Client Facilitation

A C A D E M Y

Questions & Answers With

Hyrum Smith
Remind me of the old adage about owning a ranch

If you want to make a small fortune, buy a ranch with a large

Scott Miller
General Manager
Client Facilitation Services
To Our Client Facilitators:
We’ve just entered the 26th year since the founding
of our company and thought it perfect timing to
interview our co-founder Hyrum Smith. We asked
our facilitators to submit questions and I posed
them to Hyrum, with a few of my own. I’m certain
you’ll enjoy reading his responses, so print off these
pages and sit back with a cup of hot cider and enjoy
some sage advice—on a broad range of topics.
You will also see a note from Sean Covey at the
end regarding the future of our Time Management
solutions.
We had our interview delayed a little bit.
Would you mind sharing with us what
happened in your life this week?
We were supposed to have the interview yesterday
and we had an emergency. I run a cattle ranch here in
southern Utah and I had a bunch of cows get through a fence
up on our…what we call our summer range. The BLM (Bureau
of Land Management) called and said get your cows off BLM
ground.We had to go up and find the cows. My wife, son-in-law,
son, and my grandson—five of us—trailered five horses up the
mountain yesterday and spent four hours in the saddle finding
cows.We found one cow that was sick and we were able to corral
that one into the trailer and bring it back. Most of the other cows
had already made it back to the correct area.
fortune.
Tell us…go back 25 years almost and give us
a quick reminder of the principles that you
founded Franklin Quest on. Remind us of the
journey you started that literally tens of millions of us
have followed you on.
I started the company back in 1983. The reason I
started the company is because I had a passion to
teach. I went through the process of discovering my own
governing values. Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography had a
major impact on my life and I decided that I would do what
he did and find out what my values are—what matters most to
me. I discovered that one of the things that matters most to me
is to (a) make a difference and (b) how do I make a difference.
I should teach, I should teach people what I believe to be true,
and that can change and better their lives.
I left a very lucrative career at ADP—Automatic Data
Processing, a firm in New York—and started my own little
seminar company. The original name was Golden Eagle
Motivation, which I shudder to think about now. It was awful.
In a year, we learned about the seminar business. In that year,
I was living in California, and I knocked on every door on
Wilshire Boulevard and no one was interested in a seminar
on how to be a great person. That was my original seminar—
“How to Be a Wonderful Human Being.” My original vision
was “How to Become a Magnificent Human Being.” It
bombed, but I learned a lot about the seminar business. I read
a book which I wish I could remember the name of. It was
about how to build your own seminar business. It said it takes
four to five years to make a name for yourself, so don’t get

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discouraged. I learned, for example, that when people say they
will come to seminar they haven’t paid for, they don’t come.
That was a hard lesson to learn. I did a lot of seminars for 3 to
4 people when I was expecting 50.
I gravitated to time management because there was a recession.
People were being laid off and productivity of existing people
became a very big issue. I had aligned myself briefly with a
guy who was teaching time management as a consultant, so
I decided we could teach time management from a values-
based position. It was my idea of helping people become better
human beings using the Trojan Horse of time management.
Time management, we discovered, was interesting to people.
Dick Winwood was my partner and, actually, my wife was my
third partner. We created a seminar called “Focus on Time
Management.” We started that thing and it just exploded
around us. The reason is our approach was “find out what
matters most to you and then do something about it.”
I can give you the seminar in nine seconds: ‘find out what
matters most to you; bring the events of your life in line with
what matters most to you and you have a right to inner peace.’
I’ve just given you the whole seminar. That’s basically it.
Initially, we used the Day Timer®. The advent and creation of
the Franklin Day Planner was a wonderful mistake. We went
to Day Timer to see if they would make some changes on
their format to fit the mechanics we were teaching.They were
not interested in doing that. If you look at a Franklin Planner
and a Day Timer they were similar. We had some changes
we wanted made to the left and right pages. They were not
willing to collaborate. So we mocked one up of our own
and invented the Franklin Planner. We decided to call it the
Franklin Planner because Ben Franklin in his autobiography
talked about this little book he carried with him everywhere.
He recorded the weather every day and all of his thoughts.
So it was a fun beginning. The whole idea was all around the
idea of finding out what your personal governing values are
and building that productivity pyramid, because at the top
of the pyramid was a tool. Now you need a tool to bring
your governing values into some kind of daily activity because
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
that is the only way you can experience inner peace. It was a
fun concept to teach because a lot of people, when you start
talking about inner peace, would become uncomfortable at
first.The more we got into the seminar, the more they realized
that is what they want. What I want is peace in my life. I want
to feel okay about me. I want to be in charge of me and to be
doing what matters most to me. I don’t want to be reactive,
I want to be proactive. Those words started to become buzz
words in the business community. That is how it started.
You’ve been in this business now for 25 plus
years and are considered a world expert
on time management. What are some
fundamental principles that have not changed in
the midst of revolutionary technical changes in
how we lead our lives, operate our businesses, and
communicate?
