Many of us in the business community grew up with Stephen Covey’s excellent book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is both influential and insightful. Unfortunately, Mr. Covey never wrote an important follow-up identifying the traits that people should avoid. Without further ado, I give you the 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People:

1. Be the smartest person in the room – You have all the right answers so why ask others. It is a terrible waste of of your important time to wait for people to follow your train of thought. Chances are that you are absolutely right, so why bother? When you are the smartest person in the room, take advantage of it and don’t waste time soliciting input or advice you don’t need.
2. Avoid making decisions – Making decisions is very limiting. Things change, markets evolve, and trends emerge. If you make a decision and set yourself on a defined course of action, you may miss a big opportunity. Plus, your organization doesn’t like having clear direction because it may stifle innovation.
3. Maximize benefit for the present – The world is a turbulent place. Saving for a rainy day is for suckers. Spend your budget like every quarter could be your last. Nobody ever got a big payout or kudos for anything by coming in third. There is a good reason why the most highly paid baseball players are the home run hitters.
4. Be dramatic – Most effective people I know command a room just by walking through the door. Communicate as if every thing has life or death implications, even when they don’t. Anger, fear and embarrassment are great motivators. Plus, being dramatic gets all the cards on the table. Bring every petty thought and personal emotion to bear in all situations. People will really understand you.
5. Don’t listen to your customers – Think of the old saying about Henry Ford that if he listened to his customers, he would have built a better horse. Customers don’t know anything. They need to be led by the hand and require an enormous amount of overhead just to turn on their car. Are you seriously going to waste time listening to these people? They should be grateful that you are making products or services for them to buy.
6. Interrupt people and talk loudly – Don’t be the person sitting on the sideline or in the corner with nothing to say. Put yourself out there. Interrupt people. You are smart and have insightful things to add. They will respect you for cutting them off. Also, it is very important to pitch your voice as loudly as possible to minimize any chance that someone doesn’t hear you.
7. Why do something today when you can do it tomorrow – It is a very rare situation when something has to get done NOW. Most things are easily put off to another time. Deadlines are arbitrary and milestones are contrived. You are much better off doing things on your terms and timeframe.

There are many more ways to be very ineffective in life, but if you can pull off these 7, you are sure to be a complete failure. Did we leave anything off?

P.S. Thanks to Luke Ball for helping with this post.