Organizational change begins with personal change.  The mechanism of change in organizations is to engage individuals at every level to modify their behavior toward reaching a unified goal.  When these goals are related to the vision, mission and values of the organization, a corporate culture is born.

It sounds right, but where does the time to focus on change come from? Workload and schedules are already overwhelming.

In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a best seller for 15 years, Stephen R. Covey provides a practical perspective on making the time to change. Habit #3 is “Put First Things First”, Covey’s version of Time Management.  He defines activities using Urgency and Importance as criteria.

Urgent: requires immediate attention

Important: contributes to results, achievement of goals

Covey divides activities into four Quadrants:

Urgent and Important     Quadrant I	Not Urgent but Important     Quadrant II
Quadrant III     Urgent but Not Important	Quadrant IV     Not Urgent and Not Important

Business people spend the majority of their time putting out the fires of Quadrant I or reacting to other people’s priorities in Quadrant III, instead of their own.  Only the most disciplined people spend significant amounts of their time in Quadrant II. These earn Stephen Covey’s label of “Highly Effective People”.

Here’s why Quadrant II time makes a difference:

• All sustainable changes in behavior begin in Quadrant II.  Quadrant II activities include strategizing, learning, developing processes, expanding communication and changing behavior.
• It is spent preventing problems, especially those in Quadrant I, that take up time, compromise results and increase stress. 
• It requires:
  • Choosing priorities. All activities are not created equal
  • Consciously overriding unproductive habits
  • Blocking out small portions of time at first to make positive changes
  • Accepting responsibility for the use of time rather than allowing others to do it

Efficiency -- doing things right --  focuses on Quadrants I and III. 

But goal-oriented, effective people focus on Quadrants I and II and understand that it is up to them to dedicate time to work on the right things, often at the expense of less important activities, in order to make positive changes.

Read the Case Study:  Efficiency is Bad for Business

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