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Chapter 1

THE PAIN

LISTEN TO THE VOICES:

“I’m stuck, I’m in a rut.”

Another, I have no life. I’m burned out exhausted.”

Another , no one really values or appreciates me. My boss doesn’t have a clue of all I’m capable of.”

Another,I don’t feel especially needed, not at work, not by my teenage and grown children, not by my neighbors and community, not by my spouse except to pay the bills.

Another, I’m frustrated and discouraged.

Another, I’m just not making enough to make ends meet. I never seem to get ahead.

Another, maybe I just don’t have what it takes.

Another, I’m not making a difference.

Another, I feel empty inside. My life lacks meaning; something’s missing.”

Another, I’m angry. I’m scared. I can’t afford to lose my job.

Another, I’m lonely.

Another, I’m stressed out; everything’s urgent.

Another, I’m micromanaged and suffocating.

Another, I’m sick of all the backstabbing politics and kissing up.

Another, I’m bored, just putting in my time. Most of my satisfactions come off the job.

Another, I’m beat up to get the numbers. The pressure to produce is unbelievable. I simply don’t have the time or resources to do it all.

Another, with a spouse who doesn’t understand and kids who don’t listen or obey, home is no better than work.”

Another, if only people understood, they come to realize I can’t change things.

THESE ARE THE TYPICAL VOICES of people at work and at home voices of literally millions of parents, laborers, service providers, managers, professionals and executives all over the world who are fighting to make it in the new reality. The pain is personal, and it’s deep. You may relate with many of the statements yourself. As Carl Rogers once said, “What is most personal is most general.”

Of course some people are engaged, contributing and energized in their work, but far too few. I frequently ask large audiences, How many agree that the vast majority of the workforce in your organization possesses far more talent, intelligence, capability and creativity than their present jobs require or even allow? The overwhelming majority of the people raise their hands, and this is with groups all over the world. About the same percentage acknowledge that they are under immense pressure to produce more for less. Just think about it. People face a new and increasing expectation to produce more for less in a terribly complex world, yet they are simply not allowed to use a significant portion of their talents and intelligence.

In no way is this pain more clearly or practically manifest in organizations than in their inability to focus on and execute their highest priorities. Using what we call the xQ (Execution Quotient) Questionnaire*, Harris Interactive, the originators of the Harris Poll, recently polled 23,000 U.S. residents employed full time within key industries† and in key functional areas.‡ Consider a few of their most stunning findings: • Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why.

• Only 1 in 5 was enthusiastic about their team’s and organization’s goals.

• Only 1 in 5 workers said they have a clear “line of sight” between their tasks and their team’s and organization’s goals.

• Only half were satisfied with the work they have accomplished at the end of the week.

• Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals.

• Only 15 percent felt they worked in a high-trust environment.

• Only 17 percent felt their organization fosters open communication that is respectful of differing opinions and that results in new and better ideas.

• Only 10 percent felt that their organization holds people accountable for results.

• Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for.

• Only 13 percent have high-trust, highly cooperative working relationships with other groups or departments.

If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only four of the eleven players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only two of the eleven would care. Only two of the eleven would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but two players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.

The data is sobering. It matches my own experience with people in organizations of every kind all around the world. Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for. They are neither fulfilled nor excited. They are frustrated. They are not clear about where the organization is headed or what its highest priorities are. They are bogged down and distracted. Most of all, they don’t feel they can change much. Can you imagine the personal and organizational cost of failing to fully engage the passion, talent and intelligence of the workforce? It is far greater than all taxes, interest charges and labor costs put together!

WHY AN 8TH HABIT?

The world has profoundly changed since The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was published in 1989. The challenges and complexity we face in our personal lives and relationships, in our families, in our professional lives, and in our organizations are of a different order of magnitude. In fact, many mark 1989—the year we witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall—as the beginning of the Information Age, the birth of a new reality, a sea change of incredible significance—truly a new era.

Many have asked whether the 7 Habits are still relevant in today’s new reality. My answer is always the same: The greater the change and more difficult the challenges, the more relevant they become. You see, the 7 Habits are about becoming highly effective. They represent a complete framework of universal, timeless principles of character and human effectiveness.

Being effective as individuals and organizations is no longer optional in today’s world—it’s the price of entry to the playing field. But surviving, thriving, innovating, excelling and leading in this new reality will require us to build on and reach beyond effectiveness. The call and need of a new era is for greatness. It’s for fulfillment, passionate execution, and significant contribution. These are on a different plane or dimension. They are different in kind—just as significance is different in kind, not in degree, from success. Tapping into the higher reaches of human genius and motivation—what we could call voice—requires a new mind-set, a new skill-set, a new tool-set …a new habit.

The 8th Habit, then, is not about adding one more habit to the 7—one that somehow got forgotten. It’s about seeing and harnessing the power of a third dimension to the 7 Habits that meets the central challenge of the new Knowledge Worker Age. This 8th Habit is to Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs.

The 8th Habit represents the pathway to the enormously promising side of today’s reality. It stands in stark contrast to the pain and frustration I’ve been describing. In fact, it is a timeless reality. It is the voice of the human spirit—full of hope and intelligence, resilient by nature, boundless in its potential to serve the common good. This voice also encompasses the soul of organizations that will survive, thrive and profoundly impact the future of the world.

