A brief history of management consultants - humor - Steven R. Covey

Washington Monthly, March, 1998 by Gregg Easterbrook

News item: Franklin Covey, the "life management" firm founded through Stephen R. Covey's bestseller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, announced that its 1997 revenues totaled $433 million. The company has sold 12 million books, including The Ten Natural Laws Time and Life management. Franklin Covey products include the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families" audio tapes, a "One Day Getting to Synergy Workshop," and a "Three Day Time Quest Management Workshop." The company notes that "one in 3.5 people in the state of Michigan carry a Franklin Day Planner," a device for keeping lists.

Each year, Franklin Covey holds seminars for 750,000 people from corporations, government agencies, and schools, and says it has "certified more than 14,000 in-house corporate facilitators." Its client list boasts the Department of Energy, which has spent at least $500,000 on Covey workshops; some 2,900 school districts; the federal departments of Defense, Interior, and Transportation; the U.S. Postal Service; corporations such as AT&T, Intel, and General Electric; and President Bill Clinton, who spent a day being privately tutored by Steven Covey during Thanksgiving week of 1994. Covey, once the subject of a PBS documentary, asserts that he has discovered "the universal value system of all mankind" His company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol FC.

SCENE: Camp David, Thanksgiving week of 1994. A light snow falls on the Maryland mountains. President William Jefferson Clinton sits in his study, where an intern is assisting him. Linda Tripp, a trusted aide, shows in Steven R. Covey.

Clinton: Thank you for coming. I would have liked to go out to the life-management resort facility your company runs in Sundance, Utah. I hear that government agencies and major corporations spend tens of millions of dollars per year to send people to your resort, where the food and the snow bunnies are fourstar. I mean, to read "wisdom literature," like your brochure says.

Covey: Mr. President, are you proactive? Do you synergize?

Clinton: You see, the Republicans have just taken over the House, and I need advice on --

Covey: Mr. President, do you make lists? Do you focus on your goals?

Clinton: Well, doesn't everybody --

Covey: Lists! Make proactive lists! Make lists before you plan to do something, not afterward! Then keep the lists in your pocket in a Franklin Day Planner, as my publicists say with a perfectly straight face that one person in 3.5 in Michigan does! Then, exactly seven times a day, take out your list and look at it! Do you mind if I stand on your desk?

Clinton: Go ahead. Actually I like to do things on my desk, too.

Covey: (Climbs on desk, stands) That's better! Now I am much taller than you! It makes me feel synergistic!

Clinton: About this making lists, my point is, doesn't everyone --

Covey: Mr. President, are you aware that my book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was on The New, York Times bestseller list for 270 weeks, yet all this book really says is that people should make lists and pursue goals?

Clinton: That's mighty fine advice, but --

Covey: Are you aware that major corporations pay my company millions of dollars to have recent college graduates conduct seminars in which they play Native American chant CDs and tell people to make lists and have goals? Are you aware that the U. S. armed services have hired my company for this purpose?

Clinton: Should I be scared now?

Covey: No! Be synergistic! Don't you see what this means?

Clinton: That millions of dollars a year are going down the drain?

Covey: No! That I have discovered one of the universal laws of mankind -- that people will listen to any kind of drivel at all if it gives them an excuse to go to a vacation resort at someone else's expense!

Clinton: Say, that's good. I'll mention that to my trusted aide Dick Morris.

Covey: And I have found that I can empower myself to synergize a spiritual paradigm shift! Whoops, that's a copyrighted phrase. Since 1 mentioned it, you will have to send me an extra $20,000.

Clinton: Now about those Department of Energy, contracts. My people over there have been having a few problems with little things like managing nuclear waste. There was that regrettable incident when the plutonium canisters were sent by FedEx to the Ben & Jerry's factory and mixed in with the Rainforest Crunch. I assume your seminars will help them deal with problems like that.

Covey: Absolutely not! Mr. President, actually dealing with problems is old-fashioned, linear thinking. Feeling your way to spiritual dissipation of problems is the goal of life management.

Clinton: Well ... very little of what you've said makes any sense whatsoever, but since you've been promoted on PBS, you must be respectable!

Covey: And now it's time to get in touch with our synergy. We should hug!

Clinton: Really, if it's all the same to you --

Covey: Then hug your intern over there!

Monica: (JUMPS Up eagerly.) Sure!

Clinton: (They embrace passionately.) Baby, I want you to get a Franklin Day Planner. Write on your list, "Deny, deny, deny." Look at it exactly seven times daily.