Today Fortune Magazine highlighted Smart Trust  in Why Trust Matters so Much In Business.  Smart Trust was #7 on Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list and is rapidly spreading through North America’s best led organizations.   Creating cultures of high trust is a growing 2012  focus of progressive companies recovering from the recent downturn.

If you missed last weeks telecast on Smart Trust or if you want to share it with colleagues or friends (please do) it is available now at SmartTrustBook.com.  Thanks for all the tremendous feedback and positive reactions as evidenced by the continued strong sales of Smart Trust!  

Please help us spread the word:  Go to the help us spread the word tab on SmartTrustBook.com to access numerous free resources, a picture of the book, excerpts  and other digital files you can use to blog, tweet or write newsletters including Smart Trust.  Become an advocate of Smart Trust by forwarding links to friends, colleagues, and other stakeholders.  Together we can start the ripple effect of a global renaissance of trust

Thanks for being an ambassador of Smart Trust

 Trust Across America’s Jordan Kimmel interviewed me today on their show on Voice America Radio.  Jordan is a leading expert on quantifying corporate trustworthiness of public companies and is an engaging interviewer.  We discussed our  new book Smart Trust Here are links if you would like to listen: Part 1 and Part 2 

They also announced today their prestigious 2012 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior list that Stephen M. R. Covey and I are honored to be included on for the second year in a row.

Smart Trust hit the #1 spot as the bestselling book of all books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble on the first day it was released further demonstrating the relevance and importance of trust in these difficult economic times.   In her forward for Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a Low Trust World, Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PespsiCo said: “ We can indeed convert this crisis of trust into a great opportunity, what Stephen and Greg call a ’renaissance of trust.’ When we do this well, we can minimize risk while maximizing possibilities. To do that, each one of us needs to start with our own behavior.” ( To download a free copy of the foreword and other free resources from the book go to: SmartTrustBbook.com)

Smart Trust teaches how to trust in a low trust world by mastering a skill we call Smart Trust that help you navigate risks and maximize possibilities.

Thanks to all our customers for advocating trust and propelling Smart Trust to bestseller status.  More importantly thank you for leading out and demonstrating that Smart Trust is a better way to live and to lead.

Forbes’ Dan Schwabel interviewed Stephen M. R. Covey about Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a Low Trust World in an article he called How to Build a Company People Trust.

Stephen told Dan in part:

“At its core, building trust comes down to your credibility and your behavior. In the book, we identified 5 Smart Trust “actions” that were common to high trust leaders and organizations. For example, the 5th action of Smart Trust is to “lead out in extending trust to others,” highlighting the reality that one of the best ways to create trust is simply to give trust. This is because of the reciprocity of trust—when we give it, people return it; when we withhold it, they withhold it.

Yes, a few may attempt to abuse it: but we shouldn’t allow the few that we can’t trust to define for us the many that we can. Instead, focus on building a high trust culture around the many that will help us weed out the few. And it’s the leader’s job to go first in extending trust. That’s what leaders do. The first job of any leader is to inspire trust; the second job is to extend trust. Leaders need to be smart about it, of course, because there is risk in trusting. But there is also risk in not trusting—in fact, not trusting is often the greater risk. Smart Trust helps us find the sweet spot and develop the judgment of how to wisely extend trust in a low-trust world.”

Join Stephen and me for our first live telecast on our new book Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a Low Trust World  this Thursday January 12th.  We will candidly share and discuss with you a one hour overview of the book.  Go to SmartTrustBook.com to register.  Join us whether  you have had the time to read or even buy the book yet.  We trust you will do both.

Finally we are on the verge of publishing our new book Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a low Trust World,  after several years of extensive research, interviews, collabortion and study.  Smart Trust  highlights enlightening principles and anecdotes of people and organizations that are not only achieving unprecendented prosperity from high-trust relationships and cultures but–even more inspiring–also attaining elevated levels of energy and joy. 

The sustainable success these leaders and enterprises are exhibiting is paradoxically being produced in what has proved to be the lowest trust economic climate in years, if not decades.  Smart Trust shows what they are doing and the 5 actions they are commonly taking to prosper, against all odds, in the same economic circumstances causing so many others to fail.

Smart Trust has met the strict scrutiny of business  leaders around the globe and is validated by research from multiple sources that confirms that high-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations by nearly 3 times.

Find out why trusted people are more likely to get hired or promoted,  make more money,  get the best projects and the bigger budgets, and are typically last to be laid off.  It is our hope and intent that reading Smart Trust will increase your probability of not just thriving, but prospering in this increasingly unpredictable economic marketplace.

My sweet wife Annie came up with a New Years tree for our young grand kids.  They popped the balloons at what they thought was midnight.  Fortunately we were in  the MDT and could broadcast life new years from EDT New York.

