Stop the 401(k) Rip-off!: Eliminate Costly Hidden Fees to Improve Your Life
Author: David B Loeper
Your 401(k) plan is probably one of your most important future sources of financial security. This book makes it easy for you to take the five steps needed to add more than $100,000 to your retirement nest egg without taking more risk or saving more money. This can allow you to improve your lifestyle, increase your benefits, identify the hidden costs and also improve your standing within your company by proactively helping your employer to take needed action.
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
Author: Stephen R Covey
That the world has changed and is continuing to change at a rapid pace is not news. People are much more aware of everything around them. The consumer revolution has accelerated dramatically. But something vital is missing in all of this change.
Leadership has not kept up with the changes going on in the world. From board rooms to classrooms, leadership is being challenged on a daily basis yet no new leadership model has been given. In this new, important work, bestselling author Stephen R. Covey offers ideas of how leadership roles have changed and how one can take on the roles of the new leader.
Dr. Covey introduces the 4 roles of the new leader--modelling, pathfinding, aligning and empowering--and how those qualities can change you and your organization. He discusses how trust can be lost throughout organizations and how it is imperative that any organization bring trust back to the company if it is to survive. Covey also shows how to go from what he calls a "want to" person to a "can do" person and how doing so can completely transform people and organizations.
Through his ideas, one will discover how to:
*Use the four vital roles to establish trust and make growth a given
*Build and sustain an atmosphere of respect and openness
*Keep and inspire your most talented workers
*Apply creative cooperation to reach new levels of performance
*Stay more "promotable"
*Develop leadership at every level of your organization
*Take advantage of strengths and compensate for weakness
*Reduce cynicism and improve morale
*Stay flexible and focused to recognize larger opportunities.
Stephen Covey's new book will transform the way we think about leadership just as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People changed our thinking about success.
Publishers Weekly
The original seven habits of highly successful people are still relevant, but Covey, author of the mega-bestseller of that title, says that the new Information/Knowledge Worker Age, exemplified by the Internet, calls for an eighth habit to achieve personal and organizational excellence: "Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs." Covey sees leadership "as a choice to deal with people in a way that will communicate to them their worth and potential so clearly they will come to see it in themselves." His holistic approach starts with developing one's own voice, one's "unique personal significance." The bulk of the book details how, after finding your own voice, you can inspire others and create a workplace where people feel engaged. This includes establishing trust, searching for third alternatives (not a compromise between your way and my way, but a third, better way) and developing a shared vision. This book isn't easy going; less business jargon and more practical examples would have made this livelier and more helpful. But if organizations operated with Covey's ideas-and ideals-most people would undoubtedly find work much more satisfying. DVD not seen by PW. (Nov. 9) FYI: Free Press is simultaneously publishing a 15th anniversary trade paperback edition of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which has sold 15 million copies worldwide. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Covey emphasizes that this book isn't merely an afterthought to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989); instead, it adds a new dimension to the original program. The eighth habit comprises finding your "voice"-your unique personal significance-and inspiring others to find theirs. Crucial to this is shifting to a "whole-person paradigm" in which one's body, mind, heart, and spirit are all engaged. Covey predicts that society will transition from property-based industrialism to a "Knowledge Worker Age" that incubates and capitalizes on this whole-person paradigm. Meaty, readable, and insightful, the text contains FAQ sections regarding real-life application of the theories and contains diagrams that help ground readers. Though conceived for individuals, Covey's book will be of tremendous importance to organizations and businesses. The accompanying DVD (not seen) poses replacement concerns, but multiple copies are still essential for most libraries and all self-help collections. [The 15th-anniversary edition of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (ISBN 0-7432-6951-9. $15) will be published simultaneously.-Ed.]-Douglas C. Lord, Connecticut State Lib., Hartford Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Summary - Soundview Executive Book Summaries
For individuals and organizations, excellence is no longer merely an option — survival requires it. But to thrive, excel and lead in our Knowledge Worker Age, we must move beyond effectiveness to greatness, which includes fulfillment, passionate execution and significant contribution. Accessing a higher level of human genius and motivation requires a sea change in thinking: a new mind-set and skill set — in short, an additional habit to those featured in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
The 8th Habit shows you how to tap the limitless value-creation promise of the Knowledge Worker Age. It shows you how to solve the major contradictions inherent in organizational life. The 8th Habit will transform the way you think about yourself, your purpose in life, your organization and other people. It explains how to move from effectiveness to greatness.
