Franklin Covey Co., trading as FranklinCovey and based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a coaching company which provides training and assessment services in the areas of leadership, individual effectiveness, and business execution for organizations and individuals. The company was formed on May 30, 1997, as a result of merger between Hyrum W. Smith's Franklin Quest and Stephen R. Covey's Covey Leadership Center. Among other products, the company has marketed the FranklinCovey planning system, modeled in part on the writings of Benjamin Franklin, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, based on Covey's research into leadership ethics.
FC Organizational Product is the official licensee of FranklinCovey products and continues to produce paper planning products based on Covey's time management system. FranklinCovey also has sales channels in more than 120 countries worldwide.[2]
History
Franklin Quest and the Covey Leadership Center operated independently until January 22, 1997, when the two companies jointly announced a merger and public offering valued at $160 million.[3]
Merger
Hyrum W. Smith, then the CEO of Franklin Quest, expected that the 1997 acquisition would increase market value through the synergistic combination of Covey's 7 Habits book with the Franklin Planner system and with the company's associated training courses.[3] However, after the merger FranklinCovey's stock price dropped from around $20 per share to a low of under $1 per share by early 2003. As of June 1, 2006, it traded around $7 per share which has increased their purchase rate. From late 2009 to mid-2010, the stock price moved in the range $5.5 to $8.[4]
Products and services
In 2008, FranklinCovey's CEO, Bob Whitman, changed the company's direction by selling off its paper products business and shifting focus to in-person training sessions and live-online training through the internet. The spinoff of the paper planner business became known as FC Organizational Products and maintains a contract with FranklinCovey as the authorized licensee of the brand name.[5] Together the two companies still maintain one retail location, located at FranklinCovey's corporate campus in Salt Lake City.[6]
The LeaderInMe program is a "whole school transformation model and process" based around Covey's work.[10] As of 2024, there were LeaderInMe schools in the Guatemala, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Qatar, Taiwan, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and every state in the United States.[11] According to the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, students at schools using the program reported that teachers were "nicer" and that discipline problems had declined.[12] The program has been criticized for its connections to Mormonism, and imposing "a cult-like, robotic, corporate atmosphere” into public schools, indoctrinating kids through memorized songs and catchphrases related to the seven habits.[13][14]