A point that I make in just about every speech is
that the basic principles that help a human being
become a better human being have not changed for 6,000
years. I think that is something we need to keep in mind. I
have people come up to me, and this is literally true, and they
will lower their head and make sure no one around is listening
to them. They say, “I wish I lived a hundred years ago when
they had more time.” I would ask, “How much more time did
they have?” The only difference between a hundred years ago
and today is that we have more options than they had. Why
do we have more options? Because we do things faster. That is
why we are into speed.
If my grandfather missed the train, no big deal; in 24 hours,
he would take the next train. If my father missed his flight, no
big deal; he would take the next plane in 5 hours. If I miss one
section of a revolving door, I go nuts. And so does everybody
else. Why? Because we are into speed. You wouldn’t tolerate
the speed of a PC 15 years ago today. Do you remember the
old dot-matrix printers? We would stand there in awe and
watch those suckers spin. We wouldn’t tolerate that today.
Now the point is, the basic principles that help a human being
become a better human being have not changed for 6,000
years. For example, the whole idea around the quest for inner
peace…if you did a survey of the business executive 500 years
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ago and do that survey every 100 years for the next 500 years
and ask the person what they want, they want inner peace.
We did a study on this and it came back that people wanted
four things: balance in their lives, simplicity in their lives, they
wanted to be successful at something, and they wanted to
be more effective at what they do. Isn’t that interesting? If
you wrapped those four items into one simple concept, what
people want is inner peace.
What is inner peace? It is bringing what I do every single day
in line with what matters most to me. That is an immutable
principle that has nothing to do with technology. Technology
can help. What has changed in the last 100 years is our
technology. The tools with which we implement these ancient
principles are moving at light speed. And that is very exciting.
The thing that has not changed in the last 100 years, 500
years, is the human being. The human being is still the same.
We still go to the bathroom two to three times a day. We still
put our pants on one leg at a time. The human being is the
same. The basic principles, when you talk about the principles
of time management—focusing on your governing values,
changing those values into a long-range goal that turns into an
intermediate goal that eventually ends up on a daily task list—
is a very old idea.You can find that on the pages of Plato. But
why is it still relevant today? Because the human being is still a
human being. I still want to be in control of my life. I want to
be in charge of what matters most to me. I don’t want someone
telling me what I have to do every five seconds. I would like to
be in charge of that. That is why reading the books that have
been written by great authors from the very beginning of time
is such a worthwhile read; reading stuff that Winston Churchill,
Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King had to say. Look at
the principles that they talk about.They are immutable, ancient
principles that still work today. It’s treating people with respect.
It’s the principle of love, the principle of forgiveness. It’s a very
ancient idea. It still works today. Forgiveness is a good idea.
Do you want inner peace? Then you should learn to forgive.
There are 92 principles that help a human being become a
great human being. I’m going to write a book about this, by
the way. I’ve identified 92 principles that help a human being
become a human being. They are very old, ancient ideas.
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
Speaking of books, name the top three to
four books that you feel have had the biggest
influence on your life, shaped your thinking
on life.
First, the scriptures. I am a Christian and the
scriptures have had a major impact on my life. The
second book that had the biggest impact on my life is Les
Miserable. If you want to read a book that will change your
life, you need to read the full version—1,400 pages—of Les
Miserable. It is a magnificent read about a guy who had to learn
to forgive. It is also a book about the abundance mentality. It
is about a guy who discovered that giving is what mattered.
Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning is a fabulous
book. Viktor Frankl survived the Auschwitz death camps and
discovered the difference between freedom and liberty, which
is really an interesting idea. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less
Traveled is a very worthwhile read. Jim Collins’ books are very
good, Good to Great and Built to Last.Very good current stuff.
Being a prolific author yourself, what is on
your nightstand right now?
I just finished one that Richard Godfrey and I co-
authored called Home of the Brave. It was just released.
It has to do with how Americans deal with adversity.
We identified 10 great Americans and how they dealt with
adversity. In a time when we are having to deal with adversity
in a big way, the book on my brain right now is the one on the
92 principles that have to be integrated ultimately if we are
going to be great human beings. There may be a co-author.
Are you familiar with Wintley Phipps? He is the voice behind
Amazing Grace, anytime you hear it sung beautifully, that’s him.
He has the most amazing voice you’ve ever heard. We met
for lunch the other day and he’s created a list also, which we
compared. He has a list of about 70 to 80 of these principles
and 90 percent of them are identical, what I thought was really
fascinating.
You’re well known as an American patriot and
your patriotism is contagiously inspiring. What
is the connection with you regarding Ben
Franklin? Why was it Ben Franklin that seemed to inspire
so much of your writing, thinking, and teaching versus
any of the other Americans from the same generation?
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Ben Franklin’s autobiography is a wonderful read
and I would encourage everybody to read it. He talks
about his governing values and the impact these governing
values had on his life. He didn’t call them governing values;
he called them his 13 virtues and how he focused on each
one. He would take one and focus on it for an entire week.
The next week, he would focus on another one. One was
temperance and one of them was humility; that was imposed
on him by a friend of his. He never felt good about the
humility one, which is interesting. Chastity was one of them.