The Pain
Most people in organizations today are neither fulfilled nor excited. They're frustrated and uninvolved in their organization's goals. That's why our high-pressure, 24/7 era requires more than effectiveness (the "7 Habits"). To achieve greatness, we need an "8th Habit": Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.
The Problem
Our basic management practices come from the Industrial Age.
As people consent to be controlled like things, their passivity only fuels leaders' urge to direct and manage.
There's a simple connection between the controlling, "thing" paradigm that dominates today's workplace and the inability of managers and organizations to inspire people's best contributions: People choose how much of themselves to give to their work, depending on how they're treated. Their choices may range from rebelling or quitting (if they're treated as things), to creative excitement (if they're treated as whole people).
The Solution
Most great organizations start with one person who first changed him- or herself, then inspired others. Such people realize that they can't wait for their boss or organization to change. They become an island of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. They learn their true nature and gifts, then use them to envision what they want to accomplish. They find and use their voice.
Greatness involves transcending the negative cultural "software" of ego, scarcity, comparison and competitiveness, and choosing to become the creative force in your life.
All of us can choose greatness — we can cultivate a magnificent spirit in facing a serious disease, make a difference in the life of a child, be a catalyst inside an organization, or initiate or contribute to a cause.
Discover Your Voice
We can discover our voice because of three gifts we're born with. These gifts are:
Gift #1: The Freedom to Choose. Our past, our genes, the way others have treated us — these influence us but don't determine us. Between stimulus and response there is a space where we choose our response. In our choices lie growth and our happiness.
Gift #2: Natural Laws or Principles. To use wisely that space between stimulus and response, we must live by natural laws that dictate the consequences of behavior. Positive consequences come from fairness, kindness, respect, honesty, integrity, service and contribution.
Gift #3: The Four Intelligences. These are: mental intelligence, physical intelligence, emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence.
Express Your Voice
Great achievers develop their mental energy into vision. Vision is applied imagination. Everything is created first as a mental creation, then as a physical reality. Vision also means affirming others, believing in them, and helping them realize their potential.
Great achievers develop their physical energy into discipline. They don't deny reality. They accept the sacrifice entailed in doing whatever it takes to realize their vision. Only the disciplined are truly free. Only a person who has disciplined him- or herself for decades to play the piano is free to create magnificent art.
Great achievers develop their emotional energy into passion — desire, conviction and drive. Passion appears as optimism, excitement, emotional connection, and determination, and is deeply rooted in the power of choice. Passionate people believe in creating their own future.
Great achievers develop their spiritual energy into conscience — their inward moral sense of what is right and wrong, and their drive toward meaning and contribution.
We must control our ego and let our conscience guide our moment-to-moment behavior. As we develop the four intelligences — physical, mental, emotional and spiritual — in their highest manifestations, we find our voice. Copyright © 2005 Soundview Executive Book Summaries
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 The Pain Chapter 2 The Problem Chapter 3 The Solution
Part 1: Find Your Voice
Chapter 4 Discover Your Voice -- Unopened Birth-Gifts Chapter 5 Express Your Voice -- Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience
Part 2: Inspire Others to Find Their Voice
Chapter 6 Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice -- The Leadership Challenge Focus -- Modeling and Pathfinding Chapter 7 The Voice of Influence -- Be a Trim-Tab Chapter 8 The Voice of Trustworthiness -- Modeling Character and Competence Chapter 9 The Voice and Speed of Trust Chapter 10 Blending Voices -- Searching for the Third Alternative Chapter 11 One Voice -- Pathfinding Shared Vision, Values and Strategy Execution -- Aligning and Empowering Chapter 12 The Voice and Discipline of Execution -- Aligning Goals and Systems for Results Chapter 13 The Empowering Voice -- Releasing Passion and Talent The Age of Wisdom Chapter 14 The 8th Habit and the Sweet Spot Chapter 15 Using Our Voices Wisely to Serve Others Twenty Most Commonly Asked Questions Appendices Appendix 1 Developing the 4 Intelligences/Capacities: A Practical Guide to Action Appendix 2 Literature Review of Leadership Theories Appendix 3 Representative Statements on Leadership and Management Appendix 4 The High Cost of Low Trust Appendix 5 Implementing the 4 Disciplines of Execution Appendix 6 xQ Results Appendix 7 Max & Max Revisited Appendix 8 The FranklinCovey Approach Notes Index About FranklinCovey About the Author
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