In this interview, host Jason Hartman talks with Todd Davis, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Franklin Covey, about the 30th‑anniversary edition of Stephen Covey’s classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. They explore why the book remains influential, emphasizing that its core purpose is to improve relationships. Todd explains that the original habits were never changed; instead, Sean Covey added roughly 2,000 words of contemporary examples to each habit, showing how the principles apply today. The conversation walks through Covey’s key models: the Maturity Continuum (moving from dependence to independence to interdependence) and the See‑Do‑Get paradigm, which illustrates how our perceptions shape actions and results. They discuss the cultural tension between rugged individualism and the higher‑order interdependent mindset, highlighting that true effectiveness multiplies when people collaborate. The first habit, “Be Proactive,” is presented as the foundational habit of personal responsibility and the freedom to choose one’s response, countering a victim mindset. Throughout, Todd and Jason stress the timelessness of the habits, their relevance across personal, team, and organizational contexts, and the added value of the new real‑world examples for modern readers.
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I believe, and I think most people would agree, at the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of our lives, it's all about relationships. I really think at the end of the day, that is what this life is all about and what our contribution should be about. And just nurturing and focusing on those relationships. And 7 Habits is just the excellent tool to help improve those relationships.
If you've been following my work for any length of time, you know that one of my all time favorite books is the Brilliant Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by the late Stephen Covey. And I was fortunate enough to meet Stephen Covey on a Forbes investor cruise in Russia and Scandinavia several years ago. And back in the 90s, I used to teach a lot of his principles and his content in different conferences where I would be a speaker and so forth. And it has really had just a great impact on my life. And we have a 30th anniversary edition and that's what we're here to talk about today. We've got Todd Davis. He is executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, the CPO of Franklin Covey and Covey and Franklin merged many years ago and he was there at the time they did that. And he is here to talk to us about the 30th anniversary edition of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's got some updates and I can't wait to dive into that. And he's. For those of you seeing video, we will be sharing some great visual aids with you as well. Todd, welcome. How are you?
I'm great, Jason. Thanks for having me.
Good. It's good to have you. So let's go ahead and dive in and talk about the Seven Habits. But maybe before you do that, you can just share with everybody why is this book so important and how did it become so successful? I mean, I have my own opinions about that because it had a great influence on my life. But what do you think?
Yeah, great question. Well, and you mentioned you had met with Dr. Covey on a cruise. I was fortunate enough to work with him for several years when I first joined what was then called the Covey Leadership Center. I've been here now about 25 years and it's a question we get asked all the time. Dr. Covey would always make the point of saying he didn't invent the Seven Habits. What he did was discover or identify those principles that made individuals and teams and organizations and families and everything else most effective. Those that were most effective and then looked at what was it that they were doing, these people were doing on a consistent basis. Then he put them into a format that we could talk about, like today on the podcast, that we could understand and that we could implement into our lives. And so that's why they're so relevant, because they're based on principles of effectiveness, and they're as relevant today as they were 30 years ago when Stephen first wrote about them.
Yeah, they sure are. These are timeless principles that just never go out of style, and they always, always deserve review, because we tend to forget these things in the push and pull and speed of daily life, don't we?
That's right. And as you mentioned, we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of the book. And while we didn't change any of the habits because these principles are timeless, what we did do is Sean Covey, one of Stephen's sons, who is a president here at Franklin Covey. He went in and grew up with Stephen and has been working with Seven Habits for his entire career. He put in additional content at the end of each habit, about 2,000 words, if you will, of just current examples where that habit or that principle is at work in today's. In today's life, today's situations. And so it just gives complete application to the habits now as they were even 30 years ago.
Good, Good stuff. Well, why don't you share your screen and let's go ahead and look at some slides on this, because one of the nice things the book has is it has some really good visual aids, some graphs, some, I guess, infographics I'd almost call them. And let's go ahead and take a look at them.
Great.
Now it's. Yeah, there you go. That's the right one.
