Covey: ‘Unleash’ Workers for Best Performance

JON SPRINGER

LAS VEGAS — The information age will outproduce the industrial age by 50 times, but only if organizations are prepared to shed industrial-age practices and adopt a paradigm for the new world.

Great organizations in the 21st century will be those that embody great people and great leaders, said Dr. Stephen Covey, addressing the opening General Session at the FMI Show here this month. Covey is the author of the business best seller, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and its follow-up, “The 8th Habit.”

Covey argued that success today requires skilled workers who should be “unleashed toward goals that inspire them,” not controlled by the “carrot and stick” as in previous eras.

“You should adopt the mindset, skill set and toolset of the knowledge worker age,” he said. “The primary drivers of success in the industrial age were machines and capital, in other words, things. People were necessary, but replaceable.

“The problem is, that although we're in the knowledge worker age, so many of our modern management practices come from the industrial age. It's reflected in our hiring and firing practices, our performance appraisal system, our compensation system, even in the way we communicate with people.”

Covey advocated that good organizations should be trustworthy and like good workers “have a moral center” to inspire trust. They should use a map to reach their goals, he said, adding that a “positive mental attitude” can be worthless without first having a sense of direction.

Using the example of a supermarket that was performing poorly, Covey noted that performance didn't improve until store management turned to department workers for their input, setting measurable goals for improving sales through better store conditions.

Inspiring trust improves speed within an organization and tends to lower its costs, Covey argued. He also encouraged “empathic listening” as a key to forging better relationships within an organization, using the example of an “Indian talking stick,” a tradition that required a party to reiterate the previous speaker's point before being allowed to respond.