The 7 Habits Boardroom ProgramA 12-Month Effectiveness & Growth Framework for SME Owners
Built on Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — translated into a structured consulting and coaching engagement with quarterly deliverables and a tracked Boardroom dashboard.
A consulting engagement built on a proven operating system
The 7 Habits Boardroom Program translates Stephen Covey's framework — for forty years the standard reference on personal and organisational effectiveness — into a structured, 12-month engagement purpose-built for SME owners. Each habit becomes one program quarter or module: a diagnostic, a set of working sessions, a concrete deliverable, and a KPI tracked on the client's Boardroom dashboard.
The program sits across both arms of the practice. DuBois Business Consulting leads the commercial and operational deliverables — revenue, margin, succession, exit-readiness. Flick the Switch leads the personal-effectiveness coaching underneath them — the habits, mindset, and discipline that make the commercial work stick. Most SME owners already know what to do. What's missing is the operating system that makes doing it sustainable.
Program Architecture
| Duration | 12 months, structured in 4 quarters of 3 months each. |
| Format | Fortnightly 1:1 sessions (60–90 min) + monthly Boardroom review + quarterly deliverable sign-off. |
| Sequence | Habits 1–3 (Q1–Q2): Private Victory — self-leadership and foundations. Habits 4–6 (Q2–Q3): Public Victory — team, customers, partners. Habit 7 (Q4): Renewal — sustaining the system beyond the engagement. |
| Client outcome | A documented, owner-led operating rhythm: clear priorities, a functioning team, win-win commercial relationships, and a renewal discipline that outlasts the consulting engagement. |
| Tracking | DuBois Boardroom Program dashboard — same infrastructure as the existing 12-Month Boardroom Program tracker. |
The P/PC Balance
Covey's central idea — and the one most SME owners violate without realising it — is the balance between Production (P) and Production Capability (PC). P is the result: revenue, the sale, the deliverable. PC is the capacity that produces results: the team, the systems, the owner's own capacity, the client relationships.
Effectiveness lies in the balance — what I call the P/PC Balance.Stephen Covey
Production
The result. Revenue, the sale, the deliverable, this quarter's number.
Production Capability
The capacity that produces results. The team, the systems, the owner's capacity, the relationships.
Every module in this program develops a PC asset — a system, a habit, a capability — that produces a measurable P result. This is the throughline that ties the personal-effectiveness coaching to the commercial consulting deliverables: not two workstreams, but one workstream viewed from two levels.
Quarter 1 — Private Victory: Foundations
Most SME owners enter this program reactive — running the business day to day with no documented strategic centre. Quarter 1 builds that centre before any commercial work begins. Skipping this is the single most common reason consulting engagements fail to stick.
Self-Leadership & Strategic Clarity
Be Proactive
The Ownership Audit
SME owners frequently default to blaming market conditions, staff, or clients for results that are within their own control. This module separates what is genuinely outside the owner's control from what they have simply stopped exercising control over.
- Circle of Control mapping — list every recurring frustration, sort into Control / Influence / No Control
- Language audit — identify reactive language patterns over a one-week tracking period
- Reframe each "No Control" item the owner is currently treating as an excuse
Begin with the End in Mind
The Exit-Back Strategy Session
Directly maps to DuBois's exit-planning specialty. Most owners cannot articulate what "done" looks like for the business — without that, every decision is made without reference to an end state.
- Personal mission statement session — values, non-negotiables, what success looks like personally
- Exit-Back Planning — define the target exit and work backwards to today's decisions
- Translate the mission statement into 3–5 commercial non-negotiables for the business
Put First Things First
The Owner's Time Audit & Quadrant II System
Almost universally, SME owners are buried in Quadrant III (urgent, not important) and Quadrant I (urgent and important) firefighting, with zero time in Quadrant II — the quadrant where strategy, systems, and revenue growth actually get built.
- 7-day time audit — owner logs every hour against Covey's four quadrants
- Delegation session — identify every Quadrant III/IV task that should sit with someone else
- Build a weekly Quadrant II block — protected time for strategic work identified in Habits 1–2
Quarter 2 — The Bridge: Team & Trust
With personal foundations in place, Quarter 2 turns outward to the people who execute the strategy: the team. This is where DuBois's franchise-network and retention experience translates directly into client deliverables.
Public Victory — Building the Team
Think Win-Win
The Stakeholder Agreement Framework
SME owners frequently run win-lose dynamics with staff and suppliers without realising it — and wonder why retention and partner loyalty underperform.
- Map all key stakeholder relationships against a Win-Win / Win-Lose / Lose-Win grid
- Identify the 2–3 relationships causing the most friction or churn
- Draft Win-Win Agreements for each key role or partnership
Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
The Client & Team Listening Audit
Commercial proposals and pitches frequently lead with the business's agenda rather than the client's actual problem — reducing conversion and buy-in.
- Empathic listening session practised on a real current client negotiation or team conflict
- Audit the owner's last 3 pitches or proposals for "tell" vs. "ask" ratio
- Rebuild one live pitch using a diagnose-before-prescribe structure
Synergize
The Cross-Functional Solution Workshop
SME teams are usually too small to have built formal mechanisms for combining perspectives — decisions default to the owner alone, leaving expertise on the table.
- Facilitated workshop bringing together 2+ perspectives on a live business problem
- Teach the 3rd Alternative method — a better way neither party started with
- Document the workshop outcome as a reusable model
Quarter 3 — Commercial Application
Quarter 3 has no new habit — it is the commercial proving ground for Habits 4–6, run as a live DuBois consulting sprint. This is where the coaching converts into the measurable revenue and margin outcomes DuBois is engaged to deliver.
Habits 4–6 Applied to Revenue & Growth
- Pricing & margin review applying Win-Win principles (Habit 4) to current pricing and discount policy
- Key account / partner renegotiation using the Seek-First-to-Understand discovery structure (Habit 5)
- One growth initiative — new channel, account segment, or partnership — built using the Synergize cross-functional model (Habit 6)
Quarter 4 — Renewal & Independence
The single highest-risk point in any consulting engagement is month 13 — when the consultant leaves and old patterns silently return. Quarter 4 is built explicitly to prevent that regression.
Sustaining the System Beyond the Engagement
Sharpen the Saw
The Renewal & Sustainability Plan
- Audit renewal across 4 dimensions: physical, mental, social/emotional, spiritual
- Build a self-managed quarterly review rhythm — the owner's own version of the Boardroom review
- Stress-test the full 12-month system: confirm Q1–Q3 deliverables are embedded as habits, not one-off projects
Program Summary
| Quarter | Habit(s) | Deliverable | Tracked KPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 1. Be Proactive | Ownership Map | Reactive-language reduction |
| Q1 | 2. Begin with the End in Mind | Mission Statement + Exit-Back Roadmap | Roadmap sign-off |
| Q1 | 3. Put First Things First | Weekly Operating Rhythm + Delegation Register | % time in Quadrant II |
| Q2 | 4. Think Win-Win | Win-Win Agreement templates | Retention rate |
| Q2 | 5. Seek First to Understand | Revised pitch/communication + Question Bank | Conversion rate |
| Q2 | 6. Synergize | Synergy Workshop Playbook | Solution quality/implementation |
| Q3 | 4–6 Applied | Commercial Application Report | Margin/revenue movement |
| Q4 | 7. Sharpen the Saw | Sustainability Plan | Independent review completed |
Ready to build the operating system behind your numbers?
Book a session to walk through the Boardroom Program and see where your business sits against the four quarters.
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