The Stephen Covey insights you’ve not heard a million times before

By Neil Patrick

Today I've been revisiting the work of the late great Stephen Covey and his best-selling work “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” The book has topped the best seller lists selling more than 25 million copies worldwide since its first publication in 1989.

Most of us have at least an awareness of this book and its ideas.

But it’s so old! Covey proposed that his teachings were universal and unchanging. But 1989 was a different world and the question I had was, is this still relevant today?

Stephen R Covey
Source:By Abras2010 (FMI Show_Palestrante_Stephen Covey)

It turns out that Covey had already answered this question. Much less well known than the Seven Habits book is its sequel, Covey's 2004 book; "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness".

In this book, Covey recognised that mere effectiveness would not suffice in what he called "The Knowledge Worker Age". He said that, "The challenges and complexity we face today are of a different order of magnitude." The 8th habit essentially urged: "Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs…"

This slideshare from Sompong Yusoontorn summarises the book very well:

The 8th Habit By Stephen R. Covey - Summary from Sompong Yusoontorn

In the Seven Habits book, Covey described the opposing ideologies of the scarcity mentality and the abundance mentality. An outlook which views the world as one of scarcity, stimulates primitive urges of possession and control.

The more scarce we view something to be, the stronger the urge to try to control and possess it becomes.

And one thing there is a scarcity of is jobs.

The scarcity mentality is the default setting for how most people view the world. Our whole society is built on it. Competition for scarce resources is the very nature of the capitalist system. Acquisition and ownership are the goal and we are encouraged to view those who own the most to be the most successful. The whole system encourages a win-lose outlook which is the antithesis of a collaborative society.

And the collaborative society is the future. Whilst on the one hand technology may be the biggest destroyer of work yet experienced by mankind, it is paradoxically also the greatest ever enabler of opportunities.

The Abundance Mentality flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity.

The Abundance Mentality takes personal joy, satisfaction and fulfillment and turns it outward, appreciating the uniqueness, the inner direction, the qualities of others. It recognizes the unlimited possibilities for positive interactive growth and development, creating new Third Alternatives.

Success does not mean victory over other people. It means success in effective interaction that brings mutually beneficial results to everyone involved. ...Public Victory is an outgrowth of the Abundance Mentality paradigm.

Regardless of the growth or demise of capitalism, those who engage in collaborative solutions to problems will have the brightest futures.

Those who retreat into possessiveness, isolationism and protectiveness, will sooner or later become marginalized and irrelevant.

To quote Covey : “The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life”.

Is artificial intelligence the greatest threat to human existence?

By Neil Patrick

Here’s a clip from the Rubin Report in which Elon Musk states “AI is like summoning the demon”.

Interesting coming from someone who more than most people is at the forefront of understanding and developing high tech future businesses.

Does he know something we don’t?





The ensuing discussion in the clip seems to miss the point. Rubin’s mates have been watching too many dystopian movies and playing too many computer games in which robots go on killing sprees I suspect.

I wonder if the real reason Elon Musk is so cautionary about AI isn’t because we’re at risk of being slaughtered by evil robots, but because he can see that technological development is now outstripping the abilities of our current political, economic and social systems to keep up.

And that this situation means we have 21st century technology but 20th century political, education, economic, social and legal systems.

The outcome of this two speed society is that jobs will disappear faster than ever…and no jobs equals no money. And in our world, no money is effectively extinction…?

Is this what he’s really hinting at?

Is it ageist that you may be turned down for a mortgage because you are over 40?

By Neil Patrick

Daily Mail 25 Nov 2014: “Over 40? Then you CAN'T have a mortgage: Banks are now rejecting borrowers who would still be paying off loan in retirement”.

This headline caught my eye today. And as is often the case with the Daily Mail, it’s a thinly disguised attempt at sensationalism. Nonetheless, I think it is very significant news, but not because of the implied injustices it alleges.

The essence of the "story" is that new research found that people aged over 40 seeking a standard 25-year mortgage are finding their options restricted because (assuming their mortgage runs its full term - which they rarely do) they will be borrowing beyond the “normal” retirement age of 65.

The new Mortgage Market Review (MMR) rules, which came into force in April, mean that lenders have to spend more time considering whether home buyers can afford the mortgages they are applying for. - not a bad thing at all in my view.

The report released yesterday by the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) stated that "interpretations" of the MMR have convinced many banks that lending into retirement now carries extra risk if borrowers go on to find that their retirement income is less than expected.

Mortgage lenders have typically applied an upper age limit of 65 for decades now. So this point isn't really anything new.

I think the real story here isn’t about mortgages and whether or not we get accepted or rejected for one when we apply. The simple facts are that lending is and always has been priced according to lenders’ rules around risk assessment. Basically, the higher the perceived risk, the higher the cost of the loan.

But if one lender rejects your application, there will almost always be others that will accept it, albeit at a higher price and/or on different terms.

Banks and lenders get a hard time from the media. Often, it is justified. Sometimes it’s not. In this case, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they were not making stricter assessments, they’d be criticised for encouraging over-indebtedness. By applying tougher rules, they are criticised for making mortgages less easily available to some people.

So as far as the new assessment rules are concerned, it’s really not a story.

No, the real story is far behind the headlines.

What is significant I think is what this news reveals about how banks currently view the financial prospects for people aged over 40 in the UK.

Looked at in this way, this news is a bombshell.

Forget the MMR rules, this news tells us that as far as the banks are concerned, the income prospects of people over 40 are very weak. Make no mistake, if a bank is happy that you can afford to repay a mortgage or other loan, they’ll be happy to lend you the money (and of course take the interest too).

So the MMR gripes are a smokescreen. And this isn’t a new form of age discrimination.

But it is a very troubling indication, that those whose business it is to understand the outlook for our incomes have decided that despite rising house prices, the outlook for most peoples' incomes remain very fragile indeed.