Welcome to the final installment of the series on how to implement the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a Getting Things Done-style system. This series of posts will guide you through the stages of personal implementation over several weeks. This will give you a chance to focus on each new habit in your life for one full week before beginning the next one. For those of you that have not read Stephen Covey’s landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, here is a brief synopsis of the seventh habit:

Sharpen the Saw focuses on balanced self-satisfaction: Regain what Covey calls “production capability” by engaging in carefully selected recreational activities. Use this time productively to restore your energy and morale, re-connect with friends and family, refresh your spiritual self.

Habit VII: Sharpen the Saw

The seventh and final habit of highly effective people is best illustrated by the anecdote that Covey uses at the introduction of the chapter:

Suppose that you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.
“What are you doing?”, you ask.
“Can’t you see,” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”
“You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”
“Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”
“Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”
“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”

~Stephen Covey

This is the trap that so many busy people find themselves in. Sawing away frantically at their tree, never stopping to maintain the saw, or replenish the energy that it takes to do the work.

The seventh habit is about personal renewal, bringing your greatest asset back into top operating condition. What asset is that? You. You are the common denominator of every aspect of your life. That may seem like an obvious statement, but I will wager that you, dear reader and many people that you know and care about, do not take enough time for yourselves in order to relax and simply be present.

Covey describes four areas of the human existence that need regular maintenance and TLC:

1. The Physical You - Your body needs food and water to survive. It also needs more. It needs exercise and activity to function properly.
2. The Mental You - Your brain has been compared to a muscle, in that it too needs exercise and a variety of stimulation. Ongoing learning and education provide this beneficial stimulus.
3. The Social/Emotional You - Everyone has a need for interpersonal relationships. Whether at work, after work, with friends and neighbors, family and social organizations - these relationships bring renewal through communication and cooperation.
4. The Spiritual You - Typically a very private portion of your life, the Spiritual You is not necessarily about religion. It is about your beliefs and values, how they affect and are affected by the various other parts of your life.

Personal Renewal in Context

All four of these dimensions should be exercised regularly in a balanced way. This process of renewal is a Quadrant 2 activity, important but not urgent. It is also an investment of time, not a spending of time, that has a true return.
The return is an increase in your energy level, a clearness of your thinking, a commitment to your values, and a connection to those you care about.

Practical Applications

In short, investing the time to Sharpen the Saw allows you to get back to work sawing with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Physical Conditioning

Paying attention to your diet and level of exercise can go a long way to improving your performance in every area of your life. Eating a balanced diet is important to healthy body chemistry. Every person is different in their caloric needs, and as I am not a doctor I am not going to go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that a diet rich in french fries is not the healthiest.

But there is more to it than that:

• Just going for a walk outside, or around the mall, can improve your circulation and endurance.
• Taking the time to stretch and limber up in the morning before starting your day can prevent a variety of work-related injuries.
• Pay attention to your posture, at home and at work.
• Do you have the proper supports for your hands on your computer keyboard and mouse?

Invest the time in your physical environment and in exercising your body.

Mental Awareness

Do you remember all of that “stuff” you had to learn in High School that you thought you’d never use? Well, if you haven’t used it the chances are good that you have lost it. (I personally could not differentiate a calculus problem today if my life depended on it!) Your mental acuity and power can be enhanced by more thinking.

You simply need to think about other things:

• Read a book.
• Learn a language.
• Do a puzzle.
• Play a board game,
• or find a chess partner.

Using your brain for thinking tasks that are also enjoyable creates new pathways and opens the floodgates of creativity. Some of you might be thinking, “But I’m not creative!” Sure you are. You just don’t get enough practice. Using and developing your creative skills in the context of entertainment enhances those abilities in other contexts as well, like work and general problem solving.

Social Engagement

“No man is an island”, as the old saying goes. Each of us is part of one or more groups that provide a mutual benefit. The group benefits from our presence and contributions while we benefit from the support of and connection to the group. Friendships, organized sports teams, social groups and clubs, business networks, your church, the list goes on and on. Being part of a group and participating in group activities is essential to your effectiveness.

Consider the benefits that membership in a group typically confers:

• Like-minded people to talk to
• Support and resources for help in times of need
• Entertainment and recreation
• Personal validation and recognition
• Business opportunities

Get involved, it’ll do you good. You might even learn something.

Spiritual Centering

Finding your central values and core beliefs is what the previous 6 habits were all about. the seventh habit ties them together. Investing the time for spiritual renewal provides the energy, the determination and the guiding hand for your life. There are about as many ways to express your spiritual dimension as there are people to practice it. It is intensely private, as it is incredibly important. Your values create the framework and structure of your entire life. How you relate to people, respond to stress, handle crises, express your feelings.