Stephen M R Covey and I do intend to make this year our best year yet as far as our mission to shift global governance  on teams in organizations and hopefully even countries to one of high trust.  We were committed and optimistic when we chose the sub tittle to our first book The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything.  We actually approached that sub title a little sheepishly at the time.  We felt in 2006 that perhaps it was a little too bold.  Now in hindsight after selling over 1 million copies of The Speed of Trust  and spending the last 2 years researching and writing our new book Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a Low Trust World, that feel if anything we understated the significance of trust.  This year we intend to boldly emphasize the over arching influence that trust has on all aspects of our lives and leadership.  We strongly suggest that high trust is the key to transforming toxic relationships,  toxic teams,  toxic organizations and even toxic countries into extraordinary growth engines that will drive our ailing economy to new heights.

We have discovered and documented in Smart Trust compelling examples and evidence that certain “outliers” of success are producing extraordinary results in the same circumstances causing others to fail. We are thrilled that Smart Trust will be in stores in 10 short days and provide a platform for this important dialogue to make 2012 our best year yet.

Rarely does a leadership book garner as much credibility as does Touch Points by Campbell’s trusted Chief Executive Doug Conant and respected intenational leadership authority Mette Norgaard.  It is a perfect blend of Mette’s hard won and informed perspective consulting leaders of many of the World’s top organizations and Doug’s real time and full time leadership of fortune 500 organizations including as the current CEO of Campbells. Norgaard has consulted such well known organizations as Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, and Finnish Broadcasting and Conant led giant Nabisco prior to taking the helm at Cambells several years ago.

As you know Stephen M R Covey and I read a lot of books.  I have been averaging one per week this year.  That said this is a clear stand out informed by two insiders that really know leadership.  Stephen M R Covey said this remarkable book will forever change the way we view leadership.  I could not agree more.  The practical reality of leading by moment to moment Touchpoints makes so much sense and is so internally validating to real world leaders and practitioners it is hard to imagine it has not been written about before.  Finally a guidebook that actually guides you on how to lead effectively now. Not now. Right now.  I strongly recommend you read it right now. You can get it at Amazon. Enjoy!

We know things have been quiet on the blogging front for CoveyLink this year but we have been completing research and writing  a new book entitled Smart Trust to be published by Simon & Schuster NY in January 2012.  You can look forward to much more frequent blog posts in the last half of 2011 in anticipation of this new look at Smart Trust around the world co-authored by Stephen M. R. Covey and Greg D. Link.

Following one of his presentations, a man approached Stephen backstage with a question that was obviously troubling him deeply. “Are you really serious about this?”, he asked incredulously. “Are there really people out there who operate with the kind of trust you’ve described?” This man lived and worked in a country where there was ripe corruption, characterized my massive distrust. He was clearly feeling deeply torn. He sincerely wanted to believe what we’d said, but was finding it almost impossible in the context of his environment.

In many variations, this question has been posed to us repeatedly by people around the world–in organizations, businesses, schools and government. In this era of profound distrust, are there really those who succeed and experience the benefits of trust in their personal and professional lives? If so, who are they? What are they doing? And how?

This new book is written in response to these questions. The short answer is, “Yes—absolutely!” There are hundreds of examples of people, companies and countries—individuals, teams, organizations, markets and industries—that have created cultures and relationships of high trust and are enjoying the wonderful benefits demonstrated in this forthcoming book—prosperity, energy and joy. In fact, one of the most exciting dimensions of our work over the past seven years, even predating The Speed of Trust book, has been to both sense and see first-hand the groundswell renaissance of trust that is gaining momentum and transforming lives and leadership around the globe—even in the midst of the “crisis of trust” that fills today’s headlines.

To be transparent, of course I am biased in my comments about this wonderful book by my colleagues.  That said, seriously, you will be glad you read it.  I do have a somewhat informed judgement of business books by now and this useful parable stands well with the best of business parables,  including the all time greats like,  FISH, One Minute Manager and Who Moved my Cheese. A Slice of Trust: The Leadership Secret with the Hot & Fruity Filling,  highlights in a memorable and meaningful way an important, career critical, management essential insight: Trust matters.

I dare say it is LOL funny in spots. (yes we can use LOL now that it made the Oxford  dictionary).  The humor surprised me.  That is a very tough thing to pull off for a business audience without loosing credibility and sounding trite.  Well done David and Barry!  It is a delightful read that will certainly touch all who read it.  It artfully teaches powerful principles to a surprisingly broad audience:

from the school room to the board room.

Speaking of the board room,  Spencer Johnson,  author of Who Moved my Cheese told Stephen that executives bought his Cheese book in bulk,  by the boxes,  to encourage their entire organizations to embrace change by reading a lighthearted story.  I predict that executives will do the same with A Slice of Trust in order to help all their team members embrace today’s critical competitive advantage of high trust.  Consider what the Chairman of Nissan Americas, Carlos Tavares had to say: “Dazzling…and true! It took me years to discover the power of trust.  With A Slice of Trust, you will understand so much more–and in only a few hours!”

Stephen M R Covey made an equally wise observation in his foreword to this book: “As you join Simon the Pieman on his adventures in trust, I invite you to reflect on how you have extended trust in your organization, your relationships, your family, your world.  After all, the most important story is your story. It’s a story that you create everyday as you explore opportunities for trust.  And it’s a story whose telling is brought to life every time you extend your trust to another, one slice at a time.” Well said Stephen!