As you read about Ben Franklin, you realize that is one he
struggled with.   And he talked about it in his life. As you study
the life of Ben Franklin, I believe he is probably the most
productive, prolific American in our history. The things that
he founded; the things that he created, invented; the role he
played in the Constitutional Convention as an old man; the
trips to Europe representing the United States; when you look
at the things the man did in his 82 years, it was amazing. At
the time, the life expectancy was 55. I just think he was an
incredible person.You know, the impact that he has had on the
world, the impact he had on the Constitutional Convention—
he imposed the idea of identifying governing values first on
the Constitutional Convention, so that is what they focused
on. They were screaming at each other for four months in
1787, “What matters most to us? What would we cross the ‘I’
beam’ for?” Freedom of this, freedom of that, and that is what
ended up in our Constitution.
Other than the recent book you’ve just written
and the book you’re considering writing
about 92 principles, what are you working on?
My major focus right now—I’m still giving three
to four speeches a month, which I will probably do
until I die because I love to do it. One of the highlights of my
speaking career was when I was asked by Norman Vincent
Peale, when he came to Salt Lake City, to warm-up the crowd.
So I spoke for an hour before Norman Vincent Peale, about 2
years before he died 10 or 12 years ago. He was 92 years old
and the guy got up and gave a wonderful talk. He could hardly
get up to the podium, but when he did, it was like someone
stuck an electrode in him. He went nuts for an hour and then
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
he could hardly make it back to his seat. I thought, that will be
me. I’m going to do that until I die. I’m focusing on a couple
of businesses with my sons and sons-in-law here in southern
Utah. I am just right under six million miles on commercial
aircraft. My biggest value, at this point, is spending time with
my family.
Right now I am the president of the Command and General
Staff College Foundation at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It is
kind of a fun thing. Three years ago, I got a call from David
Petraeus, who was then the commandant of the school. He
was a three-star general then. I had lunch with him and he
said that he wanted to create a foundation and would I help. I
said I would be happy to do that, and I am now the president
of that foundation and we raise money for the college. West
Point has a foundation; Annapolis and the Air Force Academy
have one. The Command and General Staff College is a very
prestigious, 125-year-old school. To move from major to
colonel in the Army, you have to graduate from the Command
and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. I got to know
David Petraeus before he became a household name. Now he
is a four-star general running the war in the Middle East. He is
a fabulous guy, by the way.   This is my philanthropic urge right
now. I am back at Leavenworth every other month and we’re
having fun raising money. I was in Ross Perot’s office two
weeks ago. We’re honoring him next April at a dinner giving
him our annual Leadership Award for all the things he’s done
for the military. I was in his office at Perot Systems.You should
see his office. It’s a museum.
Technology today offers many electronic
options for managing time, but I still love
my paper Franklin Planner. Are we seeing
a return to paper and pencil, or is the trend going
toward electronic tools?
My impression is that there is a surge returning to
paper. I will never forget when 3Com brought in
and put on my desk the first Palm Pilot. I played with it and
thought it was a great toy, but no one will ever buy one. I
turned out to be wrong about that. We strongly embraced
technology at FranklinCovey and sold 10,000 Palm Pilots a
week for several years, and then all of a sudden, we didn’t.
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People stopped buying PDAs. I thought, “I’ve got to try the
Palm Pilot.” I put away my paper planner for 13 months. I
went to a PDA and I discovered that I could do everything
in my Palm Pilot that I could do in my paper planner, but I
wouldn’t. The reason I wouldn’t is because it took too much
time. It was too hard to do. I came back to my paper planner
because of the ease of the operation. What I discovered was
that for managing tasks, appointments, and taking notes, a
paper planner is four times faster than any electronic device.
There is a whole host of reasons for that, but I will just leave
it at that level. A paper planner for tasks, appointments—
managing me—is four times faster. Now, there is a place for
technology. I carry a BlackBerry. I love my BlackBerry. What
do I use it for? I can communicate my calendar to my people.
I can download The Wall Street Journal. I can check my email. It
is a wonderful phone. But for managing me in the heat of the
day, my paper planner is more effective and it is faster.
I have had letters from CEOs, senior vice-presidents from
all over the country, telling me, “Hyrum, I’m back to my
paper planner. I’ve got control back in my life.” In fact, just a
year ago, a senior VP from Merrill Lynch went through our
seminar. She said, “Hyrum, you trained me 18 years ago, I
went to an electronic device 3 years ago, I lost control of
my life. I went back to my paper planner and my control
is back.” There is something about writing on paper that a
human being likes. The thing about those three things: tasks,
appointments, and taking notes, and if I know how to retrieve
those notes—the magic of the Franklin Planner is the retrieval
system. The minute I write a note in my planner, I’ve given
that note a root in time. I will always be able to find it. There
are three different ways for retrieving information from a
Franklin Planner. I can do it with lightning speed. If you don’t
understand the mechanics of the Franklin Planner, you don’t
understand why people would use that instead of technology.
If you’ve gone through the class and you’ve been taught well
how to use it, it is a dangerous tool. I’m a paper guy myself.
