I realized the other day that we haven’t talked much about Stephen Covey’s latest work. I had a post the week the book launched, but we haven’t done much since.

I opened my ears and let Technorati go to work. Here is what bloggers have been saying about The 8th Habit:

That Dwayne – Finding Your Voice

“This book is all about anchoring your actions and decisions to your values and passion, and about providing encouragement and opportunity to others to give them a chance to make Meaningful contributions. Easier than it sounds, of course, but a very inspiring concept.”

aaron21 – The 8th Habit

“The problem that Covey identifies in the first part of the book is that we are working in an Information Age, where the ideas that people contribute to organizations are the true assets in this new global economy. However, most organizations still operate in an Industrial Age mindset. In doing so, Knowledge Workers are often micro-managed, “carrot-and-sticked” and dehumanized. Leaders aren’t often in the actual position of leadership, and managers with operational control don’t always lead the people they’re responsible for. So how do organizations survive and thrive in a marketplace that values, no less demands innovative ideas? They need to model and grow the values that invite collaboration.”

Reba’s Blog – The 8th Habit

” Went roaming thru Stephen Covey’s new book, The Eighth Habit, at B&N today. It’s not on my purchase list, but I may venture into it in more depth, using the cool new hold’em for pick up option at the SAPL site.

What I did see in the, well – I hate to use the word “tome” here, but it was somewhat weighty. Okay, maybe just heavy. I digress. What I did see that I want to learn more about was an obvious focus upon the absence of trust within our current business culture, as well as a pervasive “what’s in it for me” -itis. This, coupled with a lack of what Covey calls “spiritual intelligence.” Wow. You think????…”

I picked up Howard Gardners book Changing Minds with the hope that it contained some sure fire tricks for getting people to come around and see things my way. Unfortunately, there are no such tricks, but there are some helpful ideas.

Howard Gardner begins the book by talking about theories of mind, how we acquire ideas, and how our minds change. He then transitions into chapters that present the levers of change, which are: reason, research, resonance, redescriptions, resources and rewards, real world events, and resistances. The rest of the book talks about these levers of change, how they work, when they work, and gives examples of them in action.

The book contained some very interesting information, with the following passage being one of the most striking:

Studies of moral development, for example, show that individuals at X stage of sophistication are likely to be persuaded by arguments that are couched at X+1 level of complexity. Thus, youngsters at the might = right level find convincing an argument that states that a person who is smart or moral might be more worthy of resources than a person with bigger muscles. If the complexity is greater, say +2 or +3 stages, then the youngsters cannot assimilate the argument and simply ignore it (arguments in terms of complex concepts like distributive justice or the categorical imperative fall on the deaf ears of ten-year-olds).

The passage made me wonder how much the quality of political debate in this country might improve if the educational system improved. It is also relevant to business in that when introducing a new product or service, you have to keep your explanation at a level that people can understand, or else they will just ignore your message.

Gardner ends the book by discussing changing ones own mind, and offers a summary of what we have learned. The trick in psychosurgery (i.e. mindchanging) is to accept the changes that will happen anyway, acknowledge that certain other changes may be impossible, and concentrate ones efforts on those changes of mind that are important, wont occur naturally, but can be achieved with sufficient effort and motivation. In other words, pick your battles wisely.

This book is pretty good overall, but is slow and technical in some places. This book would be most interesting to people who dont know much about psychology, or dont change their minds very often. The rest of you may find it too dry to finish.