Personally,  not so big on the “fruity filling” I prefer coconut cream or pecan, but I digress. Either way this book will leave you hungry for more. Not just pie but trust too.  I can just see author Barry Rellaford at a taster table in Costco serving pie and signing books. (or the Costco equivalent outside the 8 countries that now are lucky enough to have a trusted Costco).  I enjoy the picture conjured up by my close friend and favorite Dane, Mette Norgaard, author of  The Ugly Duckling Goes to Work: “A Slice of Trust is served with warmth and humor.  Pour yourself a cup of tea and enjoy a few bites of wisdom for the workplace.”

A Slice of Trust will soon be available in a language near you as it follows The Speed of Trust’s global success in over 22 languages and counting.  For now buy your Slice of Trust or a box or two in World English at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com or your favorite bookseller in your airport or neighborhood.  (it is a fast read so don’t worry about the pile of books on your nightstand you will read A Slice of Trust before it gets to the pile).   Whether to introduce your team or family to Trust or reinforce the principles taught in The Speed of Trust reading A Slice of Trust this month will make you smile.

Enjoy

If you are not familiar with the work of our friend Marci Shimoff you need to be.  Marci is the New York Times bestselling author of Chicken Soup for the Women’s soul and Happy for No Reason.  Her work speaks to the source of trusting relationships–love and happiness.  Too soft for you?  You are in for a surprise.  Business people, parents, and organizational leaders alike are all trying to crack the code on the key to productive relationships.  While it may be for different reasons the source is the same.  Marci reveals startling research from brain science that proves what the ancient wisdom literature has told us all along–unconditional love is the key to influence and fulfillment.  I love reading Marci’s work (not quite as fun as being with her authentic radiant self in person).  Her authentic style does come through in her thorough writing and research of the topic including over 100 personal interviews with experts.  Marci,  John Lennon  would be happy with how you provided the evidence for his lyrics “all you need is love”

The more hardened a management cynic you are, the more you will be glad you read this book.  At least buy a copy for your significant relationships, but you may want to read it first. (by the way it is already a top 3 book on Amazon and heading for number one so you better hurry if you want to read it before he or she does).

The Speed of Trust again graced the USA Today bestseller list as clear indication that momentum is building by leaders interested in learning to lead and get results in a way that inspires trust.  We judge others by their behaviors and ourselves by our intents.  The art is to behave in ways that inspire trust.  To walk our talk.  My daily challenge.

The Speed of Trust topped the non fiction book bestseller list in the Washington Post today.  I would like to think that this is an indication of our leaderships intent to restore trust.  I am confident that the ripple effect of responsibility and accountability felt this month in Washington and around the USA will continue to increase trust.  Leaders must go first and make restoring trust a strategic imperative.  At this time of the lowest trust and confidence levels in history paradoxically we are also seeing tremendous examples of high trust.  Leaders, teams and organizations around the world are prospering and growing by behaving in high trust ways.

In the foreword of his game changing new book for education,  The Leader In Me my good friend Dr. Stephen R. Covey misspoke.  Rare for him.  With this the 20th anniversary year of his landmark book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People it’s about time I tell one on him.  My dear Dr. C, the comment in the foreword that I take such exception to is your reference to the 7 Habits that “the book caught a wave that even I had no way of anticipating”.  Not only did you anticipate it, you willed it into being.  You epitomize Jim Collins level 5 leader that he refers to in Good to Great as having a perfect blend of deep personal humility and intense professional will.

I remember it clearly, I had only worked with Dr. Covey for a couple of years and we were having a meeting with our publisher Simon & Schuster in thier headquarters in Rockafeller Center in New York City.  Their entire team met with us around the big round marble table on the executive floor.   I considered myself an optimist even then but Dr. C exceeded my expectations.  This was 1989 and we were trying to convince the S&S brain-trust that they should do a first print run of 100,000 copies for The 7 Habits, which for a first time business author was unheard of.  I can still see the S&S executives rolling their eyes as we suggested such an absurd proposal. (You S&S folks know who you are).  It gets better.  As support for his request Dr. C proceeded to inform them that he predicted that 7 Habits would sell 10 million copies by the end of it’s first decade. You could have heard a pin drop as the S&S executives looked at each other like whose gonna be the one that tells this guy he is out of his ever loving mind and is as naive as a country bumpkin (from Utah no less).  Well, you know the rest of the story, 7 Habits did sell over 10 million copies the first decade and darn near an additional 10 million in the second decade and is still a top 100 book of all books on Amazon as we speak.

Are you more suspicious?  Who can you count on?

