Pro-activeness and How to Promote It

From World's Chinese Wiki

From "Preparedness" in Chapter Eight of Sun Zi Art of War, we can see that pro-activeness is one important characteristic a good general should have. He has to be proactive in always being ready to engage the enemy and also keeps on building an invincible defence to fend of enemy’s attack.

Business Application

Pro-activeness is a value that should be encouraged in your company. With pro-activeness, your company is able to react and grab opportunities fast, analogous to the readiness to engage enemy in war, and also be able to fend off any moves, especially surprise moves, of the rival or limit damage, analogous to building an invincible defense in war.

But pro-activeness in business means certain amount of risk taking is needed. So there are two factors that will affect the pro-active culture in your company. They are authority delegation and employer's response to mistakes.

Authority Delegation

Before you delegate authority to your leaders, let them know in what situations they should and can practice pro-activeness. For example, if an opportunity comes up and the risk involve is one which the leader can reduce based on certain specialized knowledge he has. Then, by all means, he should be proactive and grab the opportunity, not letting the opportunity slip by. Where possible, train them to assess opportunity and avoid thinking traps.

Only after they have been trained and know in what situations they can and should practice pro-activeness, then delegate them the necessary authority to execute. By having the proper authority, they can then grab opportunities, especially those that have a short life-span.

Response to Mistakes

If the employer is very quick to reproach a pro-active staff, it will be difficult to further that culture in the company. Reason being, would anyone take risks if they know that there is a chance they will be scolded.

Do not be quick to reproach any of your leaders if they took a risk and it turn out to be worse. Know how they come up with the decision; point out where the mistakes are.

This is because the company has incurred the costs of the wrong decisions already, so why not take it as a payment for lesson, learn from it, and share the lesson with other people. You never know such moves can help you prevent someone from committing the same mistakes by another person in your company. Sharing it would reduce the learning curve for other staff in your company. Such an approach will promote a proactive culture in your company.

Another side of the coin is, one should have a proper reward system for pro-active staff that took the risk and benefited the company. By balancing the rewards and punishment, the culture of pro-activeness can then be promoted.

So do you have a culture for risk taking, appropriate amount of authority delegated and a rewards/punishment system built in?