When I first started working at a little company called State of the Art, new employees were able to take the Franklin Covey planning class, reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and we were given a daily planner and a new way of looking at the business world.

Some people adopted the habits religiously; others thought it wasn’t for them. I think I sat somewhere in the middle, taking the principles and working them into my own version that worked for me. To this day, if I get overwhelmed with work projects, I create my list, develop my ranking and start to work down the list to get things done. This book changed the mindset of many people and their approach to work.

Now in the age of technology, we have CRM systems that assist us creating our lists and checking off those things we’ve done. I can’t help but think that this is Covey’s influence coming out in the form of technology.

Alicia Anderson at Blytheco says she will always remember “Sharpening the Saw” as a great principle to remember from Covey. The fact is, those of us who have decided we are lifelong learners will choose to do just that…take time from our schedules to continue to learn, grow and prosper. We realize that many companies adopt the “learn forever” mantra and we feel that those are the “mover and shaker” businesses that will be tomorrow’s leaders.

Are you a company that is always looking to “sharpen the saw”? One of the reasons we have created our White Paper Resource Center is for those companies that are always looking to improve. We also have our Summer Webinar Series focusing on improvements you can make from a marketing perspective. Needless to say, all of those webinars and more are in our recorded webinar section of our website where you can find just about any event we have ever hosted online. If you need just plain system user training, we can help in that area as well.

In his 8^th habit, Covey emphasized that the world isn’t about you – it at some point has to turn to the service of others. This is one thing I believe our CEO, Stephen Blythe has tremendous passion for. Not only is Blythe passionate about helping our customers succeed, he spends a considerable amount of time with others contributing to causes.

We will be thinking of Stephen Covey’s family and friends as they mourn the loss of someone incredibly special, who I believe changed the way we think about business.