We all are sitting straight up right now and have a high level of suspicion of others especially as it comes to our money.  I was just listening to Tom Brokaw’s commencement address to Emory University from 2005.  He said this about money to these graduating seniors as they started their new life: “In this new life you will also have to think about money in a new way, life after all is not an ATM, now you have to earn the money.  Think about how you can hang on to some of it, and if you are fortunate, use the money that is beyond what you need, to save a life, to save a neighborhood, to save the world. You may be surprised to learn that it is that use of money, that is the most satisfying and gratifying.  In our family where we began with no money, we like to say that we have  discovered that God invented money so those that have it can help others.  More over while money helps, it is discounted somehow if it does not carry your full personal value and commitment.  A few years ago in a ceremony similar to this one, I declared: ‘it is easy to make a buck but it is tough to make a difference.’  A father of one of the graduates, a Wall Street success wrote to me suggesting a rewrite of that line, he said it’s tough to make a buck but if you make a lot of bucks you can make a hell of a difference. A or B because there is no wrong answer.” Tom went on to tell this, “Class of 9/11″ as he called them (because they entered college the month of 9/11) that they had a responsibility to rise to the occasion to right the global ship of state.

Now is the time to have a propensity to trust each other and risk again.  Now is the time to give to others and have an abundance mentality, when everything in us and around us, screams for us to have a fear based scarcity mentality.  Now is the time to use our time, not for worry, but for lifting others with our time and our treasure as history tells us we have again and again. Trust that the ripple effect of extending trust will create a tide that will raise all of us–again.

This brings to mind a quote from George Bernard Shaw that my wife Annie and I love so much.  We first heard it from Werner Erhard in the 70′s and Annie shared it with Stephen R. Covey who quoted it in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It sums up my feeling today as it has these last three decades.  We invite you to join us in sparking a global renaissance of trust.

George Bernard Shaw:

“This is the true joy in life–that being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.  That being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.  I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it what ever I can.  I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.  For the harder I work the more I live.  I rejoice in life for its own sake.  Life is no brief candle to me. It’s sort of a splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

May we all be a force of nature.

Showing loyalty by giving credit where credit is due is a way to make massive deposits in people’s trust account.  As Robert Townsend former CEO of Avis said: “It’s been my experience that the people who gain trust, loyalty, excitement, and energy fast are the ones who pass on the credit to the people who have really done the work.  A leader doesn’t need the credit…they get more credit than they deserve anyway.” As our friend and associate Dottie Gandy emphasizes: ” it is not only important to give credit to people for what they do it is also important to acknowledge people for who they are.”

In the new edition of The Carrot Principle:How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton found that 79% of talent that left organizations did so for lack of appreciation and 65% in North America report they were not recognized in the least bit in the last year.  These two statistics alone are worth the price of this book but they have interviewed over 200,000 workers and the results will shock you.  I know it did me. This one is a must read for anyone who manages people regardless of the setting including parents and teachers!  Lack of giving credit is clearly one of the high costs of low trust.

Twitter is remarkable. Follow us.  I ignored it too long thinking it was not scalable or professionally relevant.  My strategic business thinking is obviously sometimes my biggest handicap.  I was wrong, it scales the entire globe. It is both personal, i keep up with kids and grandkids, and professional,  I connect and communicate with like minded thinkers around the world.  Short story first.  A new friend on twitter Dinesh connected me to some wonderful TV footage on the Economist of an interview with Jaya Kumar, the Chief Marketing Officer of one of our clients, FritoLay, and Tony Hsieh,  CEO of Zappos.com talking about trust, transparency, high trust culture and specifically the Speed of Trust.  This is something that in the “old days” in the late 80′s early 90′s when we launched the 7 Habits book would have slipped through our fingers and not been shared with as broad and committed of an audience.  This conversation would not have been transparent to me so that I could engage it, leverage it and share it.  I also now have the opportunity and intend to acknowledge and thank Jaya for it.

Another new friend in Denmark gave me tips on what to see on my upcoming trip to Amsterdam.   Another did the same in London.

The longer story that comes to mind is the significance of the realization of the transcendent potential of the world wide web so eloquently described by Christopher Locke at the turn of the century (the 21st century that is) in 2000 in his book the cluetrain manifesto:

“More important, all of us are finding our voices once again.  Learning how to talk to one another.  Slowly recovering from a near fatal brush with zombification after watching Night of the Living Sponsor reruns all of our lives.  Inside, Outside, there’s a conversation going on today that wasn’t happening at all 5 years ago (95) and hasn’t been very much in evidence since the Industrial Revolution began.  Now, spanning the planet via Internet and World Wide Web, this conversation is so vast, so multifaceted, that trying to figure what it is about is futile.  It’s about a billion years of pent-up hopes and fears and dreams coded in serpentine double helixes, the collective flashback deja vu of our strange perplexing species.  Something ancient, elemental, sacred, something very very funny that’s broken loose in the pipes and wires of the 21st century. There are millions of threads in this conversation, but at the beginning and end of each one is a human being… This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual.  A longing indicates something is missing in our lives.  What is missing is the sound of the human voice.  The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice.“

Twitter is clearly a giant leap forward in that direction.

The Globe and Mail is considered Canada’s national paper with over 1 million readers.  Stephen was interviewed by Sarah Boesveld last week and his remarks appeared in today’s Globe and Mail in an article entitled Ambiguity Anxiety.   Stephen had this to say about the pressure on trust in the current crisis when managers are secretive: ”They tend to be done without very much openness, without very much transparency – people in rooms all day long behind closed doors. And when they emerge, managers dish out spin and don’t give employees the straight goods,” he says.

