Stephen Covey 8th Habit Achievement

Stephen Covey 8th habit achievement is not a trivial undertaking; i.e., from effectiveness to greatness.  In the book Made to Stick, the authors highlighted the following points from Stephen Covey’s 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness:

Stephen Covey 8th Habit Achievement Challenges

The following was determined by polling 23,000 employees from a number of companies and industries:

  • Only 37% said that they had a clear understand what their organization is trying to achieve and why.
  • Only 1 in 5 was enthusiast about their team’s and organization’s goals.
  • Only 1 in 5 had a clear line of sight between their tasks and their team’s and organization’s goals.
  • Only 15% said that their organization enables them to execute key goals.
  • Only 20% trusted the organization that they worked for.

From these results, one could conclude that there is a lot confusion and dissatisfaction in companies

Stephen Covey 8th Habit Achievement Metaphor

Stephen Covey’s human metaphor for these statistics is that if a soccer team had these same scores:

  • Only 4 of 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs.
  • Only 2 of the 11 players on the field would care.
  • Only 2 of the 11 would know what position that they played and know exactly what they are to do.
  • All but 2 players would in some way be competing against their own team members, rather than the opponent.

This soccer analogy creates a human context for the polling statistics. This metaphor comparison creates a sense of drama and movement. Why this analogy works is because works our schema of soccer teams and the fact this schema is more defined than that of organizations. Covey’s point is that organizations should operate like teams but don’t.

If one were to examine a company relative to Stephen Covey 8th habit achievement, one would probably note that certain portions of an organization do work in teams; however, issues typically arise.  For example:

  • Are the teams addressing issues that benefit the enterprise as a whole? Often not.
  • Organizational performance measures and strategy building often do not structurally encourage team efforts that utilize data to give teams insight to what is the best effort to undertake.

Stephen Covey 8th Habit Achievement System

What organizations need is a system for addressing Stephen Covey 8th Habit Achievement.  The Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) methodology is such a structured business management system.