First Things First

by Stephen R. Covey

our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.

When we don’t listen to or live by our conscience, we tend to blame and accuse other people in an attempt to justify our own inner dissonance.

If we don’t have a sense of mission and principles to measure ourselves against, we benchmark against other peop...

When we have a family, a work group, an organization, a society that’s into blaming and accusing and confessing each other’s sins, we have a fairly good indication that people are not living in harmony with their own inner imperatives.

They experience a deep level of inner peace and quality of life.

The amazing thing is that, with all the negative consequences of violating conscience, we sometimes make that choice.

Put your faith in the principles of integrity. You’ll get peace of mind and wisdom will come to you.

People know it. In their deep inner lives, they know what they ought to be doing. And they know it would improve quality of life. The challenge is to develop the character and competence to listen to it and live by it—to act with integrity in the moment of choice.

Set a goal to go through the process each time you face a decision moment.

The value of any week is not limited to what we do in it; it’s also in what we learn from it and become as a result of it.

As we organize, act, evaluate . . . organize, act, evaluate . . . and organize, act, and evaluate again, our weeks become repeating cycles of learning and growth.

But the most helpful insight came as I was able to see repeating patterns in my life that it was impossible for me to see from day to day.

The repeated process of organizing, acting, and evaluating helps us see the consequences of our choices and actions more clearly.

Effective interdependence is core to the issue of time management.

Our greatest joy—and our greatest pain—comes in our relationships with others.

The fact is that we’re better together than we are alone.

no one individual has all the talents, all the ideas, all the capacity to perform the functions of the whole.

When we try to satisfy needs and fulfill capacities through an independent achievement, linear, chronos only paradigm, life sometimes seems like an hour in a huge smorgasbord. There’s only so much time, so we have to maximize our satisfaction, sample as much as we can. We rush through the line, grabbing as much variety as possible. We become gluttons of experiences and sensations.

We want the benefits of marriage, but we don’t make the emotional commitment to live a life of rich interdependence, of selfless service, of sensitivity, of continuous improvement of character to make it grow.

We bring children into the world, but we’re not committed to the tremendous time and effort it takes to teach and train, to love and listen.

We’re so busy consuming that we don’t take care of our capacity to produce, and we see evidence of it all around us—in

We’re living with the illusion of independence, but the paradigm is not creating the quality-of-life results we desire.

The problems we see in families, organizations, and societies are the result of individuals making choices in their space between stimulus and response. When those choices come out of reactivity, scripting, or urgency response, it impacts time and quality of life for families, organizations, and society as a whole.

They’re less concerned about who is right than what is right.

They may be very sincere in their effort, but they can’t sustain action outside their deep paradigms.

Total quality begins with total personal quality. Organizational empowerment begins with individual empowerment. That’s why work in our deep inner life and integrity are so important.

Ultimately, there’s no such thing as “organizational behavior”; it’s all behavior of the people in the organization.

But if we’re duplicitous or dishonest in any role, it affects every role in our lives.

Trust is something you can’t fake or quick-fix.

Switching from an independent to an interdependent paradigm creates a whole new way of seeing that powerfully impacts the decisions we make concerning the best use of our time—and the results we get. It literally redefines “importance.”

The fourth generation is a “people” paradigm.

The difference between the focus on people and things represents one of the deepest underlying differences between the third and fourth generations.

But the fourth-generation paradigm is people first, things second. It’s leadership first, management second. It’s effectiveness first, efficiency second. It’s purpose first, structure second. It’s vision first, method second.

Obviously, the “things” paradigm is appropriate when we’re managing things. But it’s inappropriate—and ineffective—when we try to apply it to people.

The people paradigm is vital to success in families, organizations, and groups of all kinds.

In the interdependent reality, we’re dealing with the space between stimulus and response in others as well as ourselves.

Self-awareness empowers us to have other awareness.

Because we understand conscience, we can know what it is to be part of the collective conscience.

Through our independent will, we can work to achieve interdependent will.

We can contribute our own creative imagination to the incredible process of creative synergy.

Difference is the beginning of sinergy

This is the essence of win-win: in almost all situations, cooperation is far more productive than competition.

It’s that between us is the ability to work together to achieve far more than either of us could on our own.

In the interdependent reality, win-win is the only long-term viable option. It’s the essence of the abundance mentality—there’s plenty for both of us; plenty in our combined capacity to create even more for ourselves and everyone else. In some respects, it’s really what some refer to as “win-win-win.” By working together, learning from each other, helping each other grow, everyone benefits, including society as a whole.

So when they see things differently, we seek first to understand. Before we speak, we listen. We leave our own autobiography and invest deeply in genuinely understanding their point of view.

As we really understand the other point of view, we often find our own point of view changed through increased understanding.

And when both people understand both perspectives, instead of being on opposite sides of the table looking across at each other, we find ourselves on the same side looking at solutions together.

Synergy is the fruit of thinking win-win and seeking first to understand.

It’s the creation of third alternatives that are genuinely better than solutions individuals could ever come up with on their own.

The core problem was a lack of shared vision.