Summary of Stephen Covey Speech in Riyadh that I Attended Back in June 1998 with @dabalnk & @maalatif

On Wednesday 6/3/98, I attended "Change & Principle-Centered Leadership for the 21st Century in Riyadh. The session was given by Dr. Stephen Covey. Here is a summary of the session:

He summarized the session with the following practical points that could be implemented immediately to benefit from the session:

- In the next 48 hours teach what you have learned twice; once to a loved one and another to a working associates. The best way to learn is to teach. The fastest way to get is to give and share. When you start
thinking to always to teach what you learn, your concentration will increase dramatically. Teaching always should occur immediately after learning.

- Get serious on mission statements starting with your own personal mission statement. What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of contribution you want to make throughout your life? How do you want others to remember you after have long gone? The focus of the mission
statement should be your contributions. What value are going to add? Ensure that community work is central to your contribution. At work, the mission statement should be owned by the whole workgroup. For a large organization, the mission statement should be written by about 20-30 people. Then distributed to everyone in the organization for comments.

After the comments are incorporated, it should be sent again for review. He said only after 2 or 3 times of distribution do some people think that their organization is serious about this mission statement.

The main reason for failure of mission statements is lack of ownership. They get written by a few, shared and in most cases forgotten afterwards until the next exercise.
If everyone in the organization feels it is his mission statement and it is not handed to him by upper management, only then will everyone make it a success. He also talked about the universal mission statement:

"To increase the economic well-being and quality of life of all stakeholders."

- Think of one person where the relationship between you and him has broken, and do whatever it takes to rebuild that relationship. You could go and say I haven't been a good listener. I want to be. Apologizing makes others feel you are quite personal & reachable.

- Double the time you spend in Quadrant II (Important but not urgent). This includes preparation, prevention, values clarification, planning, relationship building, and empowerment. Research has shown that 50-60% of a person's time is spent in Quadrant III (Urgent but not improtant).

This includes needless interruptions, unnecessary reports, unimportant meetings, phone calls, mail, e-mail, and other people minor issues. After a while, double the time spent in Quadrant II again.

Spend more time on being a role model, and on teaching.

- Take time to 'sharpen the saw' everyday. This includes the mental, physical, social, and spiritual. He said that for Muslims the 5 times a day prayer is one of the best for 'sharpening the spiritual saw.' He said that waking up at 3:30 in the morning to do the Fajr prayer everyday is unmatched in any other culture. He warned of being 'too busy driving to fill up gas only to find out we ran out of gas.' Work on the assumption you had a heart attack. On your professional life, assume the half life is 3 years; don't think it is permanent.

The session also included a short address by Prince Sultan bin Salman, the Saudi Austronaut, who emphasized some interesting points:

- The oganization and its members should have wide interaction with the community. We are approaching a future that will be quite competitive. We should be competing for the good of the community.

- The Saudi culture in specific and the Muslim culture in general is based on principled. He muzed, this being the case, that we should have paid half price for the lecture since we are already meeting Principled Center Leadership half way by default.

- We already have 5 conferences a day everyday which are the building blocks of principles.