Taking the Initiative on Initiatives

The next instalment in the “Beyond Professionalism” series, today’s blog is all about seizing the initiative on… Initiatives. How do internal work initiatives come into being in the first place and what are they for? How important is your mindset when it comes to propelling your own career forwards? Read on to find out…

Do you ever feel like there’s something missing from your work? Have you ever spotted a gaping hole in an existing process or felt a negative sentiment towards certain aspects of the job? Do you ever think about better ways of doing things? I’d wager yes – but the bigger question is, how have you reacted to this? 

You might have noticed that most people choose to moan about it. There are a lot of reasons for this. It’s not their problem to solve. Moaning feels good. They’re too busy doing other things to do anything else. Are these good reasons though? Why is it somebody else’s problem when you’re the one feeling the effects of it? Are you really too busy to take the time to address something that might stop you from being so busy in the future? Can you really justify moaning when you’re not prepared to propose a solution?

A lot of companies will try to address existing deficiencies through the rollout of initiatives. These initiatives are in the interest of the company and as such are often curated at the executive level. It’s easy for us to imagine that it is in fact the responsibility of the people at the top to come up with these initiatives and ensure that they are successful (rather than ours) for a number of reasons. They have the best overview of the business from which to draw the best solutions. They are paid more for the responsibility of solving these problems. They are more experienced and therefore more likely to get it right.

What can we do about it?

We could therefore choose to rely on others to eventually solve all of our problems – but what if we were to take on some of this accountability ourselves? As those who will first hand see the benefits of well implemented solutions, are we not therefore motivated to push for them? Should we not be more inclined to put our money where our mouths are when we complain of poor processes and at least try to fix the problems ourselves? Do we want to relinquish all control of our own working experience?

If we make the conscious choice to tackle the things that most frustrate us in the workplace, we are taking the first step towards a better future. Sure, we won’t always be successful in trying, or always right about our solutions, but we will have tried and at least given ourselves justification for bemoaning the situation. We’ll also nearly always discover something else about the complexities of a situation that might give rise to a change in perspective, or a tweak to the original approach that then better sets us up for ultimate success.

You’re never too junior or inexperienced to start trying. You can always bring something unique and potentially game changing to the table. What you should always do, is to take the initiative on your own problems. You never know, you might end up defining the next big global initiative for your own company, just as I did. Be the change you want to see.