Covey's 7 Habits at Camp David: Clinton's Reset and the Upward Spiral

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In late 1994, after a bruising midterm election, President Bill Clinton invited Stephen R. Covey to Camp David to discuss weaving the principles of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People into his presidency. The 1989 book had sold more than 20 million copies by Covey's death in 2012 at age 79, and Time named it one of the 25 most influential business management books. Covey argued that society had drifted toward a personality ethic of charm and quick fixes, and called for a return to a character ethic rooted in principles. The first three habits move a person from dependence to independence: be proactive, drawing on Viktor Frankl's idea of a space between stimulus and response; begin with the end in mind, using a personal mission statement and an imagined funeral; and put first things first, using the urgent and important matrix.

Habits four through six cover interdependence. Think win-win requires courage and consideration and an abundance mentality rather than scarcity. Seek first to understand follows the Greek sequence of ethos, pathos and logos, with ethos framed as an emotional bank account and logic coming last. Synergize describes outcomes greater than the sum of their parts. Habit seven, sharpen the saw, renews the physical, mental, social and spiritual dimensions, and Covey's upward spiral of learn, commit and do returns to each habit at a higher level.

• Covey's circle of influence holds only effort, attitude and responses, and it grows when energy is focused there.
• Quadrant three tasks are urgent but unimportant, and the episode says resisting them depends on the clarity of a mission statement.
• Covey treated compromise as a lower form of interaction in which everyone loses a little.
• His son Sean Covey published The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens in 1998 and later The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make.
• The 7 Habits of Happy Kids, illustrated by Stacy Curtis, teaches the ideas through animal characters.