Replenishing this core source of energy and vitality is essential to your effectiveness:

• Meditation or prayer
• Communing with nature
• Literature
• Music
• Participation in worship
• Participation in community service
• Individual commitments to serve others

It is much easier to see where you are going when you know where you are starting from.

Building the Habit

I ask you to take on three simple activities that will help you administer and adjust to your new habit.

These activities are:

1. Create a Weekly Plan

Take some time at the end of your Weekly Review to plan your activities for the coming week. If you are not familiar with the Weekly Review, click here for more information. Be sure to set aside some time for personal renewal.

Consider these questions as you plan your week:

1. How do I really spend my time?
2. What is truly important to me?
3. How can I make my commitments more effective?

2. Make a Personal Commitment

Commit yourself to adding one simple activity each week to implement and practice the new habit. Whether you go outside after work to play catch with your child, or spend time with the bowling team, make a commitment to establishing more time for Sharpening the Saw.

3. Teach to Learn

One of the best ways to establish your own understanding of a new topic is to explain it to another person. Pick someone that you can teach the new habit to, it can be your accountability partner or someone else.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need some help. There is no worksheet this week, you didn’t miss the download link. For review, here are all of the previous posts in the series:

• Habit One - Be Proactive
• Habit Two - Begin with the End in Mind
• Habit Three - Put First Things First, part I
• Habit Three - Put First Things First, part II
• Habit Four - Think Win/Win
• Habit Five - Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
• Habit Six - Synergize

Running an effective meeting requires identifying participants, assigning clear roles and responsibilities for each, establishing trust and openness, and outlining a clear understanding of who has authority to make decisions. The main thrust of determining the participants:

Who can contribute to the objective of the meeting

As you draft the list of participants, ask yourself these two questions:

1. What will this individual contribute to this meeting and
2. What will the impact be if this individual is not present?

Selecting the appropriate participants involves addressing issues of inclusion, exclusion, influence, attitude, trust and control. Here are some factors for you to consider:

• Identifying participants sounds obvious, but the wrong choices can derail a meeting. Some advance thinking can help you steer clear of the potential problems. Do you need a full committee for a particular meeting or are certain members key? Do you have the right expertise in the room for the situation at hand? Are the stakeholders affected by the actions to be taken in this meeting represented? Are there valid reasons to exclude a person or group from this meeting?
• Identifying clear roles and responsibilities for each person should be easy if you’ve chosen the participants well. Make sure roles and responsibilities are clearly understood before the meeting begins.
• Trust and openness are necessary for any productive exchange to take place in a meeting. Your track record as a facilitator - or your lace of a negative track record if this is your first meeting - is an important factor in establishing trust and openness in a meeting.
• A clear understanding of who has authority in the meeting is required for any action, resolution, or decision to occur. Getting to the right decision is useless if those who make it do not have the authority to execute it. This is information that should be clearly communicated to all participants.

A note on trust

Without trust and openness, the attendees may feel the meeting has a foregone conclusion, and nothing they say will be heard. Attendees will not feel free to introduce new ideas, participate in discussion, nor will they bother to listen to what is being presented. A lack of trust and openness will sabotage a meeting.

Where to hold the meeting

The physical - or virtual- environment of a meeting is a critical and often under-appreciated component in the success of a meeting. Whether formal or informal, in the usual workplace or off-site, environment helps to set the scene for successful interaction, focus, and pacing.

• Location sets the scene for a meeting and communicates to the participants how formal ( or casual) and how important a meeting will be. An impromptu meeting in the office is less elaborate than one off-site yet is usually more formal. A meeting in a conference center is more formal than one at a resort. You must choose a location based upon the tone and function of a meeting:
  • Idea generation may occur more readily in a relaxed, low-key setting.
  • A crisis management meeting may need to be in an organization’s headquarters in order to put decisions into effect instantly.
• Seating arrangement impact how people interact and where the energy in a meeting is concentrated. Options include circular, oval, rectangular, semicircular, and small groups around tables.
• Audio-visual and electronic aids often add clarity, break up lecture formats, or introduce material best presented visually. They are used more and more frequently as awareness about different learning styles has migrated from the schoolroom to the meeting room.
• Details as small as break arrangements can affect the productivity of a meeting. Establish protocols by announcing break arrangements. In a two-hour meeting, for example, no formal break may be scheduled, but participants may excuse themselves for restroom breaks or to refill coffee cups at any time. For all-day meetings, a morning and afternoon break are the minimum. For meetings at resort locations, working all mornings and reconvening each evening allows participants to enjoy their surroundings and take a real break in the afternoon.
• The provision of refreshments will also affect productivity and the perceptions of participants. Caffeine, water, and alcohol will produce different levels of attention in the participants. Healthy snacks and menu options for special diets (vegetarian, diabetic, low-fat, salt-free, Kosher) show consideration for the “human capital” in the meeting.
• An absence of interruptions and distractions goes a long way toward keeping the meeting on track and focused. Halfway through an afternoon meeting in a hotel is not the time to discover a disc jockey is setting up in the room one folding door panel away from your meeting. Interruptions can be minimized by having a message board outside a meeting room to prevent intrusions except in emergencies.

