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Return to Rio: Expanding the Covey model
AN ORGANISING FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING SUSTAINABILITY
How to bring sustainable development and the environment to a wider audience in
both government and business? The initial reason to write this was to develop a
framework for teaching Local SustainAbility, a methodology of Environ, a leading
Leicester-based environmental consultancy, so their work could be readily replicated.
Stephen Covey, author of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” seemed to
suggest a good starting point. Covey’s work, based on principle-centredness, is totally
congruent with sustainable development principles, building a positive shared
language around being proactive, win-win thinking, new paradigms, and building
synergy.
Covey’s mental models suggest a new way to look at the ‘overlap’ of environmental
issues with society and economics. And they hint that inner work on community
building will be needed to achieve effective, sustainable environmental change.
BACKGROUND – CONFLICTING VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
Environ have been engaged in the practice field of sustainable development for some
time, and synthesised their experience in a series of publications ‘Local
Sustainability’. Environ are working towards an environmental manifesto, and are
increasingly invited to train groups in the public and private sector who want to
replicate their results.
A series of development plans have been proposed in Leicester in the last few years,
from three different perspectives – economic, social and environmental. Each has in
turn been opposed by the other two groups. Environ have now brought together the
Millennium Partnership – a group of leaders from all three sectors – private, public
and voluntary, to try to create a single shared vision.
The group has been shown Peter Senge’s (The Fifth Discipline) model of Learning
Organisations, which sets the stage for a learning group to develop a shared vision,
but it doesn’t show how to coalesce three divergent visions in a unified framework.
This dilemma of partially overlapping visions for economic, social and environmental
development was identified at the Rio Earth Summit, and plagued the more recent
Kyoto environmental summit on global warning.
THE PROBLEM WITH THE RIO EARTH SUMMIT MODEL
The Rio Earth Summit brought out the by now familiar Agenda 21 model of three
overlapping circles representing Environmental, Social and Economic issues. This is
the first thing people usually describe when explaining the Earth Summit. Leaders
agreed that a single focus on protecting the environment wouldn’t work. To develop
sustainably, we must also look after our communities, and have productive
economies.
How Much Overlap?
With a model based on overlapping circles, it’s
hard to see where alignment is going to come.
The model actually recognises and gives strength
to potential conflicts of interest. This may sound
simplistic, but as Covey says “The way you see
the problem is the problem.”
With this overlapping circle model, people can
easily say, “I don’t see any overlap. There’s no
reason for me to care about ecology. ” And then
dismiss sustainability as something for others.
Even the work of a dedicated, resourceful, single
focus agency in Leicester, Environ, has had an
uphill task getting a group of leaders to see an
overlap might occur. And even when they do see
it, they still tend to ‘fight their own corner,’
looking out for their own limited self-interest.
And who’s to say they are wrong in this?
On Covey’s Seven Habits course we soon learn
that when we get frustrated looking at a problem
one way, what is needed is a paradigm shift. A
new way to see the problem. Because the
problem is the way we see the problem.
Social
Environment
Economic
Or...
?
Social
Environment
!
?
?
Economic
FINDING SYNERGIES IN STEPHEN COVEY’S MODEL
Covey uses a lot of mental models based on circles. ‘Circle of Influence – Circle of
Concern’ is one very important mental model – The environment - saving the whales
- may well be in my circle of concern, but is it in my circle of influence? Covey
shows we are most effective when working in our circle of influence. This model
helps decide where to act for maximum effect, maximum empowerment. And this
explains why people will tend to focus their
efforts in their ‘Rio’ circle.
Organisational
Interestingly, one key circle diagram, which
builds on ‘Circle of Influence’, is missing from
Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People. It’s the inside-out change model from
his second book Principle-Centred Leadership.
‘Myself’ is always in my circle of influence. So
I can work on myself, the inner circle. And
when I am trustworthy I can expand my circle
of influence to build a trusting relationship with
you. This is the core 7 Habits model.
Managerial
Inter Personal
Personal
Trustworthiness
Trust
Empowerment
Two further circles are drawn round this to
Alignment
expand the circle of influence model to the task
of leadership of organisations. The principle is the same – that effectiveness begins
with inner work. In Principle-Centred Leadership, organisational effectiveness is
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achieved by the inner work of empowering groups and teams (Covey called this circle
managerial) then aligning them within the organisation.
