I'm reading "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" for the first time, in preparation for a training course I'm going to take in early February. (It's required pre-reading.)

This is one deeply annoying book.

I have completely lost track of the number of times Covey claims something is a "fact" when there are clearly exceptions and special circumstances. His style--standard for the business lecture circuit--uses generalities, capsule personal examples of a point illustrated in life, and quotes from far more accomplished writers and authors, to back up his arguments. Which is too bad, because his central themes--substance over style and self-awareness--seems to be good ones. Ironically, his style is the same as that used by the people he derides as proponents of the "Personality Ethic".

Gah. People complain about technical writing as using incomprehensible gibberish terms, but I believe that business lecturers do far more damage to communication by using everyday language incorrectly or through relying on their own or (worse) others' incorrect logical arguments to support their messages.

</rant>


posted by Tom at 3:55 PM | link |