Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

“Well, how come you can do it to employees?”
“Because they're in your employ.”
“I see. Are your employees devoted to you? Do they work hard? How's the
turnover?”
“Are you kidding? You can't find good people these days. There's too much
turnover, absenteeism, moonlighting. People just don't care anymore.”
That focus on golden eggs -- that attitude, that paradigm -- is totally
inadequate to tap into the powerful energies of the mind and heart of another
person. A short-term bottom line is important, but it isn't all-important.
Effectiveness lies in the balance. Excessive focus on P results in ruined
health, worn-out machines, depleted bank accounts, and broken relationships.
Too much focus on PC is like a person who runs for three or four hours a day,
bragging about the extra 10 years of life it creates, unaware he's spending them
running. Or a person endlessly going to school, never producing, living on other
people's golden eggs -- the eternal student syndrome.
To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg
(Production) and the health and welfare of the goose (Production Capability) is
often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of
effectiveness. It balances short term with long term. It balances going for the
grade and paying the price to get an education. It balances the desire to have a
room clean and the building of a relationship in which the child is internally
committed to do it -- cheerfully, willingly, without external supervision.
It's a principle you can see validated in your own life when you burn the
candle at both ends to get more golden eggs and wind up sick or exhausted,
unable to produce any at all; or when you get a good night's sleep and wake up
ready to produce throughout the day.
You can see it when you press to get your own way with someone and
somehow feel an emptiness in the relationship; or when you really take time to
invest in a relationship and you find the desire and ability to work together, to
communicate, takes a quantum leap.
The P/PC Balance is the very essence of effectiveness. It's validated in every
arena of life. We can work with it or against it, but it's there. It's a lighthouse. It's
the definition and paradigm of effectiveness upon which the Seven Habits in this
book are based.
How to Use This Book
Before we begin work on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I
would like to suggest two Paradigm Shifts that will greatly increase the value
you will receive from this material.
First, I would recommend that you not “see” this material as a book, in the