CNNMoney.com
Companies Economy International Corrections Pre-market Trading After-hours Trading Winners/Losers/Actives Bonds Currencies Commodities World Markets Money Magazine Real Estate Taxes Jobs Ask the Expert Money 101 Autos Mutual Funds The Help Desk Loan Center Best Places to Live Ask the Expert Ultimate Guide to Retirement Retirement Calculators Best Funds Best Places to Retire Fortune Brainstorm Tech Apple 2.0 Blog Big Tech Blog Sectors and Stocks Tech Talk Resource Guide Small Business Makeovers Questions & Answers Small Business Video 100 Best Places to Launch FSB 100 Fortune Small Business Fortune 500 Brainstorm Tech Investing Management C-Suite Rankings Main Create Portfolio Edit Portfolio Create Alerts Edit Alerts
How to Succeed in 2007
We asked 50 of the brightest minds in business how they do what they do - and how you can cash in on their advice in the year ahead.
Back to feature
Stephen Covey
Stephen Covey
Vice Chairman, FranklinCovey; Author, The 7 habits of Highly Effective People
Strive for Moral Authority
Most people define greatness through wealth and popularity and position in the corner office. But what I call everyday greatness comes from character and contribution. Sometimes people who possess the wealth and prestige also have everyday greatness, but not that often in our celebrity-obsessed culture, because they are primarily focused on what's in it for me. I'm in favor of achievements - degrees and wealth and that sort of thing. Still, those achievements convey formal authority but not always moral authority. The only way to acquire moral authority is through your character and contribution, to live in such a way as to merit the confidence and the trust of other people. Moral authority is especially important to business. This is because in order to reduce costs, increase production, and nurture a culture of innovation - all of which are important criteria in today's global economy - you've got to have high trust among your workers and partners. Why? Because everyone involved needs to sacrifice. If you don't have high trust, none of those things will happen. You can't fake high trust.
 What do you think it will take in 2007 to succeed in business? E-mail the editors here.
The 50 People Who Matter Now A Business 2.0 exclusive list: Meet the executive, entrepreneurs, and cutting-edge innovators who are setting today's business agenda. (more)
Best-Kept Secrets of the World's Best Companies Here are 25 great management practices you've probably never heard of - and might want to start implementing tomorrow. (more)
© 2009 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2009 BigCharts.com Inc. All rights reserved. Please see our Terms of Use.
MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc.
Intraday data provided by Interactive Data Real-Time Services and subject to the Terms of Use.
Intraday data is at least 20-minutes delayed. All times are ET.
Historical, current end-of-day data, and splits data provided by Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data.
Fundamental data provided by Morningstar, Inc..
SEC Filings data provided by Edgar Online Inc..
Earnings data provided by FactSet CallStreet, LLC.