As you can see, there is much more involved in holding a successful meeting than just getting a bunch of people together in a room. You can read all of the posts in this series:

Part 1: Holding an Effective Meeting - the Basics
Part 2: Holding an Effective Meeting - the Content
Part 3: Holding an Effective Meeting - the Process

Welcome to the latest installment of the series on how to implement the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a Getting Things Done-style system. This series of posts will guide you through the stages of personal implementation over several weeks. This will give you a chance to focus on each new habit in your life for one full week before beginning the next one. For those of you that have not read Stephen Covey’s landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, here is a brief synopsis of the sixth habit:

Synergize describes a way of working in teams. Apply effective problem solving. Apply collaborative decision making. Value differences. Build on divergent strengths. Leverage creative collaboration. Embrace and leverage innovation. It is put forth that when synergy is pursued as a habit, the result of the teamwork will exceed the sum of what each of the members could have achieved on their own. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Habit VI - Synergize

This is the penultimate step in creating a pattern of effectiveness in your life. As the third pillar of the Public Victory, Synergy is the structure that makes interdependence such a powerful lever for increasing your personal productivity and success. Stephen Covey compares the Sixth Habit of Highly Effective People to a math equation where 1 + 1 = 3, or more!

Creative Cooperation in Context

The goal of Synergy is to maximize the value of the varied contributions that parts of a system make to the whole. There are two ways that each part leverages maximum value:

1. Building on the strengths of each team member.
2. Shoring up, or compensating for, their weaknesses.

Synergy is the cooperative relationship between the individual units, team members, or ingredients that becomes an integral part of the grouping, thus making the whole greater that the sum of its parts. By working together creatively, the group is able to accomplish more or become more effective than any of the individual components could working on their own.

Participation and Engagement

In Habit 4 we discussed the principles of Win/Win and in Habit 5 we discussed the importance of creating Understanding in Communication. The habit of Synergy takes these two concepts and increases their power by creating an environment of participation. The Win/Win concept becomes a motive for working together toward a common goal, or finding value in different goals and working to reconcile them.

Interacting with understanding becomes the method for this increased level of participation. Creating this synergy can be a difficult process as it requires a new mind-set from all of the participants; it requires a new level of engagement and an atmosphere of safety in which to operate. Seeing this in action becomes its own reward, as the participants become engaged in the process of creation.

Creativity, innovation, and true teamwork can soar to previously unknown levels of effectiveness when the participants are willing and empowered to capture the power of Synergy. Some factors that influence this process positively are:

• Trust
• Openness
• Transparency
• Mutual respect
• Recognition of contributions
• Camaraderie
• Authenticity

On the other hand, a highly competitive environment will have a stifling effect on the growth of Synergy. This competition between team members can actually work in the opposite direction - reducing the effectiveness of those participants that are not motivated by the competition or the reward. Other factors that can have a negative effect on the Synergy of engagement are:

• Poor communication
• Lack of understanding
• Undefined roles
• Not having clear goals
• Inexperienced leadership
• “Political” maneuvering
• Perfectionism
• Personal value conflicts

“Vision begins with one person, but it is only accomplished by many people.” ~John C. Maxwell

Creating this atmosphere of trust and engagement is likely to be one of the most challenging tasks that you can undertake. It can also be the most rewarding. Most of the people that we work with every day are starving for a chance to make a larger contribution, achieve greater goals, be a part of something bigger than themselves. Living and teaching the habit of Synergy is your contribution to being part of something bigger than yourself.

Practical Applications

In order to develop the habit of Synergy, the most important step is to get beyond the “Us vs. Them” state of mind. You, and the people that you work with, must begin to think in terms of “We”. Once again the emotional bank account becomes a measure of your progress, and your personal sincerity is the currency that you will be depositing.

Without sincerity, the other parts of your system and members of your team may not trust you enough to participate and engage. It will look cynical and manipulative!