Voice is unique personal significance—significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges and which makes us equal to them.

As illustrated in Figure 1.2, voice lies at the nexus of talent (your natural gifts and strengths), passion (those things that naturally energize, excite, motivate and inspire you), need (including what the world needs enough to pay you for), and conscience (that still, small voice within that assures you of what is right and that prompts you to actually do it). When you engage in work that taps your talent and fuels your passion—that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet—therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul’s code.

There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life. The exponential, revolutionary explosion of the internet is one of the most powerful modern manifestations of this truth. The internet is perhaps the perfect symbol of the new world, of the Information/Knowledge Worker economy, and of the dramatic changes that have occurred. In their 1999 book, Cluetrain Manifesto, authors Locke, Levine, Searls and Weinberger put it this way: All of us are finding our voices again. Learning how to talk to one another. . . . Inside, outside, there’s a conversation going on today that wasn’t happening at all five years ago and hasn’t been very much in evidence since the Industrial Revolution began. Now, spanning the planet via Internet and Worldwide Web, this conversation is so vast, so multifaceted, that trying to figure out what it is about is futile. It’s about a billion years of pent up hopes and fears and dreams coded in serpentine double helixes, the collective flashback déjà vu of our strange perplexing species. Something ancient, elemental, sacred, something very, very funny that’s broken loose in the pipes and wires of the twenty-first century.

There are millions and millions of threads in this conversation, but at the beginning and end of each one is a human being. . . .

This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice. The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice.2 Rather than further describe voice, let me illustrate it through the true story of one man. When I met Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank a unique organization established for the sole purpose of extending microcredit to the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. I asked him when and how he had gained his vision. He said he didn’t have any vision to begin with. He simply saw someone in need, tried to fill it, and the vision evolved. Muhammad Yunus’s vision of a poverty free world was set in motion with an event on the streets of Bangladesh. While interviewing him for my syndicated column* on Leadership, he shared his story with me: It all started twenty-five years ago. I was teaching economics at a university in Bangladesh. The country was in the middle of a famine. I felt terrible. Here I was, teaching the elegant theories of economics in the classroom with all the enthusiasm of a brand-new Ph.D. from the United States. But I would walk out of the classroom and see skeletons all around me, people waiting to die.

I felt that whatever I had learned, whatever I was teaching, was all make-believe stories, with no meaning for people’s lives. So I started trying to find out how people lived in the village next door to the university campus. I wanted to find out whether there was anything I could do as a human being to delay or stop the death, even for one single person. I abandoned the bird’s-eye view that lets you see everything from above, from the sky. I assumed a worm’s-eye view, trying to find whatever comes right in front of you, smell it, touch it, see if you can do something about it.

One particular incident took me in a new direction. I met a woman who was making bamboo stools. After a long discussion, I found out that she made only two U.S. pennies each day. I couldn’t believe anybody could work so hard and make such beautiful bamboo stools yet make such a tiny amount of profit. She explained to me that because she didn’t have the money to buy the bamboo to make the stools, she had to borrow from the trader, and the trader imposed the condition that she had to sell the product to him alone, at a price that he decided.

And that explains the two pennies, she was virtually in bonded labor to this person. And how much did the bamboo cost? She said, “Oh, about twenty cents. For a very good one twenty-five cents.” I thought, “People suffer for twenty cents and there is nothing anyone can do about it?” I debated whether I should give her twenty cents, but then I came up with another idea. let me make a list of people who needed that kind of money. I took a student of mine and we went around the village for several days and came up with a list of forty-two such people. When I added up the total amount they needed, I got the biggest shock of my life: It added up to twenty-seven dollars! I felt ashamed of myself for being part of a society which could not provide even twenty-seven dollars to forty-two hardworking, skilled human beings.

To escape that shame, I took the money out of my pocket and gave it to my student. I said, “You take this money and give it to those forty-two people that we met and tell them this is a loan, but they can pay me back whenever they are able to. In the meantime, they can sell their products wherever they can get a good price.” All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.3

EDMUND BURKE

After receiving the money, they were very excited. And seeing that excitement made me think, “What do I do now?” I thought of the bank branch which was located on the campus of the university, and I went to the manager and suggested that he lend money to the poor people that I had met in the village. He fell from the sky! He said, “You are crazy. It’s impossible. How could we lend money to poor people? They are not creditworthy.” I pleaded with him and said, “At least give it a try, find out—it’s only a small amount of money.” He said, “No. Our rules don’t permit it. They cannot offer collateral, and such a tiny amount is not worth lending.” He suggested that I see the high officials in the banking hierarchy in Bangladesh.

