How Covey Fits In

If you have read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People then you know Covey is writing about leadership. He studied over 200 years of literature on successful leadership to come up with these 7 Habits. The first three are grouped into what he calls the PERSONAL VICTORY- (or Self Mastery).

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First

When someone has worked these habits into their lives they move from dependent thinking to independent thinking. All of this ties into Senge's work in the book, The Fifth Discipline. He writes about seeing organizations as complex systems. In these systems there are 5 disciplines that needs attention. Two of them are PERSONAL MASTERY and mental models.

Discipline 1: Personal Mastery
Dicipline 2: Mental Models

"Personal mastery is a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively." (p. 7)

2) "Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action." (p. 8)

So if I am writing about how tools can shift mental models then it seems the work of Senge and Covey are going to be helpful in thinking about this.

PERSONAL MASTERY (Senge) = PERSONAL VICTORY (Covey)