Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

When a colleague loaned me Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits Of Highly Successful People” many years ago, it took me about three months to get round to reading it – I now realise that I wasted those three months! In fact, I read it three times in order to ensure that I had fully digested the wisdom.

Whilst I cannot claim to have experienced an epiphany of “Damascus Highway” proportions, it did cause me to make fundamental changes to the way I conducted business. In reality, I was practising much of what Covey suggests, but I was doing so in a fairly unstructured and ill-disciplined way. However, in what I now term my “Post Covey” period, I do ensure that I audit myself regularly and I would urge you to do the same.

Covey is also responsible for the book “Principle Centred Leadership”, and many of his ideas and approaches relate to the management of people. You are encouraged to consider, as you read through my summary of his ideas, how any of it might relate to your own particular situation as an individual, as well as a manager.

Covey’s view focuses on interdependence, on what he calls “mature interaction”. When we are truly interdependent, then we have achieved and are practising all seven habits. The habits are in fact steps, leading us from dependent through independence to interdependence and making use of our innate human characteristics – moving us in effect from what Covey terms “private victories to public victories”.

In any situation, our natural human response is to look for similarities to situations we have previously encountered. In doing this, we fail to recognise the situation we are actually in and we fail to recognise opportunities and challenges presented to us. In effect “the way we see the problem is the problem” … which accounts for why we find ourselves repeating patterns of frustration and feeling unable to respond appropriately to situations facing us.

Einstein observed “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Covey develops this theme into what he calls an “inside-out” approach. This means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self – with your principles, your values, your motives and your character.

We each have, and can develop further, various assets. Covey’s view encourages wider recognition of these assets and the maintenance of them. Once we take for granted say effective working relationships, then we cease to actively maintain them. The result could well be a reduction in the effectiveness of the relationship and therefore of a very important asset. The key is balance between the use of any asset and maintenance of it.

Interesting entry in this week’s EzineArticles blog: Expert author Jeff Herring in his business blog said, “My position is that writer’s block does not exist. I believe people get caught up in it because it sounds so cool, and makes you sound like a writer. “Oh, I have writer’s block” etc. Do you know anyone that runs? Have they ever had runner’s block? They might not have felt like running, but they ran any way.”

Christopher Knight ( EzineArticles CEO and Founder) responded: ”Well Jeff, when you put it that way, being a runner myself, I know there are days when I don’t want to run vs. when I enjoy running…and the difference in feeling has a lot to do with my environment. When it’s sunny outside or when I’m eating very healthy, I’m more likely to enjoy running than when it’s freezing cold and I just had a burger for lunch.

I think after you’ve written many hundreds or thousands of articles, you have a writing muscle/skill that is so well developed that you forget that “newbies” who are just starting out experience something different than what you do when it comes to the feelings of ‘writers block.

For me, I have so many articles or writing ideas floating in my head at any given moment that all it usually takes is for me to stop, sit down at the keyboard and release my ideas. Usually, I’ll have a core idea or theme that has been brewing in my head before I even sit down to write the next article, blog entry or email newsletter issue.

I know that writers who fail to plan or fail to setup an environment that supports their article writing goals (if they have them) are more prone to feelings of writers block.

Perhaps if EzineArticles were Nike, instead of JUST DO IT, our slogan would be, JUST WRITE IT! ”

I couldn’t agree more and I posted a comment to that effect – I only get “writer’s block” on those occasions when I don’t want to write and that happens so rarely that it is just not an issue. Like Chris, I have so many ideas floating around in my head all the time, I just wonder if I will ever find the time to “produce” them. I do believe that if you are passionate about your subject/vocation, then writing about it and talking about it, is a pleasure.

On the subject of articles: I am a very devout believer in the power of networking, I always have been and I share my thoughts on the subject in: “The Incredible Power Of Networking”, this week’s article on jonathanfarrington.com.

On the Group site: thejfagroup.com, the feature article highlights the importance of taking care of our “internal customers” not just our external ones: “It’s Important To Keep Our Internal Customers Happy Too”.

Finally, my recommended business article site of the week is one of the more established operations: www.buzzle.com Unlike many of my recent recommendations, Buzzle is not a business or sales “specific” site but it oozes professionalism, attracts very good authors, is very selective in what it allows to be published and, a real plus for me – they are very responsive – so do take a look.

Cannot believe there are how many days to Christmas? Just as my friends in America are emptying the turkey carcass into the trash can after Thanksgiving, we are beginning to look forward to ours!

OK – good weekend and keep the e-mails coming. JF

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