Covey (rhymes with 'lovey') has built a sizzling business on an ancient proposition: that groups of people - families, corporations, schools, armies, governments - can achieve their maximum potential through nothing less than moral transformation. At age 62 he keeps a schedule so brutal that associates get tired just reading his appointment book, and if executive polish must sometimes suffer as a consequence, so what? That's not what he's selling, after all. No, the author of the best-selling self-help book in years is simply scrambling, trying to keep up with the roaring current of enthusiasm that has greeted his deceptively modest-sounding manifesto. One of them actually lost a rental car recently at Union Station in Washington, D.C.

Nor is Covey one of those disorganized visionaries who surround themselves with fastidious aides. Hardly: An old friend recalls stumbling across Covey at a gym some years ago, lying on the floor with two or three showers running over him, trying to brush his teeth and shave at the same time. It's not that this is a bad night for Covey, or that he is indifferent to the idea of being highly effective in the punctilious way that time-starved masses routinely understand the phrase. He arrived here tonight, to address members of the Washington Air National Guard, in the back of a rusty Chevrolet van that had to be pressed into service when the limousine went astray. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, has lost his laser pointer once again and is practically jumping up off the stage to point to a giant chart projected on the wall of a conference room at the Westin Hotel in Seattle.

(FORTUNE Magazine) – LET THE RECORD show that Dr.

Stephen covey mormon