Eugene Fucetola
Global Operations Manager GIST AM&I
MARS INFORMATION SERVICES
The Franklin Planner and associated event-
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
management process was created by you during
the mid ‘80s a time which was arguably less global
focused and not as pervasive—24/7 around the
clock. If you were creating the planner process today,
would you change anything? And to that point, how
do you manage your own time? What would you
do differently if you were launching the company
today in the midst of the balance between paper vs.
technology and using Outlook or Lotus Notes and
the speed with which you can retrieve information
from paper? Also, will you address the environmental
sensitivity of using paper in a paperless society?
First of all, the myth that we are a paperless society
needs to be blown up, because we are using more
paper today, globally, than ever in our history. What would I
do differently? I would do everything exactly the same but…
our message to the world when we started 26 years ago was
have everything in one place. That one place was the Franklin
Planner. There was no technology then. There were no PDAs,
no PCs. There were no cell phones when we started. Have
everything in one place and that is your Franklin Planner.That
is your life. Your life was in your planner. It exploded. People
went nuts over the Franklin Planner: 172 countries, six million
people using Franklin Planners. It was amazing—32,000 at
Dow Chemical, 15,000 at Merrill Lynch using the Franklin
Planner. It just became an amazing thing. Then technology
came along and technology, clearly, has a place. We changed
one word in our message to the world from “Have everything
in one place,” to “Have everything in one system.”You create
a system that works for you.
My system…the way I manage myself. I have four pieces in my
system. I have my Franklin Planner for tasks, appointments and
taking notes. I have my BlackBerry, a wonderful receptacle for
information. I can carry more information in my BlackBerry
than I could ever carry in my Franklin Planner. I have a cell
phone that is now combined into a BlackBerry so that I can
communicate with the world. And I have a PC so that I can
do all the things that a PC allows you to do. I have a nice thin
one that fits into a satchel so that I can do my email. That
is condensed into three items now because my cell phone
and BlackBerry are one and the same. That is how I manage
Hyrum Smith, and it works wonderfully for me. If I’m passing
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somebody in the airport and ask for their phone number,
I write that in my Franklin Planner. I don’t whip out my
BlackBerry and punch that in.That is a royal pain in the fanny,
quite frankly. I can write that in my planner in nanoseconds. If
I want to transfer it into my phone when I’m on the plane, I
can do that; but initially, I write it down. The immediate need
to take a note… Even when the Tablet PC came out and you
could write on the screen, while cool, they were a pain to
work. No one used them because paper was so much faster.
When people started moving to PDAs, they started carrying
yellow pads of paper. Why? They had to.   Are you going to
take notes on a Palm Pilot or BlackBerry in a meeting and
try and keep up? There is no way. Still, it is not really socially
okay to sit there and bang on a computer. If I am going to
take a note, I write it so that it has a root in time so I can
retrieve it when I want it. If I want to transfer it to some kind
of electronic note-taking device I can do that. I can scan it in
if I want. I can save it on my computer if I want. In the heat of
the day, from a time-motion standpoint, paper is faster.
Vincent Zaniewski
Manager, Training HR Development
Corporate Human Resources
Canon U.S.A., Inc.
What do you do when everything is a top priority?
The fact is, everything is not a top priority. That is
why I spend a major part of teaching time, telling
people to take 10 to 15 minutes of time each day, isolating
yourself from the world in a period of planning and solitude,
and really focus in on what I have coming down the pike
today. What in fact is the most important thing? The A-B-C
system of prioritization is just as relevant today as it was
1,000 years ago. It is a very old idea of prioritization. A is
vital, B is important, C is maybe. What is vital—I’d even
add life-sustaining? If you add the word “life-sustaining”
to a task or something that is coming down the pike, that
changes things dramatically. When I hear “everything is a
top priority,” I ask, “Is everything life-sustaining? What on
this list may take your life?” You have to get down to the
point and ask, “What will I lose my job over? What will cost
the company money? What is the most vital, life-sustaining
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
thing I’ve got to accomplish today?” That is the way you
start your prioritization. A lot of things are close. There are
a lot of heavy things we’ve got to do.
The fact is, if you don’t take the time to isolate yourself—get
away from the melee, close the door, put your feet up on
your desk and just think—you are going to live in a reactive
world. Most people don’t take time to split the hair. What is
life-sustaining and what is vital? You’ve got to get down to
the nubs. What is the single most important thing today? If
nothing else happens, this must happen.
With respect to FranklinCovey’s client
facilitators, two of the most popular solutions
are The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
and FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities. We
have tens of thousands of facilitators throughout
North America and the world teaching these solutions.
A question from one of these facilitators reads:
Donnie Brown
Vice President Human Resources
Tindall Corporation
It is gratifying to see participants in our company
make the commitment and continue to use a Franklin
Planner after attending one of our workshops. I
would like to see more of a commitment to using the
system.
What else can facilitators and others do to increase
the number of their colleagues who use the Franklin
Planning system, whether it be the planning tool, the
methodology or the system? What have you learned
from other companies that had pervasive use? What
was the magic ingredient?