Inside-Out Change – Four Levels of Leadership
Level
Principle
1
Personal
Be Trustworthy
2
Interpersonal
Trust
3
Managerial (Group/Team)
Empowerment
4
Organisational
Alignment
This diagram above does appear right at the start of the Seven Habits Course
Workbook (page 6). Participants are told that Seven Habits will focus primarily on
levels 1 and 2, whereas the Principle-Centred Leadership Course will develop the
theme at levels 3 and 4.
Let’s look at this diagram slightly differently, with the Rio model of society,
economics and the environment in mind. The inner two circles are really about
society, i.e. relationships. The outer two are about the Economy (Business, PrincipleCentred Leadership). Can’t we expand and add in the environment?
What makes these sets of circles in the inside-out change paradigm concentric is the
idea of expanding circle of influence – and the common core of principle-centredness.
If sustainable development is right environmental methodology, it should overlap too.
This diagram suggests a way to improve on Rio, and integrate Covey and
Sustainability
THE NEW IMPROVED COVEY-RIO MODEL
The breakthrough is to add a couple more
circles to the circle of influence model, and then
see the three Rio circles as fully overlapping –
completely concentric. See everything from this
perspective, and it all fits in place.
Until you see it, this insight isn’t obvious,
because Covey’s circles aren’t labelled
Economic and Social, they are labelled ‘Seven
Habits’ and ‘Principle-Centred Leadership’,
and there’s no environment in his overlapping
circles, because Circle of Influence only goes as
far as organisation. But once you seen the new
paradigm, you can’t forget it.
Combined Covey / Rio Model
Environment
Economic
Social
What we see is a new way of looking at the Rio
Model. The Rio circles don’t overlap an arbitrary amount any more, they overlap
100%, because they are concentric. They’re all on the same axle of principlecentredness. For anyone who previously said, “the overlap isn’t enough to affect me,”
now there’s no excuse. This paradigm suggests we always should be able to find
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synergy and win-win if we are willing to look for it. How would this have reshaped
the outcome of the Kyoto summit?
N.B.: There isn’t a course yet for the outer circle – that’s the opportunity we have,
to create a new training programme, to add unique value and to create synergy.
FURTHER IMPLICATIONS OF THE COMBINED COVEY / RIO MODEL
The way we make the Rio circles converge and become concentric is by conducting
business and society in an ethical, principle-centred manner. If all circles spin on an
axle of principle-centredness, they are all concentric. The importance and value of the
central implicit paradigm – that ethics and principle-centredness matter – simply
cannot be overstated. If the environment circle is also to be concentric, it has to be
because the principles of sustainable development are also ethical.
As Seven Habits is split into an inner and outer circle – personal and interpersonal,
and Principle-Centred Leadership is also subdivided into Team / Group and
Organisation, we are tempted to make an intuitive leap and suggest the Environment
might be subdivided, with organising principles for the inner and outer circles.
Three Circles of Concern – Six Levels of Leadership
Circle
Level
Social
Seven Habits
Economic
PCL
Environmental
Sustainability
Principle
inner Personal
Be Trustworthy
outer Interpersonal
Trust
inner Group / Team
Empowerment
outer Organisation
Alignment
inner Community
Acceptance
outer Environment
Care / Service
This is not a detailed proposal for the course on sustainable development. Nor is it
even a proposal for how to go about developing the course. But it is the germ of an
idea for that course, showing it is consistent with an extension of Covey’s principles.
The discipline of using a strong ordering structure for an educational experience is
not unlike that of writing poetry vs. writing prose. It turns out that fitting ideas to a
metre enhances creativity rather than hinders.
PARADIGMS, PRINCIPLES PRACTICES, PROJECTS!
In the Seven Habits course workbook, each habit is subdivided into principles,
paradigms, and practices. As sustainability is the outer green circle of three, the most
expressed and concrete value, the course on sustainability must also be related to
action – practices and projects.
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A good way to break old habits in organisations is to bypass the
old hierarchical power structures via cross-functional teams
working on projects. If businesses get involved in their
communities and environmental projects, this will be even better.
All improvement takes
place project by
project, and in no other
way.