There is an old expression, “A rising tide lifts all boats“. Think about this analogy:

How much more can be accomplished if you could focus your efforts on applying your strengths to preparing all of the boats for the rising tide? If everyone on your team worked on the tasks that they are best at, and everyone helped each other at those tasks where they do not excel?

How often do you find yourself struggling to channel all of the water into your own little portion of the harbor? What kind of victory is it if it comes at the expense of the others on your team or in your organization?

Life is not a zero-sum game. Apply these exercises the next time you are in a meeting, a planning session, or encounter a situation that is stuck on competition. In the sincere expression of trust, these tools can be used to generate a spirit of cooperation and participation:

• Identify the common traits of the competing forces, ideas, problems/solutions.
• Open a Brainstorming discussion on the differences, search for an alternative resolution.
• Be careful not to take over but to facilitate.
• Solicit Win/Win scenarios and solutions from all of the participants.

Valuing the Differences

People see the world through their own eyes. The differences between people - mental, social, spiritual, economic, and so on - color this perception of the world. The hardest part to understand for many of us is that these perceptions are not wrong. Though different, everyone is right about how they see the world, their problems, and their opportunities. Capturing the value of these differences is the essence of Synergy.

Building the Habit

Here is a short list of activities that will help you administer and adjust to your new habit. These activities are:

• Think about a person close to you (at work or personally) who sees things differently than you do. Write down some ways that these differences could be used as starting points for finding alternative solutions.
• Identify a situation which could benefit from increased engagement and Synergy. What factors need to change in order to promote this cooperation? What can you do to change these factors? Who can you enlist to assist you in making changes?
• Pick a small project (at home or at work) that you can start from scratch in an atmosphere that promotes Synergy. Keep the number of team members small and use all of the skills that you have learned so far:
  1. Be Proactive: Create a new environment of trust
  2. Begin with the end in mind: The Synergy of the group will produce an amazing result that everyone can learn from
  3. Put first things first: Value the differences
  4. Think Win/Win: Creating the new atmosphere of cooperation and participation is a win for all
  5. Seek first to understand, then be understood: Accepting differences in points of view is the key to successful understanding

Running an effective meeting requires creating an effective process. There are several components of the meeting process: that will determine how the meeting is run.

1. Agenda,
2. Facilitation,
3. Presentations,
4. Approaches to decision-making,
5. Pacing and
6. Follow up

These are all components of how the work of the meeting gets done, which is, in turn, important to reaching the objective, determining the quality of the outcome, and satisfying the participants in the meeting itself. Let’s take a little more detailed look:

• The agenda sets the stage for the meeting: It lists the items the meeting will address and often the time frame for each agenda item. It also lists the participants and the leaders - with their responsibilities.
• Facilitation often involves taking on the role of facilitator yourself ( if you are the meeting planner) or delegating it to a colleague, subordinate, or resident expert in the topic being addressed. A facilitator is not a leader imposing a solution or pre-determined decision on a group.
• Presentations, if there are any, are a way to provide information, impart institutional knowledge, or alternatives to be considered. They can be one person talking, a team lecture, a set of PowerPoint slides, or a audio/ video or Internet production.
• Methods used for solving problems and making decisions (for meetings other than straight presentations of information) will determine both the quality of the solution or decision and the participants’ satisfaction with the process.
  • For example, approaches to decision-making will affect whether or not a meeting in which decisions have to be made has win-win outcomes.
  • Some decision-making methods, such as voting, have win-lose outcomes;
  • others, such as the well-known “free-for-all”, have lose-lose outcomes.
  • Consensus, achieved through collaboration and problem solving, is the win-win approach. Consensus is the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned, which requires group critical reasoning and may involve negotiation.
• Pacing, or keeping a meeting on track, demonstrates respect for the participants and maintains the energy in a meeting. One component of trust is ending the meeting at the announced time.
• A meeting without follow up is a meeting wasted. Identifying and assigning action steps is only as good as the follow up to ensure the action steps taken.

A Note on Institutional Knowledge

Institutional knowledge is the cumulative, retrievable, and collective knowledge and experience possessed by the members of an organization. This knowledge has to do with the history of a business or organization, it’s processes, products/services, business practices, markets, and competitors. Organizations run the risk of losing their institutional knowledge when that information resides in the brain of only one employee. All of that knowledge and experience will be lost when that individual leaves the organization.

One final tip: To make your presentation most effective, remember to tailor it to your audience’s needs. For example, a presentation for the marketing team for a new prescription drug need a different presentation than do the pharmaceutical chemists that developed it.