Page 171 - stephen covey The seven habits of highly effective people

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart

taken this approach before, you may need to spend more time to train them in what this approach
involves, what "completed staff work" means, how to synergize around differences and what
identifying alternative options and consequences involves.
The "In" basket and correspondence. Instead of diving into the "IN" basket, you would spend some
time, perhaps 30 to 60 minutes, beginning a training process with your secretary so that he or she could
gradually become empowered to handle the "IN" basket as well as the correspondence under item
number five. This training program might go on for several weeks, even months, until your secretary
or assistant is really capable of being results-minded rather than methods-minded.
Your secretary could be trained to go through all correspondence items and all "IN" basket items, to
analyze them and to handle as many as possible. Items that could not be handled with confidence
could be carefully organized, prioritized, and brought to you with a recommendation or a note for your
own action. In this way, within a few months your secretary or executive assistant could hand 80 to 90
percent of all the "IN" basket items and correspondence, often much better than you could handle them
yourself, simply because your mind is so focused on Quadrant II opportunities instead of buried in
Quadrant I problems.
The sales manager and last month's sales. A possible Quadrant II approach to item number four
would be to think through the entire relationship and performance agreement with that sales manager
to see if the Quadrant II approach is being used. The exercise doesn't indicate what you need to talk to
the sales manager about, but assuming it's a Quadrant I item, you could take the Quadrant II approach
and work on the chronic nature of the problem as well as the Quadrant I approach to solve the
immediate need.
Possibly you could train your secretary to handle the matter without your involvement and bring to
your attention only that which you need to be aware of. This may involve some Quadrant II activity
with your sales manager and others reporting to you so they understand that your primary function is
leadership rather than management. They can begin to understand that they can actually solve the
problem better with your secretary than with you, and free you for Quadrant II leadership activity.
If you feel that the sales manager might be offended by having your secretary make the contact, then
you could begin the process of building that relationship so that you can eventually win the confidence
of the sales manager toward your both taking a more beneficial Quadrant II approach.
Catching up on medical journals. Reading medical journals is a Quadrant II item you may want to
procrastinate. But your own long-term professional competence and confidence may largely be a
function of staying abreast of this literature. So, you may decide to put the subject on the agenda for
your own staff meeting, where you could suggest that a systematic approach to reading the medical
journals be set up among your staff. Members of the staff could study different journals and teach the
rest the essence of what they learn at future staff meetings. In addition, they could supply others with
key articles or excerpts which everyone really needs to read and understand.
Preparing for next month's sales meeting. Regarding item number seven, a possible Quadrant II
approach might be to call together a small group of the people who report to you and charge them to
make a thorough analysis of the needs of the salespeople. You could assign them to bring a completed
staff work recommendation to you be a specified date within a week or 10 days, giving you enough
time to adapt it and have it implemented. This may involve their interviewing each of the salespeople
to discover their real concerns and needs, or it might involve sampling the sales group so that the sales
meeting agenda is relevant and is sent out in plenty of time so that the salespeople can prepare and
get involved in it in appropriate ways.
Rather than prepare the sales meeting yourself, you could delegate that task to a small group of
people who represent different points of view and different kinds of sales problems. Let them interact
constructively and creatively and bring to you a finished recommendation. If they are not used to this
kind of assignment, you may spend some of that meeting challenging and training them, teaching them