J. M. Juran.
This training is a profound structure for environmental back-towork schemes. It is a unified training in life skills, principle-centredness,
relationships, teamwork, leadership, community building, and care for the
environment. What could be more satisfying and complete?
ACCELERATED LEARNING FRAMEWORK
We can copy the success of UK Covey courses –
accelerated learning activations help create
effective guided learning experiences. It makes
sense to use best practice to carry the message.
By involving all our learning intelligences the
experience comes alive, and recall and
comprehension increase.
Content
Activation
The course content is surely as important as the
way it is delivered – we want people to take on
board the principles and processes of
Structure
sustainability. We don’t just want accelerated
learning activations; we also need a strong cognitive framework to carry the content,
and powerful, memorable mental models. In the Covey courses Covey, these
diagrams and models act as a mental framework for recalling the content, principles
and processes.
BUILDING COMMUNITY
We’ve already figured from using the Covey model for sustainability, that there is a
‘private victory’ associated with the ‘public victory’ of sustainable development. This
inner value, the private victory that must happen first, is building community.
Many want to leap into saving the environment – the most expanded possible circle of
concern, but to look at building community – our circle of influence – before leaping
to save the whales is a profound idea and a direct result of using the Covey model.
The implications are far reaching. Businesses which want to help their wider
community must first create internal community. And sustainable environmental
development first requires sustainable communities. So, how to build community?
Scott Peck’s work “The Different Drum” is the best source of theory on community
building. For practice, the Foundation for Community Encouragement (FCE) and
Community Building in Britain (CBiB) have grown from Peck’s work and are good
for workshop facilitators, training materials, and research on community building.
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Gerald McCloud, founder of the Iona Community,
says community is built through “a strenuous and
virtuous work.” A community that is formed around a
great task itself creates synergy, which we experience
as something greater than ourselves, something holy,
sacred. This holiness / wholeness is awe-inspiring.
But we can create wholeness, and so we can choose to
make any ground holy.
Dee Hock, Founder of VISA, has some great ideas
about how to build organisational community. At
VISA he created an example of what he calls a
“Chaord” – a chaotically ordered, organic, selforganising, self-replicating system. VISA has
propagated rapidly, almost like a virus, through the
traditional banking community.
You may make a mistake, you may
make a bad gamble, but in the long
run you’re acting on a principle
that has the backing of evolution.
This is the way biological evolution
goes on – constant delegation of
authority. Obviously democracy is
superior to monarchy. It was De
Tocqueville who said that
democracy is always right, but for
the wrong reasons. Because there is
operating in a democracy the
principle that Buckminster Fuller
called synergy. Synergy is the
intelligence of a highly complex
system, the nature of which is
always unknown to the individual
members.
Alan Watts
Chaords have organising principles, which are so
compelling that replication is inevitable. The Internet
is another example of compelling principles setting a
standard. If community building and sustainable
development can become Chaordic, the desired result
of rapid growth and propagation of the ideas and practice will be achieved. It makes
sense then to research and incorporate Dee Hock’s work.
SEVEN HABITS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Covey’s Seven Habits Model places personal and interpersonal
on a ‘maturity continuum’ from dependence through
independence and on to interdependence, with three Habits on
the personal level, and three Habits for interpersonal. The
Seventh Habit is Sharpen the Saw – i.e. sustaining. The same
structure is in Principle-Centred Leadership.
Interdependence
Independence
This structure may work to organise principles of Sustainability.
Dependence
Three habits for building community, three for creating an ideal
environment? If the model is good, any gap that needs filling will
indicate a place where the model is incomplete. The inner and outer structure for each
of the three Rio levels makes sense. The subdivision into three (see, do, get – or
thinker, process of thinking, thought) is in tune with deep natural principles.
ORGANISATIONAL CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE
“Circle of Influence – Circle of Concern” is a foundation principle from Seven
Habits. It’s interesting to see how this applies in practice with the growth of a large
organisation. Here is an example of expanding organisational circle of influence, as it
grows beyond the confines of fulfilling the organisation’s own needs for survival.
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Mr. Kaku, chairman of Canon, explains
very clearly how Canon first shifted into
community (stage 2), then expanded into
its wider community (stage 3) before fully
expanding to a world role (stage 4). It’s a
clear description of broadening Canon’s
Circle of Influence into the outer
community and environment rings of the
Covey / Rio model.
