The North Star of Proactivity

TL;DR (AI-powered): I try to refrain from giving people (or systems) advice that ignores context.But if I must prescribe one thing, I try to keep it high-level enough that people can still adapt it. The one principle I believe is worth treating as a North Star is this: deliberately design work so that proactivity is the natural response. That means clear end-to-end ownership where possible, or well-designed systems that make ownership transitions intentional rather than fuzzy. Most organizational dysfunction is just diluted ownership dressed up as process — and a system will always deliver exactly the reactivity (or proactivity) it was designed for.

I believe in the kingship of context – and that ultimately we always have to figure out what works best contextually – and are better off for it.

So I often refrain from giving true advice, at least in a prescriptive manner – even over here. My hope is rather that you get inspired by ideas and implications I elaborate on here, “shape them up” and transform to make them your own. What and how could work best in your context, even if that’s first an assumption or something to try out (like an experiment).

But if I am forced to give more prescriptive advice, then I will be careful to keep at the right abstract level. So to still leave “wiggle room” for you to think through what it means and implies for you, contextually – since that’s where it ultimately has to work.

At the risk of sounding a bit vague (while doing my best to bring about clarity on what I mean), here’s an attempt to articulate that general prescriptive advice, as the one thing I believe should act as a kind of “North Star” in all we do…

To aim at and design for proactivity.

(Let’s stick for the moment primarily in the constraints of how we work, for the sake of focus – although that’s advice that goes definitely beyond that.)

First, what do I even mean by proactivity? And what “design” in that phrase implies?

In “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey defines “proactivity” as the foundational first habit of “private victory”. It means not merely taking initiative, but that we humans are responsible for our own lives. By the way, that very word, “responsible”, is yet another giveaway: being responsible means being “response-able”, or have the ability to choose the responses we can have.

It means that every time we get a stimulus, and therefore are expected to naturally have a response, we have the freedom to choose, using our self-awareness, imagination, conscience and independent will, how to respond. The same concept can apply to organizations and systems of work – how are they providing the ability to people, processes and tools to interact with each other in such a way that aims at responding not as mere reflexes to stimuli. But thoughtfully. Tapping into that freedom to choose and therefore respond more proactively (as opposed to risk falling victim to one’s own circumstances).

I surely hope that, if you have been following my writing on this blog, you will find that idea not alien at all to what I advocate and share over here. Just to name a few, I have written before about:

• You (we!) have more agency than you (we!) think;

• That there’s always choices we can make (and proactively move the ball forward, so to speak); and

• In fact, I have a standing Christmas tradition to revisit a deep reflection around G.K. Chesterton’s response to the question “what’s wrong with the world? – I am.”

The fundamental point always converges to that realization – there’s only, in the end, on a very practical level, the things we can control and do something about them. And assuming we accept that reality and that we do want to do something about making things better, then we must design stimuli and systems that aim at nurturing proactivity, not automated responses.

Now, then the real question becomes what does that really mean? How do we design a work system in organizations that aim at and design for proactivity?

If I think about that, then my “one-thing advice” sort of splits into two, as essentially you have a twofold way of looking at it:

• You either fundamentally incentivize proactivity by clarity on ownership (here implying as end-to-end and broadly and independently as possible).

• Or you approach it more from a systems thinking angle and design systems that enable you to clearly move through states where ownership is more constrained yet pretty clear – including policies (what needs to be true) on how things move from “here to there”.

To be clear – those are not completely mutually exclusive. In reality, you can sort of mix and match and purposely build in broader ownership at certain points because that simplifies things, while still mostly approaching things with building a system that can work with things moving along a flow where ownership may transition at times.

The real “crux of the matter” here is that you need to do those things purposefully and deliberately. And also think whether the points you need for an ownership change isn’t creating incentives against true collaboration and working too much as a “throwing over the fence” kind of thing.

Never losing sight of that, since every system is always perfectly designed to get the results it gets, you want to make sure that whatever you designed is not causing the very opposite to be true. That not only proactivity is not incentivized, but rather “sitting and waiting”, being reactive, is the less risky and thus most natural response.

Where I come from (Brazil), we actually have a nice saying that illustrates that kind of dysfunctional risk:

A dog that has two owners dies of hunger.

I’m repeatedly at a loss of words to observe and realize how much of the dysfunction in how organizations go about delivering work, ultimately and fundamentally, so often boils down to dilution or unclarity of ownership. And even when there’s somehow clarity of ownership in terms of states and who owns certain activities, there is often an incentive (as tacit as it may be) to be reactive and protective about “my part”, as opposed to a real “we are on this together”.

By Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect, I’m happy to engage and interact. I’m passionate about leading to achieve better outcomes with better ways of working. How can I help you?