The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

How does notoriety affect you?
It affects me in different ways. From an ego standpoint, it’s flat tering. From
a teaching standpoint it is humbling, but I must strongly acknowledge that I
am not the author of any of these principles and deserve absolutely no
recognition. I am not saying this because of a desire to be modest and
humble. I am saying this because I believe it—that I, myself, believe it. I
see myself like most of you—as a seeker of truth, of understanding. I am
not a guru; I disdain being called a guru. I want no disciples. I am only
trying to promote a discipleship toward principles that are already in
people’s hearts, that people will live true to their con science.
If you had it to do over again, what is the one thing you would do differently as a
businessperson?
I would do more strategic, proactive recruiting and selecting. When you are
buried by the urgent and have a thousand balls in the air, it is so easy to put
people that appear to have solutions into key positions. The tendency is to
not look deeply into their backgrounds and patterns, to do “due diligence,”
nor is it to carefully develop the criteria that needs to be met in the
particular roles or assignments. I am convinced that when recruiting and

---

selecting is done strategically, that is, thinking long-term and proactively,
not based upon the pressures of the moment, it pays enormous long-term
dividends. Someone once said, “That which we desire most earnestly we
believe most easily.” You really have to look deeply into both character and
competence because even tually, downstream, flaws in either area will
manifest themselves in both areas. I am convinced that although training
and devel opment is important, recruiting and selection are much more
important.
If you had it to do over again, what is the one thing you would do differently as a parent?
As a parent, I wish I had spent more time in carefully developing soft,
informal win/win agreements with each of my children in the different
phases of their lives. Because of business and travels I often indulged my
children and went for lose/win too much instead of paying the price in
relationship building sufficient to really develop thorough, sound win/win
agreements more con sistently.