I think the magic ingredient is…we had a word for it:
the breeder effect. For example, Dow Chemical…I
did the first seminar there in December 1985. For the next
several years, they had a waiting list of like 300 to 400 people
waiting to get into the seminar. The impact of the seminar
with each group that went through it had a viral effect on
the rest of the company. Those who came out of the seminar
were very excited about their planner; very excited about
how to use that planner; very excited about the whole idea
of governing values and getting those into their daily task
lists. They talked about it. They carried it with them. People
around them would see their enthusiasm for managing their
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lives. They would say, “I have to have one of those. How do
I get one?” The trainer director had people lining up at their
door.
If the seminar is being taught well, that means the instructor
has to believe in what they are teaching. They have to use the
planner. I have seen instructors try and teach the program and
when they don’t use a planner, it bombs. It dies very quickly.
The importance of the instructor being a total believer in
what they are teaching is absolutely critical. If I could tell the
client facilitator anything, it would be that when you get up
and start talking about governing values, you need to have
identified your own so that when people ask you about them
you can pull out your list and show them. I have had, literally,
hundreds of thousands of people ask me for copies of my
governing values. We finally printed them in the What Matters
Most book.Teaching a seminar is not telling the seminar. Some
people can tell the seminar and it sounds fine and it can be
entertaining for six hours, but those who teach the seminar
have done it themselves. They have had the impact in their
own personal lives and they get up and teach with six times
the energy that someone who is telling the seminar had.
People come out of the experience a believer and then the
breeder effect takes place. The next thing you know, we have
the spouses there. We did seminars at Dow Chemical for the
children of the executives. The powerful aspect of our seminar
is that it gets under people’s skin. The whole idea of finding
out what really matters most to me — writing your personal
constitution, equating the quest of discovering your governing
values to writing your own constitution — people would go
nuts over that. That is what the Americans did. They created a
Constitution. What is a Constitution? It is a list of governing
values of our founding fathers. No law is ever ratified in this
country until it is measured against our set of governing
values. That is identical to what we teach. Measure the events
of your life. If you value being physically fits and you weigh
400 pounds, there is a gap between what you are doing and
what you value. Whenever there is a gap between what you
are doing and what you value, there is pain. How do I get rid
of the pain? Close the gap.   You cut down to three meals a day
and cut out french fries and ice cream, and all of sudden, I’m
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
down to 300 and then 250 and then I’m experiencing inner
peace on that value, I value being physically fit. In fact, let me
share a letter with you that I recieved.
I did a seminar at Merrill Lynch many years ago, and a
year later, I got a letter from the senior VP of the office in
Cleveland, Ohio. I can’t remember his name. “Hyrum, I went
to your seminar a year ago and it never occurred to me that
I needed to manage my life around what matters most to me.
I took your challenge, identified my own constitution, and
discovered in the process that one of my governing values was
a good life for my son. When I discovered that was one of my
governing values, I also had to admit there was a huge gap. I
was not doing anything for my son. I’ve dedicated this last year
to making my son’s life wonderful.” Then he listed the things
he has done with his son this last year. On the last page of the
letter, it said, “Last week my son, nine years old, was killed in
a car accident. I have experienced some real pain at the loss
of my son, but I have not had to experience any guilt.” Then
he said, “For the first time, I finally realized what you talked
about when you talked about inner peace. I felt peace when
my son left, because I had dedicated my life to making his life
wonderful the last year I had him.”
You can’t look at an experience like that without getting goose
bumps on your arms. He discovered at a Time Management
seminar at Merrill Lynch, that if he wanted peace in his life, he
ought to find out what matters most to him and do something
about it. To me, that is exciting stuff.
How many children do you have?
Six
How many grandchildren do you have?
Twenty, with one in the oven. I lost a daughter in a car accident
in 1995. She was 24. I have five living children. I also lost 2
grandchildren, so I have 18 living grandchildren.
With 20 grandchildren and one on the
way, you are well aware of the differences
between Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials, Baby
Boomers, and Traditionalists. A prominent question
comes frequently, like this one.
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Michael Sutcliffe
Organizational Development
AGIA Insurance Services
As a facilitator, I come into contact with many
Millennials who are skeptical about either the paper
planner or the longevity of the Franklin Planning
System or both. Many of these younger customers
may be concerned that your system is old-fashioned
or that it is appropriate for their parents, but not for
them, and they are looking for alternative planning
systems such as David Allen’s book and content
around getting things done.
What would you say to the indisputable fact that
the workforce in the world is absolutely undergoing
a complete transition with Baby Boomers and
Traditionalists exiting, and a new, much younger,
tech-addicted profile of workers entering?
I go back to the premise that we started with. There
are, in fact, no new principles. The basic principles
that help human beings become better human beings are the
same as they were 6,000 years ago. Regardless of what the
Millennials think, they are still human beings. They are not
any smarter than the Traditionalists were. They still have the
same challenges. They still have to get up every morning and
make a living and support a family. The basic principles that
will help them find peace in their lives are the same principles
that their fathers and grandfathers had to discover to get peace
in their lives. The tools that are available to help them find
inner peace are changing at warp speed and that’s great. The
fact is, the paper planner still, for the human being, is the most
effective device. I go back to the system idea. Create a system.
