Learning and Life: Covey's First Habit Advice to Proponents of Corruption Eradication First

Stephen Covey's first habit advice to anti-corruption proponents:
First habit of highly successful people states that focusing on circle of concern is counter productive. Instead focusing on your circle of Influence will cause it to expand, and this expansion will eventually take care of your concerns. "Process Efficiency" is in your circle of Influence and "corruption" is in your circle of Concern.

By making the processes transparent and efficient (BPR), you can get rid of corruption. Efficiency is in the circle of Influence of every departmental head, while corruption lies in the departmental head's circle of concern (it involves other departments such as investigation agencies and other organs of state such as courts). Hence, as per Stephen Covey's first habit efficiency should be the first target. Expansion of circle of Influence will take care of concerns (such as corruption).

It is insane to be doing the same thing again n again and expecting a different result!

We should try massive BPR and changing of government processes to increase efficiency and speed of delivery. BPR will curb incompetence and will reward merit and decrease incompetence. But, this will require that the government should focus on Covey's First Habit of concentrating on circle of Influence (processes) rather than the circle of Concern (corruption). We have example of massive reduction in corruption in Passport and NADRA through increase in efficiency. We have several such examples in Pakistan.
One of my FB friend explained this as follows:

"While delivering a Lean Six Sigma training in a sensitive organisation, I found out that their procurement life cycle was 1.5 years. That is a next level of systematic incompetence. The interesting thing was that I was told that Rs 60 part is still bought for Rs 600. To me it's clear that Rs 540 is much less of a spillage than waiting for 1.5 years." Unfortunately the costs of incompetence and inefficiency are far greater. Compare the costs of "corruption filled" Rs30Bn Multan metro completed in one year with the still unfinished "clean corruption free" Rs 100Bn Peshawar Metro causing traffic jams in largest city of kpk for the last three years wasting millions of man-hours of city travelers !