It was the spring of 1990. I was a young pipeline systems coordinator working in Houston for Conoco Inc.'s transportation department. I was married, with a daughter of 18 months and a baby due in July. I supervised a small team of young, smart professionals coming off a year of training in our management development program. Having held a number of positions in the oil and gas industry for the past six years, I thought more of my management and leadership skills than I had a right to.
While bumping around a bookstore one day, I saw the newly printed book by Dr. Stephen Covey, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People." This book was a hot seller, and it could not have come at a better time to help me on my career path and life.
In the late 1980s, many of us were trying to adopt new and better management styles and tools in an effort to become more effective in the face of increasing amounts of work and decreasing amounts of staff. We were having some success with these efforts, but many of us felt something was lacking. Unknown to me at the time, a team of smart, creative innovators was searching for a way to help us accelerate the pace of our improvement efforts. Based on the impressive work done by Dr. Covey, the company decided to consult with the Covey Leadership Center. As a result, a senior management seminar in operations leadership was developed.
On March 6, 1990, I was very blessed and fortunate to have been selected to attend the most influential seminar of my life. During the opening-night comments of the seminar, I was mesmerized while listening to one of the best leaders I have ever known. Our Vice President Bob Walker said, "You may be somewhat surprised that we are spending so much time on you, your talents and practices as a leader in Conoco. Well, it is human nature that most of us like to think that the problems we face are caused by things outside of us. If only that other group or those other people would do something differently, then the problems would go away. In fact, that type of thinking is the problem. Every significant and lasting change that we make in the company begins with us improving ourselves as individuals. We have to focus first on improving our own individual effectiveness. Then and only then can we do a good job of influencing the other people that we work with, so that we ultimately change the whole organization for the better."
During the seminar, we spent a great deal of time discussing and thinking about critical areas where high-impact improvements could be made. We learned much in the areas of leadership, customer responsiveness, teamwork, and employee empowerment and creative problem solving.
Much of what we learned can be found in the book, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People":
- Be proactive. Take the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.
- Begin with an end in mind. Start with a clear destination to understand where you are now, where you're going and what you value most.
- Put first things first. Manage yourself. Organize and execute around priorities.
- Think win-win. See life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena where success is achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others.
- Seek first to understand. Build the skills of empathetic listening that inspires openness and trust.
- Synergize. Apply the principles of cooperative creativity, and value differences.
- Renewal. Preserve and enhance your greatest asset, yourself, by renewing the physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional dimensions of your nature.
These concepts resonated with me, and I knew I needed to take them to heart and put them to work immediately. I also learned I needed to adopt these principles and habits in my daily personal and family life. I knew the information I was learning was not a "one-shot" injection of something powerful enough to make me a super worker, boss, husband or leader. This was the beginning of a process of gradual improvement in my efficiency and effectiveness as a supervisor, husband, father and human being.
If you have not done so, you have to read this book!
For more information, contact Scott Whitelaw at scott@scott whitelaw.com or visit www.scott whitelaw.com.
