STEPHEN R Covey, author of the best-selling ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, died on Monday at a hospital in Idaho Falls, Idaho, due to complications from a bicycle accident in April, according to his family.
He was considered a pioneer in the self-help genre aimed at helping readers become more productive in their lives. Covey had an enormous impact on both the corporate world and the personal lives of millions.
A well-known motivational speaker, Covey’s book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, sold more than 20 million copies in 38 languages.
“In his final hours, he was surrounded by his loving wife and each one of his children and their spouses, just as he always wanted,” the family said in a statement. He was 79.
Covey was hospitalized in April after being knocked unconscious in the bike crash on a steep road in the foothills of Provo, Utah, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City.
“This was one of the first books in recent times that was really directed at prioritizing the way you worked, so you could be more effective as an individual” said Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Portfolio, a business imprint at Penguin Group (USA). “It wasn’t about how to be a manager or how or to run a company. It was about how to conduct yourself.
“Covey’s influence was very pervasive,” added Zackheim, a rival publisher. “It was a book that applied to everybody. You would hear about whole organizations where everybody in the company was expected to read the book.”
Bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc. called Covey “an influence in both the business and self-help genres as he imparted a system and approach to life that worked in business and personal situations.”
In “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Covey writes about the need to be proactive, to “begin with the end in mind,” habit No. 2, and “to seek first to understand, then be understood,” habit No. 5.
“Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know,” Covey wrote in the foreword.