I finally got an Amazon Kindle 2 and must say so far it has exceeded my expectations.  The ability to word search all your books alone is worth the ride.  The Speed of Trust is available in a Kindle version and searching that on the fly has proved very useful.  It holds 1500 books which beats the 500 or so that crowd my office.  You can take notes but it definitely is not as intuitive as a pen and highlighter but I am getting used to it.  It feels miraculous to not carry the 3 to 4 books I usually end up traveling with and you can easily read several at a time as it picks up where you left off so it is simple to read several books simultaneously.  The digital paper is also surprisingly easy to read even in sunlight.  While off, the Kindle displays delightful pencil sketches of authors.  It rotates randomly and one day it displayed the definition of Kindle: light or set fire, arouse or inspire (an emotion or feeling), become impassioned or exited.  I can not yet say that my Kindle has impassioned me but you can say it has re-kindled my goal to meet the challenge that Dr. Stephen R. Covey gave to me years ago: to read a book a week.   Most years I have not hit that goal but I have a couple of years past and I will say that his challenge has dramatically increased the number of books I have read in the last 22 years and that is a HABIT worth having.  Maybe it is The 9th Habit!

Previously I mentioned that I was reading Jeff Jarvis’ new book What Would Google Do? I was just struck by his comments on market trust: “Leaders in government, news media, corporations, and universities think they and their institutions can own trust when, of course, trust is given to them.  Trust is earned with difficulty and lost with ease….Trust is an act of opening up; it’s a mutual relationship of transparency and sharing.  The more ways you find to reveal yourself and listen to others, the more you will build trust, which is your brand.” We of course, agree whole heartedly.  Jeff does an excellent job of giving us a glimpse of the implications of violating trust in a post google transparent world.  His experience with Dell is worth the price of the book alone. How we behave in this financial crisis will effect our credibility, reputation and brand for years to come.  Are you behaving in ways that inspire the trust of your stakeholders, especially your customers?

I will resist the almost overwhelming temptation to quote Jeff further and will instead, again, strongly urge you to read this book right away.  In times of trouble we need to challenge ourselves to get better and to reframe our thinking.  Jeff provokes new thinking that I believe, regardless of your profession or industry, will either excite you about the possibilities of the future or scare you enough to confront reality and change your expectations.  You know I read a lot of business books so I have a somewhat informed judgement.  I predict that this is another Tipping Point and as such will top the business lists for years to come.

Jeff Jarvis explores that question as a window on the future market reality in his very compelling new book of the same name.  What Would Google Do? is thought provoking on many levels.  As our friend Seth Godin says “Five years from now, many people are going to regret the fact that they didn’t read this book today, when they had the chance.”  I feel the same way.  I can’t put it down.  Read it before your competition does.

One of the world’s great business influencers graduated this week. With honors! It is with great love and profound sadness that I report the passing of a great soul, friend and author last Saturday, January 24th, a few months shy of his 63rd birthday–Dr. Blaine Lee.

Blaine was a beloved friend and mentor of 26 years to me and countless customers and associates of FranklinCovey.  His big heart and tremendous passion endeared him to all who worked with him.  His ability to bring executives to the real issues of their personal responsibility, first surprised and then delighted them.  But it certainly endeared him to them for life.  I was with Blaine when we taught the 7 Habits to Oprah and the executives at Harpo. I remember O asking me how Blaine expected her to write a mission statement when she “did not know what was around the corner”.    Watching Blaine challenge and engage Oprah was a sight to behold and he definitely influenced her with honor.

Blaine was a co founder of Covey Leadership Center which became FranklinCovey and he was instrumental in our success.  Blaine inspired countless people to influence with honor and use their legitimate power rather than resort to coercive authority.

Blaine was the author of The Power Principle: Influence With Honor which Kenny Blanchard called “profound” and Stephen R. Covey called “life changing”.  Yes it was both to me and thousands of people around the world.  Blaine Lee was one of the most influential business thinkers and influencers of his generation.

I was moved by the reminder by Joseph Grenny, co-author of Crucial Conversations as we wept together at Blaine’s funeral that one of the core teachings of the 7 Habits is imagining you were at your own funeral and thinking about what you would want to be said about you.  The idea is to live your life accordingly.  Well there we sat at Blaine’s funeral and realized he did just that.  Judging from the remarkable tributes to Blaine from his brother and sons and our own direct experience of him, Blaine lived up to that challenge. He left this world a better place than he found it and took with him the only thing that accompanies us out of this life, his indomitable spirit and a significantly informed intelligence.

We are confident Blaine will continue his influence beyond this world. It’s certain his influence will continue to touch our world. My dear Blaine you will be sorely missed and always remembered.   As his son Ben said: ” See you in the morning Dad!”

Malcolm Gladwell has done it again. His new book Outliers is well worth the read and is already #9 of all books on the USA Today bestseller list. Outliers brilliantly challenges our assumptions about success. It makes my short list of stimulating reads about success. It is extraordinary for a growing a global perspective by learning new insights about success in other cultures. Gladwell again comes up with stimulating and surprising examples that are thought provoking and help develop our lateral thinking. It is a great book to inspire us to get better and rethink our level of play and effort. I was particularly moved by the concept that it takes 10,000 hours to master success and that hard work can overcome other disadvantages. Another unlikely insight I gained was about educating my grandchildren and helping them step up to the future. Well done Malcolm.

