The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems

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Overview

From the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People—hailed as the #1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century—The 3rd Alternative turns Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s formidable insight to a powerful new way to resolve professional and personal difficulties and create solutions to great challenges in organizations and society.

There are many methods of “conflict resolution,” but most involve compromise, a low-level accommodation that stops the fight without breaking through to amazing new results. The 3rd Alternative introduces a breakthrough approach to conflict resolution and creative problem solving, ...

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Overview

From the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People—hailed as the #1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century—The 3rd Alternative turns Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s formidable insight to a powerful new way to resolve professional and personal difficulties and create solutions to great challenges in organizations and society.

There are many methods of “conflict resolution,” but most involve compromise, a low-level accommodation that stops the fight without breaking through to amazing new results. The 3rd Alternative introduces a breakthrough approach to conflict resolution and creative problem solving, transcending traditional solutions to conflict by forging a path toward a third option, a 3rd Alternative that moves beyond your way or my way to a higher and better way—one that allows both parties to emerge from debate or even heated conflict in a far better place than either had envisioned. With the 3rd Alternative, nobody has to give up anything, and everyone wins.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

In most problems and negotiations, the first alternative is my way; the second, your way; and the third, the highway. Bestselling author Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) wants us to look beyond our either/or blinders and create a third alternative that provides true conflict resolution. But crafting a successful, non-traditional plan requires imagination and a clear sense of strategies. To simplify your task, Covey provides real life solution examples from innovative thinkers in fields including business, politics, education, family, law, policing, and health. The 3rd Alternative builds morale, but it is also a deeply practical book for problem-solvers.

Publishers Weekly
Rather than my way or your way, Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) argues for a third way around any given situation. "The 3rd alternative" is conflict resolution technique that can "apply equally well to a playground, a battlefield, a boardroom, a legislative chamber, or a family kitchen." It isn't compromise per se, Covey says, since everyone loses something by compromising. Instead, the 3rd alternative offers a significantly better answer—synergy, i.e. "what happens when one plus one equals ten or a hundred or even a thousand!" Synergy can and has been used in the past at work and at home, in classrooms, cities, and the world at large. Covey describes, for example, the collaboration in recent decades among activists, politicians, property owners, and city planners to rejuvenate New York's Times Square. While synergy may not be an entirely new concept, the enthusiasm and urgency with which Covey introduces and explains it gives this volume its substance. (Oct.)
Library Journal
In his latest book, Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) presents a novel approach to conflict resolution. Essentially, he proposes a method of debate wherein nobody loses and everybody wins. The author calls this synergy and illustrates its process in a number of fields including business, the family, and politics. He offers a new paradigm, positioning an adversary as merely someone with whom to build a new reality. Although this is not a book that can be skimmed, it should be shared and discussed. Covey may at times seem idealistic, but his basic tenets of finding a "meeting place" are sound and worth consideration.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781455896363
  • Publisher: Brilliance Audio
  • Publication date: 4/1/2012
  • Format: CD
  • Sales rank: 427,804
  • Product dimensions: 5.10 (w) x 5.60 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Stephen R. Covey
Stephen R. Covey

Recognized as one of Time magazine's 25 most influential Americans, Stephen R. Covey has dedicated his life to demonstrating how every person can truly control their destiny with profound, yet straightforward guidance. As an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and author, his advice has given insight to millions. He has sold over 20 million books sold (in 38 languages), and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was named the #1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century. His most recent major book, The 8th Habit , has sold nearly 400,000 copies. He holds an MBA from Harvard, and doctorate degree from Brigham Young University. He is the co-founder and vice chairman of FranklinCovey, the leading global professional services firm with offices in 123 countries. He lives with his wife and family in Utah.

Biography

Stephen R. Covey writes in his blockbuster self-improvement tome, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, about the "social band-aid" effect of much recent success literature, the tendency to create personality-based solutions to problems that go deeper. "Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction," he wrote. Covey acknowledges the importance of the "personality ethic," but he sought to go deeper and emphasize the "character ethic," something Covey saw as a fading concept. He went back further and found inspiration in figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thoreau, and Emerson.

Indeed, everything old is new again in Covey's works. The author himself would admit that nothing he is saying is terribly new; but Covey's synthesis of years and years of thinking about effectiveness resulted in a smash personal growth title -- one that continues to be a top seller nearly 15 years after its first publication. The title, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, makes it sounds like a quick-fix path to power, but Covey's philosophy is rooted in exactly the opposite notion: There are no quick fixes, no shortcuts. He is writing about habits, after all, which can be as tough to institute as they can be to break. His list: Be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first; think win-win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; synergize; sharpen the saw.

Covey's subsequent titles are based in some way or another on this seminal book. First Things First offers a time-management strategy and a new way of looking at priorities. Principle-Centered Leadership is an examination of character traits and an "inside-out" way of improving organizational leadership. Covey, a Mormon, also wrote two religious contemplations of human effectiveness and interaction, The Spiritual Roots of Human Relations and The Divine Center. These were Covey's first two titles; his esteem for spirituality is not absent from subsequent work but appears as just one more tool that can be applied in self-improvement.

Like Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese?, 7 Habits has been able to achieve astonishing sales success by espousing ideas applicable beyond an office setting. Covey's books are about self-improvement more than they are about corporate management, which has enabled him to create a successful version of the philosophy for families (entitled, of course, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families) in addition to attracting people who just want to be more efficient in their lives, or bolster that diet.

Most attractive about Covey is his versatility in conveying his ideas. His books are structured in appealing, number-oriented groupings ("Three Resolutions," "Thirty Methods of Influence," four quadrants of importance in time management) and big umbrellas of ideas, but within these pockets Covey draws from a wide range of resources: anecdotes, business school exercises, historical wisdom, and diverse metaphors. Sometimes, Covey uses himself as an example. He knows as well as anyone that practicing what he preaches is tough; but he keeps trying, which makes him an inspiring testimonial for his own books.

Good To Know

Covey is married to Sandra Merrill Covey. They have nine children.

Covey is co-chair of FranklinCovey, a management resources firm based in Provo, Utah. He has also been a business professor at Brigham Young University, where he earned his doctorate.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has sold more than 12 million copies in 33 languages and 75 countries throughout the world.

    1. Hometown:
      Provo, Utah
    1. Date of Birth:
      October 24, 1932
    2. Place of Birth:
      Salt Lake City, Utah
    1. Education:
      B.S., University of Utah, 1950; M.B.A., Harvard University, 1957; Ph.D., Brigham Young University, 1976
    2. Website:

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