Great. So what you have in front of you, for those who are not familiar with 7 Habits, Stephen, we talk about his brilliance all the time, but his brilliance is in this model. It's called the maturity continuum. And it shows, as you're looking at the model, how we go from, or hopefully go from dependence to independence, and then finally up to interdependence. Now, I'll be honest with you. Before I read Seven Habits, which was about 20, about a year before I joined, so about 26, 27 years ago, I thought the whole goal in life was to become independent. We all come into the world as dependent, dependent on our parents or whoever our caregiver is, to feed us, to do everything for us. And I thought you spent your whole life, and if those of you have children, you're trying to raise them, help Everyone become independent. And that is certainly a good goal. But the big aha or discovery with seven habits is that as we hopefully become independent, then we continue to move up the scale to interdependence, where the notion here is that you and I together, Jason, can create something far greater than what either one of us could have done alone. And so, on this maturity continuum, we show how we move from dependence to independence using the first three habits. And we'll dive into those.
Go ahead, if you would, and just put your mouse there, because I see habit number one, be proactive. But what you're talking about now are those bars across the circle where dependence is at the bottom. Independence and then interdependence. And as I recall, what Covey demonstrated so well in the book is that, you know, dependence, yes, we all come into life dependent, right? And then the goal is to become independent. And part of the. Since we've got an American centric audience and people around the world have been so influenced by America, you know, there's that rugged individualism, which is kind of a distinctly American concept, so far as I know, and, you know, represented Western movies and, you know, all that kind of stuff, you know, the lone wolf that, you know, get it done guy, and all that stuff is good, you know, but it'll only get you to a certain point. If you want to do something really big, you do need to move to that highest level of interdependence. And so I think that's an important distinction. And in the world we live in today, you know, one plus one is not two, it's 11. Okay. You know, so there's sort of an exponential growth that can be achieved through interdependence, right?
Absolutely. If we operate in an interdependent mind with an interdependent mindset, then one plus one is three or ten or a thousand. You're exactly right.
It's eleven. It's a one and a one.
So down here in this mindset of dependence, it's. We have the attitude or the mindset of, you, you are responsible for my happiness. You are responsible for taking care of me. That's the mindset there. And as move up to independence and. Are you seeing my mouse now, Jason? Okay. As we move up to independence, it's the paradigm or the mindset of, I, I can do this, I can do my job, you do your job, and we'll be fine. And that sounds good, but you're right, it gets us to a point. And if we move up to interdependence and work on that all the time, then it's this paradigm or this mindset of we together we can create something far greater. Before I go through each of the seven habits, I want to share with you one very important model that Steven used and introduced us to. And that is what we the see do get model. Because the way we see things, the way we see each of these habits influences everything we do. And of course we know that what we do gives us the results we get. But the way we see things or our paradigms, our mental image, the mental map we have, influences everything we do. For example, in the workforce, if I'm a micromanager, and some of you have worked for micromanager before, I know I have. If I'm a micromanager, how do I see my team? Well, I see them as incompetent. And so if I see my team as incompetent, then what do I do? What do I practice? Well, I micromanage. Everything they do, I criticize, I triple check, I'm always course correcting them. And if that's what I do, well, then what results do we get? The results we get are probably pretty poor, mediocre at best. And then here's the big aha with this paradigm model, the see to get model. I see my poor results as this micromanager or as this whatever, whatever mindset you have. And I say to myself, see, these people are incompetent. I've got to micromanage even more. And it's this self fulfilling prophecy all driven by the way we see things. And so as we talk about each of the habits, I just want the audience to remember that, that there's the common mindset and then there's the highly effective mindset. And so let's look at each of these habits. Now being proactive is habit one. It's habit one for a reason. It's foundational. It's the habit, as it says here on the screen, the habit of personal responsibility or the habit of choice. I like to think of it as, you can see where it falls in the maturity continuum. It's foundational to all of the other habits. And thinking back now on the mindset that I have when I go into habit one, most of us, or at least I know I have from one time to another, I've just fallen into this trap where I think, you know what, it's just the way things are, there's not much I can do about it. And I have to kind of accept the status quo, but the highly effective mindset is that I realize I'm free to choose, and I'm ultimately responsible for my own happiness. In fact, I remember 26 years ago reading the 7 Habits. And the most empowering concept that I read then and to this day is that I am free to choose my response to any situation. There's a million things I can't control. There's many things I can't influence, but I can choose my response to any situation.
And that, you know, he's taking these principles from a lot of other timeless works like this one from Victor Franklin.