Our friend Paul Allen, an internet entreprenuer extraordinaire,  quoted The Speed of Trust in a very interesting explanation of the power of referrals on his blog entitled The Power of LinkedIn and The Speed of Trust. Paul is one of the brightest minds we know and you will enjoy his insights on the potential of social networking from a marketing perspective.

Take 2 one of England’s leading online booksellers today announced that The Speed of Trust was the #7 Bestselling book in Britain last week!

Mellisa Long & Stephen M. R. Covey

Stephen M.R. Covey talks about what role trust plays in business and relationships.  Stephen was interviewed by Mellissa Long on CNN about trust in themarketplace. 

QQ.com is the #1 internet portal in China reaching over 90% of all web users in China with over 273 million active accounts.  That is nearly the entire population of the U.S. or Europe both children and adults!  In a lengthy interview Stephen and I were struck by the similarities of the questions and the high level of interest in the topic of Trust consistent with what we experience in other countries.  There was no sense of caution as the interviewer pointed out the low levels of trust that still exist in China between the government and business. The Speed of Trust is published in both simple and Complex Chinese and is selling well.  

Stephen emphasized the common ground of the topic of trust in relationships with team members from various nations.  He pointed out that the 13 behaviors of high trust leaders are common to leaders around the globe regardless of nationality.  There was significant interest in Stephen’s assertion that trust many times can be restored  or to a great degree improved after it is broken.  It is not black and white.  This resonated as a hopeful concept for China as they tend to consider dire consequences to loosing face or damaging your family or business reputation.  Stephen also discussed the gains in market trust and brand reputation gained by China due to their hosting the Olympics.  The national pride in China fueled by the Olympics and rising economics is evident in conversations with local leaders. 

Ever thought of starting your own business? Our good friends, Ken Blanchard and Ethan Willis, have teamed up to write Ken’s next bestseller: The One Minute Entrepreneur. I first met Ken 23 years ago when I lived in San Diego, just after he had published The One Minute Manager and before it became the New York Times bestseller (and sold more than 12 million copies in 27 languages). It was Ken that introduced me to a new entrepreneur in 1986, Dr. Stephen R. Covey, who had an idea for a book.  We all know the rest of that story.  Every time I see Kenny, he asks me, “Link, what has become clear to you since we last spoke?”  A provocative question.  Well Ken, what is clear to me is that The One Minute Entrepreneur is a must-read book.

The Speed of Trust is # 2 on BusinessWeek Magazine’s latest bestseller list and is sweeping global business circles.

The Speed of Trust continues to gain momentum around the world in our quest to be a catalyst for a global renaissance of Trust.  It was #5 on Canada’s respected Financial Times’ bestseller list over Easter weekend. 

When the going gets tough, projects, money, and jobs gravitate to trusted high performers.  The Speed of Trust teaches 13 behaviors common to high trust people and leaders throughout the world.  The last to be laid-off or outsourced are those “go to” performers that are trusted.  

As Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine, stated in his interview with Stephen M. R. Covey on The Speed of Trust: “Money was the currency of the old economy; Trust is the currency of the new, global economy.” Stephen M. R. Covey is fast becoming the global CEO of Trust. Stephen will be speaking in Singapore, Hong Kong, and several other Asian cities in late May.

The Speed of Trust is the #1 Best Selling Business Book according to todays Journal!

Happy Valentines day Geri Covey and Annie Link #12 USA TODAY February 14th!!

New York Times Bestseller

CEO Read recently named The Speed of Trust as the #1 most read business book by CEO’s and executives for 2007.  We are honored and feel this speaks to the ever growing relevance of Trust in todays Global Marketplace.

Response to Covey’s recent remarks to ChicagoLand Business Leaders:

“The Speed of Trust is not a topic, it is a movement — one that I encourage all Chicago businesses to engage in.”

–Jerry Roper, President & CEO, ChicagoLand Chamber of Commerce

The Speed of Trust, is already in its 5^th printing less than three months after publication!  BusinessWeek just selected it as one of the top five career books of 2006 along with Jack Welch’s new book.  This is particularly impressive given that The Speed of Trust was only published for the last two months of 2006. 

Warren Bennis, bestselling author of On Becoming a Leader, had this to say about Stephen M. R. Covey’s new book (fall 2006) entitled The SPEED of Trust:  “Covey’s book underscores the single most important factor-the substrate-that will determine the success (or failure) of any organization in the 21st Century: TRUST. This is a powerful read: brave, imaginative, amazingly prescient and backed up by empirical and analytical heft. A must read for anyone in a position of responsibility, from a support group to a global corporation.”

We are THRILLED to announce that today is the long awaited official publication date of “The SPEED of Trust” by Stephen M. R. Covey.

