This paper compares and contrasts two self-help books aimed at effecting personal change in order to achieve greater success in business and in life. Stephen R. Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Ron Willingham's self-published When Good Isn't Good Enough, both published in 1989, are typical of a gradual shift in business books toward an emphasis on self-actualization, ethical principles, and personal awareness that has begun to turn books originally aimed at the corporate development world into books with a much wider, more general appeal. Both emphasize spiritual values and self-reliance, and both build on the traditions begun by popular sources such as Dale Carnegie and In Search of Excellence.
Covey argues for the need to rediscover the elements of what he calls the Character Ethic as the basis for success, "things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule." Covey believes that the Character Ethic has been slowly supplanted by the Personality Ethic, in which "success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques." He contends that any kind of effective, satisfying success comes from the principles of the Character Ethic, rather than the Personality Ethic, and he sets out to delineate those principles as guidelines for living.
Covey's thesis is that the principles that form the basis of the Character Ethic can be useful to the individual only once they have become internalized as habits. He posits seven habits, the combination of knowledge, skill, and desire that can become the determinants of behavior only once they have been ingrained in the individual enough to form the basis of that individual's character. These habits begin with the "private victories" of self-mastery: being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, and putting first things first....