Have all the bells and whistles you want. You will discover
in the long run that the most effective tool for you for tasks,
appointments, and taking notes is the paper planning device
of some kind. Have your BlackBerry. Have your PC. Create
a system that makes you the most effective you can be. Inner
peace for you is having balance in your life; its simplicity; it’s
being successful at something. You want to be more effective
at what you do. That is what human beings want. I don’t care
what label you put on the generation. That generation is still
human beings.
This stuff about labeling the generations is fine. It creates
magazine articles, and that’s cool. When you come right back
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
to it, that 20-year-old today going into the business world has
to be able to decide what matters most to me today. What
am I going to do that is the most effective thing that I could
do? How am I going to make my relationships better with
the people that I work with? The sad thing that is happening
is that because of our ability to communicate immediately
and electronically, we are dehumanizing the interpersonal
relationship issue on the planet. In fact, I heard the other day
that at a high school dance, students were asking each other
to dance by text message across the dance hall. What is that all
about? Because texting is so pervasive now, the actual human
interaction is becoming less.When you don’t have that human
interaction, to me, that is a very dangerous thing. I think we
need to be careful about that. Back to the issues of managing
me. None of the principles changed from generation to
generation. I would be very bold about saying, when I’m
teaching someone who is part of the “new generation” and
we’re high-tech, that paper is high-tech. Paper is technology.
Paper will always be high-tech. It is a conceptual thing. It is
not a device thing. It is part of my system, and part of my
system happens to be paper. Why? Because it happens to be
very effective.
Dawn M. Karner,
CPLP, ACC, CPCC
HR Training Manager
Cache Creek Casino Resort
As a life coach, I regularly help others navigate
change but I don’t seem to be able to do it for myself
as well as I would like to. Do you have any words of
wisdom to help an individual make the changes their
head is wanting?
It’s back to the idea, “Have you taken the time to
identify your own personal governing values? Have
you written your own personal constitution?” What I have
found is that there are many who have not yet done this.There
are many facilitators out there who teach governing values and
teach the FOCUS course and do it very well, but they have
never taken the time to sit down with themselves and identify
what their governing values are. There is a reason why people
don’t. We did a study some years ago and discovered that 92
percent of the people that we taught continue to use their
planner. Only 12 percent had taken the time to identify and
8

write down their constitution. What a gap. I never had anyone
come out of a seminar and say “That idea of the Productivity
Pyramid was a stupid idea. I’m not going to do it.” I’ve had
hundreds of thousands of people say that is a wonderful idea
and I’m going to do it. But they don’t. Here is why they don’t.
If I sit down with myself and identify my governing values,
the highest priorities in my life, and write them down, I also
have to come face to face with the gap between what I’m not
doing about those governing values. The gap is painful and
so people steer away from it. They intuitively know that the
minute they sit down and identify the values, they have to be
a better husband or wife, lose weight, this or that.They are not
prepared to do that. Light is the best disinfectant on the planet.
The minute you identify your governing values, you put light
on what matters most to you and all of a sudden, the gaps are
all very clear.
Dr. Covey’s Habit 3: Put First Things First is
a great illustration around big rocks. One of
the most popular tools with facilitators is in
fact the Big Rocks kit. This question relates to Habit
3 and placing the big rocks into their week.
Gil Speer
Zionsville, Indiana
Many of my participants try to action-plan their
relationships and miss the whole point of relationship
building. Or these relationships are so broken, they
don’t feel it is worthwhile to spend any time on them.
This is a great question. What is the balance between
action planning — fitting time in for your relationships
in an efficiency model — versus seeing the value and
managing around relationship building?
I think this all boils down to how much value you
place on relationship building. There are managers
in our society who place a low value on relationship building.
They couldn’t care less if they have a good relationship
with those they work with, as long as they get their jobs
done. The issue is really how much value do you place on
relationship building? If you really do place a high value
on that, then you will figure out ways…taking it through
the Productivity Pyramid. I value relationships. Long range
goals; intermediate goals. What am I going to do today about
building relationships? Then all of a sudden, you find yourself
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
looking for ways to enhance and build the relationships that
you have with people around you.You have to identify, first of
all, what are my most important relationships. Is it my spouse,
my significant other, my children, my boss, the people I work
for or with? Just exactly how important is that? The minute
we consciously start thinking about that, then suddenly
we start doing something about it. I’ve discovered that the
minute you start thinking about and focusing on an issue, you
automatically find ways to do something about it. It starts with
deciding that the relationships are important and then all of a
sudden, you are finding ways to do it. If you’re mechanically
setting aside an hour a day for relationships, it’s not going to
work.
What is the most common question you are
asked from participants across the million
plus people attending your seminars?
It usually has to do with identifying their governing
values—something that has gotten under their skin.
