The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
“Begin with the End in Mind” habit 2 of Stephen Covey’s best selling book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, gives us insight into how we can improve ourselves and become more effective. But interestingly it gives teams, and project teams for that matter, a road map for effectively managing our projects.
Watch the video by Stephen Covey with a focus on habit 2:
- The Seven Habits will help individuals, teams and organisations achieve their goals.
- Greatness starts from the inside out, from the individual to team interdependence.
- Being proactive is focusing on the things you can control.
The 7 habits in relation to project management are:
- Be proactive, plan for the future and control the things you can control.
- Begin with the end in mind, the project goal. For projects develop clearly a shared purpose.
- First things first, what is really urgent, what is important?
- Interdependence, working with a team and further developing the shared purpose.
- Think win-win, think of all stakeholders needs.
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood, Synergize! Listening to stakeholder’s needs and wants.
- Continual improvement – Sharpen the Saw; Growth, learning from each other, previous projects and practising the seven habits.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: A Summary
The video belows gives a summary on the seven habits of highly effective people.
In the video Stephen Covey presents “Begin with the End in Mind” and he suggests that we should begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of the desired direction and destination. He reinforces that we should then continue to remind ourselves of that end in mind, so the focus on the destination becomes proactive, suggesting that being proactive in this manner will make things happen.