Principle Centered Leadership Book Review

Principle Centered Leadership by Stephen Covey is based on the difficult ideas of paradigms and natural laws as they relate to business. Covey relates this subject matter by establishing a common ground, using relatable examples and applying simple logic to derive complex meanings and understandings about how the social structure of a company works and even more specifically the applications of how these paradigms can effectively be used in a business.

For anyone to say that this book was created for solely business use would be a great understatement of the truth and wisdom it speaks. I can personally attest to the role it has played my in everyday life and the greater total quality you can receive from it. The key is evaluating your paradigm and shifting it to bring about significant improvements. Behind the author's philosophy is trust. The true foundation of an organization is trust because you must be able to communicate and solve problems. Without trust, even the best plans and personnel with the best intentions can fail. When you are buried by dilemmas, the result will be a bad paradigm, pain, and a loss of a competitive edge over your rivals. Incomplete and obsolete paradigms thrive in our current working environment. As a result, many businesses make decisions that fail (231). With trust and fully contrived paradigms a business has the building blocks to grow and expand. Influencing behavior and attitude will lead minor changes; whereas, transforming paradigms will make major changes.

Through a scientific process, the book is able to logically relate ideas that give creditability to Covey's Philosophy. These include family relationships and the natural sciences

(i.e. photosynthesis.) Since laws and principles are well-established and concrete it seems highly unusual to use these words when describing with the social structure of a company. However, Covey's logic seems to hold up on this not-so well-defined subject. One example that resonates throughout the book is the "Law of the farm". It is a natural example where planting, growing, and harvesting crops happens in a process that cannot be altered or shifted. Covey explains that the only way for a company to implement a paradigm that works, they institute the natural laws/principles (53). To elaborate, the farming process example is directly compared to a typical office setting where work is trying to be complete. In these two settings, things must be done in a specific order at a certain time otherwise the end result will be failure. In the author's words "You can't harvest corn in the Fall is you forgot to plant it in the Spring. (83)" In much the same way, if a co-worker forgets to fill-out the paperwork for offer; you haven't sealed the deal.

As a manger, you must create an environment and a company philosophy which workers have a common vision and goals, so that employees will make decisions based on the greater good of the company rather than on themselves. Everyone must work together as a team together in order to be successful. To me, this information seems pretty obvious and simple. Essentially, he is preaching what is being taught in every textbook in today's era of management. However, it is one thing to say, as a manager, that you are going to include everyone in your company and quite another to actually do it. I believe the book was really thought provoking in this light. It is just didn't say to do it, but it also showed how you could do implement such a strategy. Leadership is an intelligent resource that must be used at all levels in the organization. In order to effectively lead on throughout an organization, one must understand the fundamental relationships exist in all organizations.

It's all about relationships. These can be divided in between four fundamental levels of natural laws: Personal (trustworthiness), Interpersonal (trust), Managerial (empowerment), and Organizational (alignment) in that order. These are the heart of the Principle-centered leadership is paradigm. All of these laws/principles need to be rooted deeply within the organization. If any of the four are not fully addressed, your company will not reach a level of competition and are likely to fail. You must work at all levels to be truly successful. Ideally you want one ecosystem that is absolutely interdependent. Even though this is an unrealistic goal, since there is always bound to be conflicts. Nevertheless, managers most have a high sense of accountability and larger sense of control in their organization (164). Apart from trust, you must address all the needs of the company not just a single one such as increasing your profit margin or maximizing shareholders wealth. Rather it must be an all-inclusive paradigm that works to everyone's benefit involved. There are three domains of action: control (law), freedom, and the middle ground between the control and freedom (civilization and culture) that has universal principles that everyone understands and obeys. In turbulent times, these universal principles are especially important to sustain its existence and establish an advantage over competitors.

In a nutshell, Principle Centered Leadership by Stephen Covey is a very insightful book that can be applied to many different situations whether in the business arena or your personal life. What I really like about the book is that it is multi-purpose. Not only used for making managerial decisions within the organization, but it also can be used as a set of guidelines that govern your life. Because it is so overlapping, it can be used to explain a number of things. For instance, the book can easily be related to reader's experiences of leadership which makes it easier to learn. By focusing on examples and stories rather than relying on descriptions and definitions, the material is much easier to digest.

Even though Convey makes a compelling argument of what managers must do to lead an organization on all levels in order to optimize performance and accountability (trust), it seems unrealistic that any manger, no matter his or her intelligence or ability to lead, can perfectly capture all levels of "natural law." The manner in which these ideals are explained seem to only work in an almost a utopian-like atmosphere. This seems to negate personal freedom which plays a crucial part in any company. Even with a corporate culture where everyone's needs are fulfilled and all employees are able to reach their full potential, there is bound to be distrust and corruption - it's human nature. I wish Covey would have covered the role human inefficiencies play in the operations of a company and how these threats can be reduced or stabilized so that the company has a general idea of how much internal damage they have and how they can combat these issues.

I have started to use Covey's approach to analyze my own life and evaluate how I could change my paradigm in such a way as to incorporate the four natural laws into each aspect of my life whether it is schoolwork, social skills, or conducting everyday tasks. I like how this idea of principle-centered leadership is more than just a management tool or something that only can be used in a group. Rather Covey's thought processes can be applied to a person's interaction with others outside the work place into their personal life. Not only that, but they can be applied to one's personality (regardless of type) to better oneself.

In addition to personal development, this book highlighted concepts such as alignment, business strategy, and corporate culture are oftentimes emphasized in textbooks and class discussions. However, sometimes the underlying idea(s) of these concepts is shunned by non-value adding terminology. Covey is clear and concise, and straight-to-the-point in layman's terms to provide useful insight. In this respect, I prefer Principle Centered Leadership's explanation over the textbook's explanation.

Personally, I believe that Stephen Covey's principle-centered leadership is inspiring and revolutionary management/leadership style. In the future, I believe this style will become more prevalent in companies with its main driving force being competition. Even though principle-centered leadership is innovative, it still has its quarks. It is far to idealist and utopian-like and does not fully comprehend the chaos and randomness that happens in the workplace. Through the course of time, a more well-developed and more applicable set of laws will be added on to the current set of principles. With a little tweaking, this book can be used as a guide for managers to lead effectively in their business regardless of field or their specific operations that is comprehensive to any business strategy.