I am at a seminar by Stephen Covey titled "Managing Change in the Face of Crisis". I have been reading Covey for more than 20 years, but this is my first time to attend Covey in person. This also happens to be Covey's first time in Qatar.
Like millions of people, I benefited from Covey and his thinking and philosophy influenced me in many ways. And I still highly respect Covey and believe that his books and teachings are very valuable, and it feels good to be with him in the same room. Nevertheless, I am not sure if he was coming up with anything new in the past many years. This is the case today. He is presenting a nice collection of ideas, but they are all in the Seven Habit and a couple of his later book.
To be honest it looked a little like show business with the workers on the stage banging and unrolling a banner that says "Coffee Break"! And the title for the seminar was apparently meant to indicate that there is something specific on how weather the current crisis and some of the lessons learned that can prevent repeating them. But so far, a couple of hours into the seminar, there is nothing of that. It is more on paradigm shift, industrial vs. information economies, leadership vs management, natural laws, values and principles, abundance thinking, etc.
A line he said today summarizes this: "nothing fails like success", and I feel this somewhat applies to to him.
I also noticed that his delivery style is not very engaging as well. But this doesn't come as a surprise since I heard a number of his audio books and seminars.
But don't get me wrong, for the younger generation who haven't read his works, and for those who started late in giving attention to these topics, today's seminar would be of tremendous benefit, even life changing to some, and that's more than worth.
I have to take off early, and based on the above, I don't think I will miss much. But for those who didn't read Covey, please do. You will learn a lot, and hopefully change a lot!
1 comment:
ummm,
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