I took his advice and went to the people who matter in the banking section. Everybody told me the same thing. Finally, after several days of running around, I offered myself as a guarantor. “I’ll guarantee the loan, I’ll sign whatever they want me to sign, and they can give me the money and I’ll give it to the people that I want to.” So that was the beginning. They warned me repeatedly that the poor people who receive the money will never pay it back. I said, “I’ll take a chance.” And the surprising thing was, they repaid me every penny. I got very excited and came to the manager and said, “Look, they pay back, there’s no problem.” But he said, “Oh, no, they’re just fooling you. Soon they will take more money and never pay you back.” So I gave them more money, and they paid me back. I told this to him, but he said, “Well, maybe you can do it in one village, but if you do it in two villages it won’t work.” And I hurriedly did it in two villages—and it worked.

So it became a kind of struggle between me and the bank manager and his colleagues in the highest positions. They kept saying that a larger number, five villages probably, will show it. So I did it in five villages, and it only showed that everybody paid back. Still they didn’t give up. They said, “Ten villages. Fifty villages. One hundred villages.” And so it became a kind of contest between them and me. I came up with results they could not deny because it was their money I was giving, but they would not accept it because they are trained to believe that poor people are not reliable. Luckily, I was not trained that way so I could believe whatever I was seeing, as it revealed itself. But the bankers’ minds, their eyes were blinded by the knowledge they had.

Finally, I had the thought, Why am I trying to convince them? I am totally convinced that poor people can take money and pay it back. Why don’t we set up a separate bank? That excited me, and I wrote down the proposal and went to the government to get the permission to set up a bank. It took me two years to convince the government.

On October 2nd 1983, we became a bank a formal, independent bank. And what excitement for all of us, now that we had our own bank and we could expand as we wished. And expand we did.

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world.

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

Grameen Bank now works in more than 46,000 villages in Bangladesh, through 1,267 branches and over 12,000 staff members. They have lent more than $4.5 billion, in loans of twelve to fifteen dollars, averaging under $200. Each year they lend about half a billion dollars. They even lend to beggars to help them come out of begging and start selling. A housing loan is three hundred dollars. These are small numbers to those of us in business. But think in terms of the individual impact: To lend $500 million annually required 3.7 million people, 96 percent of whom are women, to make a decision that they could and would take steps to change their lives and the lives of their families; 3.7 million people had to decide that they were capable of creating change; 3.7 million people survived the sleepless night to show up trembling but committed at the Grameen office the next morning. At the heart of this empowerment lies individual women who chose individually and in synergistic norm-producing groups to become self-reliant, independent entrepreneurs producing goods out of their own homes or neighborhoods or backyards to become economically viable and successful. They found their voices.

As I have studied and interviewed some of the world’s great leaders, I noticed that their sense of vision and voice has usually evolved slowly. I am sure there are exceptions. Some may have a vision of what is possible suddenly burst upon their consciousness. But generally speaking, I find that vision comes as people sense human need and respond to their conscience in trying to meet that need. And when they meet that need, they see another, and meet that, and on and on. Little by little, they begin to generalize this sense of need and start thinking of ways to institutionalize their efforts so they can be sustained.

Muhammad Yunus is an example of a man who did exactly that—sensed human need and responded to conscience by applying his talent and passion to meet that need—first personally, then in building trust and searching for creative solutions to problems, and finally by institutionalizing the capacity to fill the needs of society through an organization. He found his voice in inspiring others to find theirs. The microcredit movement is now spreading across the world.

Few of us can do great things, but all of us can do small things with great love.

MOTHER TERESA

THE PAIN—THE PROBLEM—THE SOLUTION

I’ve begun by describing the pain of the workforce. It is felt by people at every level of every kind of organization. It is felt in families, in communities and in society generally.

The purpose of this book is to give you a road map that will lead you from such pain and frustration to true fulfillment, relevance, significance and contribution in today’s new landscape—not only in your work and organization, but also in your whole life. In short, it will lead you to find your voice. If you so choose, it will also lead you to greatly expand your influence regardless of your position—inspiring others you care about, your team and your organization to find their voices and increase manyfold their effectiveness, growth and impact. You will discover that such influence and leadership comes by choice, not from position or rank.

The best and often only way to break through pain to a lasting solution is to first understand the fundamental problem causing the pain. In this case, much of the problem lies in behavior that flows out of an incomplete or deeply flawed paradigm or view of human nature—one that undermines people’s sense of worth and straitjackets their talents and potential.

The solution to the problem is like most significant breakthroughs in human history—it comes from a fundamental break with old ways of thinking. The promise of this book is that if you will be patient and pay the price of understanding the root problem and then set a course of living the timeless, universal principles embodied in the solution outlined in this book, your influence will steadily grow from the inside-out; you will find your voice and will inspire your team and organization to find theirs in a dramatically changed world.

Chapter 1 has briefly touched on the painful reality.

Chapter 2 identifies the core problem. Understanding this deeply entrenched problem will shed a profound light on the challenges we face personally, in our family and work relationships and in the organizations in which we spend much of our lives. It will require some mental effort—twelve pages’ worth. But the investment of delving into the human side of what has happened in organizations over the last century will give you the key paradigm for the rest of the book and will begin to give you wisdom, guidance and power in dealing with many of the most significant personal and relationship challenges and the opportunities you face. So hang in there; it will be worth it.

It’s only 12 pages long.

In chapter 3 provides an overview of the 8th Habit solution that unfolds in the remainder of the book and a brief section on how to get the most out of this book.