If this is to the template for how many
organisations grow into world citizenship,
as Kaku suggests, Covey provides the tools
in Seven Habits to establish a business in
Stage 1 (Effectiveness).
Principle-Centred Leadership fills the same
role for Stage 2, in which individual and
team visions become aligned with the
organisation’s. Many Covey clients are at
this point and poised for this next step. It
seems a timely opportunity to build tools to
help business and organisations move into
community and on into world service.
Companies truly are the economic engines
driving society, so it makes sense to design
a training programme that teaches the
principles of shifting through Kaku’s
stages, to connect the engine to the wheels.
This is what the Sustainable Development
book and course can be about – creating
effective organisational communities and
linking them with the wider community.
The evolution of a company has four stages.
The first stage is purely capitalistic, which
leads to labour-management conflicts, low
morale and trust, broken and breaking
relationships, and is driven by a narrow focus
on stakeholder needs
Overcoming these problems, the company
reaches the second stage where labour /
management relations are based on shared
destiny. All people in the company are treated
as equals. “Management with a common
destiny invites all the parties to share their joys
and sorrows as well as their prosperity.” Few
companies ever evolve to this stage but
overemphasis on this type of solidarity can
create a gap between the corporation and
society.
So in the third stage, the company is
considerate of its local community and makes
contributions to it. But the company may
eliminate the barrier between itself and the
local community only to provoke friction at the
international level.
This eventually leads to the fourth stage, where
a company is committed to serving humankind
as a whole through its philosophy and
activities. Canon today takes responsibility in
areas such as the growing imbalance between
rich and poor, and the depletion of the world’s
natural resources and the destruction of the
environment.
Mr Kaku, Chairman of Canon
Kaku’s ideas show the way forward for
others. It will be very timely to have a
training programme to help organisations work on building their influence in the
widest and most expanded circle of concern – their community and the environment.
SYNERGY – CO-MARKETING WITH COVEY
Covey literally wrote the book on creating synergy – Seven Habits. The recent merger
with Franklin shows Covey is open to new synergy. The ideas contained in this paper
are suggestions for one more big step – synergy with community and the
environment.
Covey’s courses often create a sense of community and a shared language for
personal and organisational growth. They are warmed up to the potential of
community. But Covey’s group lacks expertise in Community Building, so facilitators
trained by the Foundation for Community Encouragement could be synergistic with
Covey trainers.
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Similarly, CB facilitators will typically not have the full knowledge of how to carry
through a full corporate diagnostic and culture change, and aren’t likely to be able to
fulfil a client’s needs, but in concert with Covey trainers, they’d be a winning team.
For environmentalists, it makes sense to use Covey to take ecology to business.
Mischievous scamps can think of Covey as a Trojan Horse for the environmental
agenda in business. The idea that community building must precede effective
environmental action will make sense to many environmentalists, and challenge
others.
Currently there are separate languages for development in the private, public and
voluntary sectors, which tends to confound communication. The new model creates
the basis for better communication, through a convergence of language in all 3
sectors.
A HOLISTIC SCHEME FOR DEVELOPING SOCIETY
Covey’s inside-out change model is developed into a complete integrated approach to
developing every level of society. No single group has the tools to implement and
teach this approach, so it makes sense to build a collaborative strategic partnership.
These three circles match 3 of 4 stages in the ancient Indian Vedic ideal of society.
The first stage is student, bramacharya, learning and growing up (7 Habits). The next
is marriage and following the family dharma – action and success in the world (PCL).
The third shifts to taking a parental role, making a contribution to society as a whole –
a role of servant leadership and sustainable development. Each stage is a circle in our
model. Fourthly – the undrawn circle – we retire to the forest to seek enlightenment.
This further Vedic insight suggests that our new third course should be aimed at those
in government or entering this third age in life, preparing to take a paternal role in
community and society. And perhaps also those working at a high strategic level in
business and organisations. It’s about shaping society with a wise touch, bringing
light so that strategies, structures and enterprises are fruitful and sustainable.
Seven Habits has a spin-off course – First Things First – to make the practices very
clear, and Principle-Centred Leadership has a process – the Performance Cycle
Review – to turn the principles into practice. Similarly, it’s quite likely our new
programme will end up with a companion piece – perhaps around running projects
effectively.
David Saunders, December 1997
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