The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

parties will benefit and ultimately much more work will get done in much
less time. I believe that a family that is well organized, whose time has been
spent effectively delegating on a one-on-one basis, can organize the work so
that everyone can do everything in about an hour a day. But that takes the
internal capacity to want to manage, not just to produce. The focus is on
effectiveness, not efficiency.
Certainly you can pick up that room better than a child, but the key is that
you want to empower the child to do it. It takes time. You have to get
involved in the training and development. It takes time, but how valuable
that time is downstream! It saves you so much in the long run.
This approach involves an entirely new paradigm of delegation. In effect,
it changes the nature of the relationship: The steward becomes his own
boss, governed by a conscience that contains the commitment to agreed
upon desired results. But it also releases his creative energies toward doing
whatever is necessary in harmony with correct principles to achieve those
desired results.
The principles involved in stewardship delegation are correct and
applicable to any kind of person or situation. With immature people, you
specify fewer desired results and more guidelines, identify more resources,

---

conduct more frequent accountability interviews, and apply more
immediate consequences. With more mature people, you have more
challenging desired results, fewer guidelines, less frequent accountability,
and less measurable but more discernable criteria.
Effective delegation is perhaps the best indicator of effective management
simply because it is so basic to both personal and organizational growth.
THE QUADRANT II PARADIGM
The key to effective management of self, or of others through delegation, is
not in any technique or tool or extrinsic factor. It is intrinsic—in the
Quadrant II paradigm that empowers you to see through the lens of
importance rather than urgency.
I have included in the Appendix an exercise called “A Quadrant II Day at
the Office” which will enable you to see in a busi ness setting how
powerfully this paradigm can impact your effectiveness.
*
As you work to develop a Quadrant II paradigm, you will increase your
ability to organize and execute every week of your life around your deepest
priorities, to walk your talk. You will not be dependent on any other person
or thing for the effective management of your life.
Interestingly, every one of the Seven Habits is in Quadrant II. Every one
deals with fundamentally important things that, if done on a regular basis,
would make a tremendous positive difference in our lives.

---

---