I rarely get mechanical questions about the planning system
or how to use it. It usually has something to do with a deep
challenge in their lives. The biggest question is “How do I sit
down and identify my governing values? What books can I
read that will help me identify my governing values?” That
is when I steer them to the autobiography of Ben Franklin,
Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, or Scott Peck’s The
Road Less Traveled. They are wonderful books that help people
identify governing values. Talk to people who have identified
their governing values. The biggest question usually is “I’m
excited about this, but how do I do this?”That is what’s asked in
most of the letters I receive: “How do I do this? I’m struggling
in discovering my governing values.” The reason that is hard is
that when they sit down to identify their governing, they start
with a list of things that somebody else thinks they should
have rather than what I think I should have. When I started
out the process myself, I had 43 governing values. I ended
up with 16. I discovered that most of them weren’t mine,
they were somebody else’s. I have 16 now. These are pretty
solid. What changes is the description of them. We encourage
everyone to write a paragraph about what the value means to
them, and that paragraph has changed dramatically over time.
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In fact, I’m looking in my Franklin Planner sitting in front
of me to pull out my list of governing values. Number 3 for
me is “I am an outstanding husband and father.” I encourage
people to write them as affirmations so that it is an active
statement not a passive statement. So my governing values
are written as active statements. This is what number 3 means
to me: “I take sufficient meaningful time with my wife and
children to help them with their spiritual, intellectual, social,
professional, physical, and financial needs. I love my wife with
care, respect, kindness, and maintaining with her a spiritual
physical union of excellence. I build strong family unity. I have
helped develop leadership skills in all family members and
guide them in living all the commandments of God. I help
them build their self-esteem and help each maximize their
potential.” That paragraph has changed dramatically now that
I have been married for almost 44 years. That paragraph has
evolved. That’s changed as I have a better understanding about
what it means to be an outstanding husband and father.
Ann Bick
Xcel Energy
How do I diplomatically say no to requests
for assistance?
That is a great question because of what happens
when people have really sat down and created their
own constitution. They’ve written their governing values. The
first thing that comes out of a clear understanding of what
matters most to me is the magnificent ability and the courage
to say no. Automatically. Why? Because I recognize now, what
matters most to me. This is my focus; this is where I’m going.
And so all the requests that take me off that focus, off that
direction, I have to say no to. If I don’t have that clear vision,
then I don’t have a good reason to say no. And then I’m into
that “I’m going to offend them if I say no because I just don’t
want to do it.”Well, why don’t I want to do it? If you’re saying
no, people are going to expect an explanation. Quite frankly,
you don’t owe anybody an explanation, but they want one.
So when someone says, “Can you do this?” “No!” “Well, why
not?” “Let me tell you why not. This is what I have discovered
today. It comes from long-term planning, a solitude session,
and there is no way I can squeeze that in today. Your A1 is
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
my C44. Take your A1 somewhere else.”You don’t have to be
rude, but the fact is, that if you’ve taken the 10 to 15 minutes
in a solitude time every single day, you will have amazing
ability and courage to say no.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing you speak 15
or 20 times over the course of my career at
FranklinCovey, and one of the points I find
most inspiring about you is your ability to condense
broad, esoteric thoughts into quick quotes and quips
that I can memorize. My PDA is full of one-liners from
you that have had profound impact on me. One of my
favorites is your definition of character. Another one
is about vocabulary and the ability to think. Would
you share these and a few of your favorites? Tell us
again your definition of character.
Character is the ability to carry out a worthy decision after the
emotion of making that decision has passed.
Is that original to you, Hyrum?
Yes, that is, actually. I take credit for that one. It is
not a dictionary definition of character, but it is a
profound one in that character is doing what you say you
are going to do. If you say you are going to lose weight, lose
weight. If you say you are going to be on time, be on time. It
is easy to make commitments.The whole idea is that we make
these commitments and we get excited about them. We go
back to our desk, but nothing has changed at our desk. And
then we don’t do what we say we are going to do. A person’s
character is ultimately measured by what they do, when they
say they are going to do it.
The other one my father introduced me to: “You cannot think
any deeper than your vocabulary will allow you to.” I was
12 years old when I first heard that and it took me 20 years
to realize that is a very profound statement. We think in the
words we understand. There are 340,000 words in the English
language. Winston Churchill had a working vocabulary
of 25,000 words. We think he had the biggest working
vocabulary of any English-speaking person in history. The
average business person has 12,000 to 13,000. The average
teenager has about 2,500. If you want a scary experience, walk
through the hallways of any high school in America and listen
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to the vocabulary you hear and you won’t sleep for a month,
because their vocabulary is so awful.
I’m assuming the quote from your father drove a love
for reading and writing books.
Absolutely! The only way to build a vocabulary is to read. But
our young people don’t read today. Why? Because they have
TV, and these Xboxes and these crummy, stupid games that
they play. Nobody is reading. Newspapers are going out of
business at an alarming rate. USA Today is a popular newspaper
because you don’t have to read it.You can see it at 30 feet and
many of the words are misspelled. In all of the studies done on
successful people on this planet, from all walks of life, the one
common denominator that they found is a large vocabulary.
Indulge us. Share a couple more of your favorites that
you think our clients can benefit from.
