Over 80 FranklinCovey partners, executives and clients attended the European marketing launch of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Signature 4.0 in Amsterdam, Holland, last month.

The three-day event enabled top executives at FranklinCovey, including Vice-President Sue Dathe-Douglass, responsible for Global Leadership, Sales and Effectiveness, Vice-President Scott Miller, responsible for Marketing, and practice leader Catherine Nelson to go through the various aspects of the latest iteration of the 7 Habits.

According to Sean Covey, Executive Vice President, Global Solutions and Partnerships, the latest 7 Habits programme has involved the most extensive product development effort that FranklinCovey Co. has ever attempted. “It began by gathering feedback from clients and partners around the world. Part of the research effort involved searching for companies in various countries that had transformed themselves using the 7 Habits,” he said.

The company then went on to discover specific practices and methodologies those companies used in their implementation of the 7 Habits. Prototype development and beta testing in various locations globally followed until the final solution was established.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Signature 4.0 is now an essential foundation for a great culture be it within an organisation, a team of people working together or a single individual and the family. The focus has now turned to living the 7 Habits through several tools, including a smartphone app that can be downloaded to iPhones and Android devices, and handy cards.

The seven-week (7 x 7-day) contract has been revised to help people live and practice the 7 Habits in a prescriptive and easy way. Participants are given an elegant manual, redesigned on recycled paper and the training content includes 34 new videos that are more streamlined, inspiring, skill-based and global than ever.

Commenting on the new 7 Habits, Malcolm J Naudi, Managing Director of FranklinCovey Malta Ltd, said: “We are extremely excited about 7 Habits 4.0. I can honestly say this has been a great leap forward. While preserving the soul and keeping the timeless practices that Dr Stephen R. Covey captured so brilliantly in his book, we now have added timely practices and a general updating of the components to live in the second decade of the millennium.”

New content has also been developed in the form of a companion programme, Leader Implementation: Coaching Your Team to Higher Performance. This is designed for leaders and managers at all levels of the organisation in a process that teaches and equips leaders on how to coach their teams to higher performance and how to sustain and institutionalise the 7 Habits within their teams.

This new programme is based on best practices from leading organisations around the world that have made the 7 Habits the foundation of their high performance cultures.

Similar events to the launch in Amsterdam were held in Salt Lake City and Mauritius. Two other launches are being held this month in Jakarta and Dubai. The first open 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Signature 4.0 programme is being held in Malta from 28-30 May, 2014.