice should be done with all sincerity, with a balance between courage and consideration. This means expressing feelings and convictions with courage balanced with consideration for the feelings and convictions of the boss.

This, of course, is very much linked to the degree of dependence on the boss. Employees with poor bargaining positions, or those who eye promotion, usually have to be deprecatorily submissive.

In conditions other than "I'm O.K., you're O.K.", relationships between bosses and their subordinates are in effect a war (remember the strikes that hit Greater Jakarta and peaked in 1994).

In most cases the war is unbalanced, except if employees have something a boss is afraid of, or have something a boss badly needs. Because bosses have a say over their subordinates' salary and career, they are almost always the winners. Subordinates are therefore often treated as defeated enemies. Some are lucky enough to be treated leniently, as the U.S. treated Japan after World War II, but others may experience something akin to the Japanese occupation of China.

Although today's bosses insist workers are their resources, they really mean assets, not treasure.

They are always comparing their resources, picking out who they think is the best and using them to measure their other assets. In their eyes, only so many people can be "A" students and only one person can be number one. By so doing, they urge their workers to compete against each other, creating a low trust atmosphere and conducive climate for bias, unfairness and suspicion.

Such bosses have difficulty sharing recognition and credit, power or profit even with those who help in the production -- particularly if they think that the help is not useful enough.

They want their employees to be like themselves. They look on differences as insubordination and disloyalty. They see life as having only so much, as though there was only one pie out there. And if someone is to get a big piece of the pie, it means less for everybody else.

This scarcity mentality, Covey says, should be turned into a win/win relationship in which both bosses and their employees enjoy mutual benefits. The question is if bosses will share what they have monopolized. What's the point of competing if our chance of winning is 100 percent?

In a game called "win as much as you can," I and the other course participants were aware that a win/win deal was as easy as your ABCs to clinch. Yet none of us won in the end. My group was leading when we agreed with the rest of the groups to make a win/win deal in the game's fifth session. We stayed faithful to agreement, even though it meant less profits. We wouldn't risk losing our trustworthiness. But the other groups violated the deal and our profits dropped considerably. In the subsequent sessions, marked with no trust, none of us wanted a deal. We all became selfish. The game ended in disaster for all of us because everyone nurtured this kind of thinking "it is okay if I lose provided that you also lose."

Covey says a win/win deal can be achieved if we realize that we have to depend on each other in order to survive. Thus, the ultimate goal of the seven habits is interdependence.

The most revealing part of the course was when we were asked to write down our personal mission statement. "What do you want to be remembered upon your death?" asked course facilitator Robert Wrighton.

In an environment where we work to live, its not surprising to find people who work and work, striving for a better career but when they finally reach the top they find they are leaning against the wrong wall.