There is a definition of wisdom that I like to use: “Wisdom
is knowledge rightfully applied.” My son, when he was four,
we were in the kitchen together. I said, “When the stove is
hot, it burns. Don’t touch the oven.” I gave him knowledge.
What do you think he did when I left the kitchen? He has
wisdom now on the tips of all four fingers on his right hand.
Wisdom is knowledge rightfully applied. At the start of all
seminars, I say, “All I can do today is share some knowledge
that has been pulled together from some wonderful sources.
The issue is, are you going to do anything with it? I’d like to
share with you a definition of success: a successful manager
of time is willing to do that which the unsuccessful manager
of time is not willing to do. I’m going to give you a profile
of what a successful manager of time is willing to do. The
question is, are you going to do anything about it? A successful
mother, father, business person, athlete is willing to do that
which an unsuccessful mother, father, business person, athlete
is not willing to do.”
I was having dinner with Gary Player a few years ago and I
asked, “How many golf balls have you hit in your lifetime?”
He looked at me and said, “I don’t know.” I asked, “How many
balls do you hit in a day?” He knew that number—500. I said,
“You hit 500 golf balls in a day?” Well, Gary Player is now 74
years old. He has hit 5 million golf balls. If you are willing to
Q & A With Hyrum Smith
hit 5 million golf balls, you are going to be Gary Player. Who
is Gary Player? He is one of the top six golfers ever to play the
game—163 tournaments. Tiger Woods is at 60 something at
this point. He’s won 163 tournaments. The guy is a machine.
This aligns with the writings of Malcolm Gladwell in
Outliers and Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated that, in
fact genius may be more about disciplined, rigorous
practice versus solely innate. Some are just willing to
practice more.
Right. It’s like defining time. If you don’t know what time
is, you will never get control of it. What is time? Time is the
occurrence of events in sequence one after the other. Too
often, people confuse time with having something to do with
a clock. It has nothing to do with a clock. All a clock does is
tell you how long it takes the sun to go across the sky. Time
is the occurrence of events in sequence one after the other.
Everything is an event. Your getting out of bed this morning
is an event. Getting in your car is an event. Picking up your
phone is an event. Time is the occurrence of all these events
in sequence one after the other. The issue, then, is what events
do I have any control over? Now we are in the prioritizing of
things. Can I control what time I get up? Can I control what
I wear? Can I control what I eat? Can I control when I do
my email? Can I control when I take that phone call? Now
we are starting to manage time. Only when you understand
what time is can you manage it. Too many people think it has
something to do with a clock. It’s got nothing to do with a
clock.
Let’s finish with this question. What have you
learned? I imagine you’ve had some fantastic
business successes and some great failures. I
also suspect you’ve both gained and lost some great
friends along the way. As you come into what Dr.
Covey calls, the crescendo of your life and career, tell
us what you’ve learned?
I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned that was
really brought home to me in vivid clarity when my
daughter was killed in the car accident, and this is a statement
that I learned many, many years ago: “Pain is inevitable, misery
is optional.” In fact, I wrote a book with that title, Pain is
inevitable, misery is optional. The fact is, that we are not going to
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 Q & A With Hyrum Smith

get through the mortal experience without some pain. Pain

comes in lots of different forms. There’s spiritual pain, there’s
physical pain, emotional pain, psychological pain. There’s all
kinds of pain. But the fact is, we choose whether or not we
are going to be miserable about it. Some of the most amazing,
fantastic, serene, magnificent people I know have had to deal
with some sort of excruciating pain of some kind. But they
chose not to be miserable. So, I think that is the biggest lesson
that I’ve learned. I made a lot of big mistakes. I’ve caused pain.
I’ve had to experience pain. Ultimately, the measure of who
we are is how we deal with pain.

SEAN Covey
Chief Product Architect and Sr. VP
Innovations, Products, and Ventures

You have long trusted FranklinCovey to bring you
the very best in personal productivity and time
management. For nearly 30 years, we have worked
to help you facilitate timeless productivity principles
in relevant and impactful ways. While our FOCUS
workshop has been a life-changing experience for
literally hundreds of thousands of people around
the world, we feel the time has come to make this
content even better.
This year we will be reinventing our Time Management
curriculum and making it more engaging, practical,
and powerful than ever. We will be gathering data
from around the globe to improve everything from
what we teach, to how we teach it from the materials
we provide to you, our valued partners, to the tools
and resources we provide your participants. Our
videos will be inspiring, our tools will be more current
and useful, and our research will be world-class.
A lot has changed in the last few years, and people have
moved to a whole new level of tools and technologies
to help them cope with the nearly overwhelming
crush of information, tasks, and appointments. We’re
not sure exactly what will emerge from our innovation
efforts, but you can be assured that if FranklinCovey
is doing it, it will be world-class. We owe you nothing
less.
If you would like to be a part of this process, let
us know. Our development process involves a lot
of customer input and on-site testing, and we’d be
delighted for any feedback or contributions you’d
like to offer. If you would like to be involved, please
contact our General Manager of Innovations, Adam
Merrill, at adam.merrill@franklincovey.com.
Thanks,
Sean

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