 We know your time is precious and that we are certainly biased, but we are confident you will join the CEO of Black & Decker, Nolan Archibald, in discovering that “The SPEED of Trust” is well worth your time. He put it this way: 

“When I received this book and was asked to read it and offer my comments, my first impulse was, ‘I don’t have the time.’  However, as I read the foreword, then the first few chapters, I could not put it down.  It is exactly what business leaders need today. This book gets to the core roots of ethical behavior and integrity and how ‘trust’ is the most critical factor in effective leaders and organizations.  Covey discusses with clarity and insight how to develop trust through character and competence and how ‘trusted’ leaders and organizations do things better, faster, and at lower costs.  Everyone should make the time to read this book.”

William Parrett, CEO of Deloitte Touche Tomatsu, adds,

“The Speed ofTrust is Red-hot relevant.”

 Yes, we know, you still have books you have not finished reading on your bedside stand.  However, this book is different; we know you will finish this one.  As Nolan Archibald said above, he could not put it down.  Besides, trust is the one thing that will change your relationships and career for the better.

 As Chris Anderson, Publisher of WIRED magazine and author of the hot new book “The Long Tail,” told Stephen in a recent interview: “The currency of the old economy was simply money.  The new currency is trust itself. People confer their attention to the people who have earned it.  So trust is the new currency of the reputation economy.”

Dr. Laura said: “Want to be an irresistible positive force?  Combine personal responsibility with compassion and respect for others.  Want to know how to do this perfectly?  Read The Speed of Trust.”

One last plug, October 8th’s New York Times’ Book Review had this to say: “Of the three [books], the most intriguing is “The Speed of Trust” (Free Press, $26), by Mr. Covey, a Harvard M.B.A. who previously ran the Covey Leadership Center, which featured the work of his father, Stephen R. Covey—a guru in his own right as author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.’  The younger Mr. Covey, a potential guru himself, defines trust as a combination of character and competence.”

Stephen spoke to several hundred business people in Colorado last week  in anticipation of the the long awaited publication of The Speed of Trust.  The reaction?

Gaye Stockman, President & CEO of the Loveland Colorado Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center, had this to say: “Covey’s The Speed of Trust presentation was an amazing event for the Loveland Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center. Not only did we have a wonderful turnout of approximately 500 business professionals in Northern Colorado, but the support from sponsors leading up to the event was awesome. Rarely are we able to put together a presentation and have it become self-sustaining within such a short period of time. We managed to do it all within three weeks. Now that says something – not only for The Speed of Trust but about the public’s readiness to hear this message. Thank you for helping us spread this powerful message throughout our business community. We continue to hear from our members how great Mr. Covey’s presentation was.” 

I suggest that the speed of trust in this case was the trust the community had in Gaye and her team.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an extraordinary book from our friend, Tom Peters, entitled, “Sixty.”  I devoured it as my vacation reading.   It is a magical compilation of 60 TIB’s or Things I Believe, as he calls them – one for each year of Tom’s life . . . so far.  I add, “so far” as I sent Tom the cover of the AARP magazine a couple of years ago with the headline “60 is the new 30.”  We are all blessed to have virtually a second adult life after 60.  Fortunately for all of us, Tom is in the best health he has been for years and will continue to influence our thinking and our actions for years to come.

The compelling question is what will we do with our extra years?  Retire?  Not hardly.  Ken Blanchard told us he prefers to think of it as refiring, not retiring.  Nobel thought.  We would like to think that we can have even more influence and make a bigger difference in our experienced years.  They say we have two ages:  our chronological age and our biological age.  To this we add a third, our experiential age.   While it is physically healthy to reduce our biological age, we contend that it is mentally and spiritually healthy to expand our experiential age.  Said another way, in five years, will you have muddled through one year five times or will you have increased your experiential age by 10 years, learning more exponentially each successive year?  Leaning into life and being our best selves is not only valuable for leaving a legacy that will outlive us, but, more importantly, our experience and knowledge is basically all we take with us to the next life.  The concept of “he who dies with the most toys wins” has long since been debunked.  (You don’t see U-Haul trailers behind hearses.) 

Back to Tom Peters outstanding book, “Sixty.”  It is a piece of art.  A unique combination of design, images, and paradigm-shaking content. For now, for the sake of brevity, I will highlight an excerpt from one of my favorites.

#46  “Excellence is a state of mind.” 

“I don’t believe in the tooth fairy.  And I don’t own a pair of rose-colored glasses.  On the other hand, I do believe: I believe in the possibility of turning any task, assignment, project, or job into a Gem-Mighty Quest. I believe in the possibility of widespread excellence.  Note, I said . . . possibility . . . of excellence.

Enter old Tom.  That is…Thomas Watson…the de facto IBM founder.  Rumor has it that Watson was once asked, ‘How long does it take to achieve excellence?’  His response, pre-dating Ken Blanchard by decades, was, ‘A minute.’  He continued by claiming that excellence was entirely in the hands of the perpetrator, no matter how ‘junior’ or ‘powerless’  Excellence…a state of mind?  A decision, actually, per Watson.  A decision…right now…to…never again…do anything that is not excellent.

