FOR YEARS I'VE had a recurring bad dream in which I succumb to the earnest pleas of local planning zealots and put my entire life between the covers of a nice fat day planner.
I include the usual stuff like credit cards, driver's license, bank records, checkbook, goals for the year, diary and important phone numbers.Then I absentmindedly put it on top of my car and drive off, leaving my life strewn on the street.
I always wake up in a cold sweat.
That's why I was so interested to learn of the merger of two of Utah's most successful companies - Franklin Quest and Covey Leadership Center. The new entity is to be called Franklin Covey Co., even though one dictionary definition of the word "covey" is company.
The Salt Lake-based Franklin Quest is a time-management training company best known for its Franklin Day Planner, and the Provo-based Covey Leadership Center is a consulting firm specializing in corporate training.
It is best known for the book written by its chairman, Stephen R. Covey, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."
No one has asked me, but I think the new company should not be Franklin Covey at all but Covey Quest Co.
That's a much catchier moniker, and it retains the key portion of the name - quest - which pertains to something heroic and historic - a search, a trail or a journey.
Besides, Franklin Quest was named for one of our most famous early Americans, Benjamin Franklin, whose life illustrated a propensity to genius.
Franklin was a historic figure of unusually diverse talents. He was as much a writer and thinker as he was an inventor, diplomat or statesman.
Not that Stephen Covey may not some day wear that many hats - but probably not yet. He is over 200 years younger than Franklin. To combine Franklin's name with Covey's, therefore, seems to be a nonsequitur.
Unless it is a conscious attempt to tie the past to the present.
It would make more sense to take Franklin's chairman, Hyrum Smith, and put his name together with Covey's, calling the new company Smith Covey Co.
(Not bad! Calls to mind Smith Barney.)
Or, they could go another way and dig out another suitable historic figure, such as John Quincy Adams, and combine his name with Franklin's, producing the Franklin Quincy Adams Co.
That combination would retain historical prestige for the new company, and fewer people would think it was named for a modern, fictitious guy named Frank Covey.
Besides, the name Adams calls to mind Scott Adams, popular author of "The Dilbert Principle," a cubicle's-eye-view of bosses and management problems.
Appropriate, don't you think? That way, people could be reminded of whatever Adams they preferred.
I also wondered - will the Franklin planner become the Franklin Covey planner? Will its nickname become the "Covey Cover"?
By the way, what happens to the Covey book? They'll keep selling it, I'm sure, but they should introduce a sequel that captures the spirit of the merger - such as "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Planners."
Or a better idea might be "The Seven Day Planners of Highly Effective People." Or how about "The Day Planners of Seven Highly Effective People"?
Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not criticizing this merger. Not at all. I'm just thinking - maybe it needed a little more planning?