. . . If you are an exercise freak (and I am…most of the time), you know exactly what I am talking about.  You may be breathless…but there’s little that’s more self-satisfying than knowing that you’ve pushed yourself right to the edge of the possible…and then a little beyond. That feeling, I contend, is replicable…on any task…at any time.  Does ‘it’ turn you on?  Will ‘it’ have been marked by…excellence?  And if not, precisely what do you intend to do about it?  Right now?”

Thanks Tom!  

That’s the profound question New York Times three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas L. Friedman asks his readers in his thought-provoking #1 bestseller, The World is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.1

Wait a minute, are you still convinced that everything you once learned about Christopher Columbus and the Santa Maria is true?  Well, maybe it was—back then.  But today, if you plan to stay in the game, Friedman suggests you reconsider and re-learn.  In an interview with Tom Nissley of Amazon.com, Friedman explains:

“What I mean when I say that the world is flat is that sometime in the late 1990’s a whole set of technologies and political events converged—including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the Internet, the diffusion of the Windows operating system, the creation of a global fiber-optic network, and the creation of interoperable software applications, which made it very easy for people all over the world to work together—that leveled the playing field. It created a global platform that allowed more people to plug and play, collaborate and compete, share knowledge and share work, than anything we have ever seen in the history of the world.”

Friedman asks people in his book where they were when they realized the world was flat.  Amazon’s Nissley asked Friedman where he was.  His response:  “I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.  I was doing a documentary for the Discovery Times Channel about “outsourcing.” After 60 hours of interviews with Indian entrepreneurs who wanted to write my software from Bangalore, do my taxes from Bangalore, trace my lost luggage from Bangalore, read my x-rays from Bangalore, and draw my Disney cartoons from Bangalore, I realized that something big had happened– the world had been flattened–and I needed to write about it.”

Friedman suggests that when the tech bubble popped in the late 90’s, followed by the distractions of Y2K mania, the tragedies of 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we westerners blinked and missed the fact that the flattening of the global economy was beginning to accelerate at a hang-on-to-your-seat pace.  Friedman interviewed Henry Schacht, who, during part of this period, was watching the whole process from the side of corporate management.

“The business economics, [he told Friedman] became ‘very ugly’ for everyone. . . .  ‘Cost pressures were enormous,’ he recalled, ‘and the flat world was available, [so] economics were forcing people to do things they never thought they would do or could do . . . Globalization got supercharged’—for both knowledge work and manufacturing.  Companies found that they could go to MIT and find four incredibly smart Chinese engineers who were ready to go back to China and work for them from there for the same amount that it would cost them to hire one engineer in America.”

Let’s think about this.  Besides the fact that your accountant is already outsourcing your tax return work to India, your most recent CAT scan or MRI was most likely deciphered in Australia, you’re having a hard time understanding the English spoken at the other end of the help-line, and the MP3 you just bought came with directions in 14 different languages, what does this flattened world really mean for you and your future—both personally and professionally? 

Friedman asked this question of Jaithirth Rao, whose Indian firm, MphasiS, is successfully and lucratively able to handle outsourced tax work “from any state in America and the federal government.”  Said Rao, “It is a good question. . . . We are in the middle of a big technological change, and when you live in a society that is at the cutting edge of that change [like America], it is hard to predict.  It’s easy to predict for someone living in India. In ten years we are going to be doing a lot of the stuff that is being done in America today. . . .  Any activity where we can digitize and decompose the value chain and move the work around, it will get moved around.  We can predict our future.  But we are behind you.  You are defining the future.  America is always on the edge of the next creative wave.”

Defining the future . . . the edge of the next creative wave. . . .  Just what is this future, this creative wave we’re all going to want to catch?  Friedman supplies a solid answer through L. Gary Boomer, CEO of Boomer Consulting in Manhattan KS, who explains, “Those who get caught in the past and resist change will be forced deeper into commoditization.  Those who can create value through leadership, relationships, and creativity will transform [their] industries, as well as strengthen relationships with their existing clients.”

According to Publishers Weekly, Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives, who are his main sources, that these [world flattening] developments are desirable and unstoppable and that American workers should be preparing to “create value through leadership.”2

At CoveyLink, we couldn’t agree more.  The global call for capable, innovative, trust-based leadership is intensifying.  World-class leadership and business relies on trust and trust has been the lubricant of commerce since the world’s first merchants began trading seeds, then beads, then goods and services.

“Fortune favors the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur

The growth of knowledge work both leads and informs this important global trend.  Knowledge work is dependent upon relationships and relationships, of course, thrive on trust.  Trust fuels this new global economy just as trust magnifies or diminishes every other leadership competency you have, including your vision—a vision which must now include the entire globe regardless of your industry or profession.

The world is not becoming flat, it is already flat.  And, yes, it will get flatter.  If you haven’t yet caught onto this fact, read Friedman’s book.  In fact, we recommend you read it now, then read it again every year as a gauge to hold up against your most recent, brilliant strategic assumptions. 

One last memorable thought from Friedman:

“In China, Bill Gates is a Britney Spears – they scalp tickets to hear him speak.  In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. That’s the problem.”