When conducting interviews I often ask people what they think initiative is. I get varying answers from "doing the crap work that nobody else wants to do" to "thinking outside the box"
As a follow up I ask people to tell me a time when they have demonstrated initiative. Most of their answers are as vague as their descriptions of initiative.
I think most people (myself included most of the time) have not put a lot of thought about what initiative is and are therefore unprepared to answer the question. They haven’t formulated their own definition of what initiative is. They try to fit their past experiences into the dictionary definition instead of thinking about what initiative means in their own opinion.
On my way home tonight I got thinking about initiative and what is MY definition of initiative? What do I think "thinking outside the box" means? How does one display initiative. Are there any other things that are related to initiative and how do they tie into being a leader somehow?
I came up with the following:
The dictionary definition of initiative (see the bottom of the post) will tell you that initiative is the ability to begin something, an opening move. This definition falls short in my opinion – I think initiative is much more complex than this. If you look at initiative the dictionary way then almost anyone could proclaim they take initiative everyday all the time, which I don’t think captures the essence of what initiative is.
I don’t think initiative is something you can define on its own without thinking about other factors into account such as creativity, skill set, and general problem solving skills. When you get your creative juices flowing and you have the ability to acquire the knowledge initiative will start to naturally follow
When it comes to solving a given problem – if you study a problem and think about it over time you will eventually come to some type of conclusion about the problem. This is where having a broad skill set can increase your ability to take initiative and exhibit creativity. If you don’t have the skills to solve a problem you can’t begin to take initiative.
True initiative comes when you execute your ideas, illuminations and thoughts about the problem as you go while not being afraid to research and develop a possible solution that may turn out to be wrong. An important skill is to draw on past experiences to know whether or not you are going down the wrong path or not and being able to see when a path you are following isn’t going to lead you to
I think the key thing to remember is to follow through and see the idea or problem through to completion. This is where initiative ties into successful leadership. If you consistently fail at following through on your initiatives it will become hard to motivate a team of people to help you see your initiative through to completion. Nobody wants to work towards a goal that they know will more than likely result in failure.
This is not to say that failed initiative is bad – I’m just saying make sure it doesn’t become habit. There are lots of important nuggets of information to be learned from taking initiative and failing as long as you take the time to think about what cause the failure. If failed initiative starts to become habit then take a minute to re-evaluate your reasons for taking the initiative in the first place.
My conclusion is this. It isn’t always something you plan to do or force to happen – sometimes it just happens on its own without you realizing it. It is something that comes about as a result of putting other skills into action.
If you are trying to improve on taking initiative, one goal to work towards, as I see it, is to decrease the time it takes to take something from idea to successful execution. This will make you a valuable contributor no matter what level or role you play in your organization.
Problems that lead to failed initiative
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- If your skill set isn’t broad enough or you are unsure how to apply your skills when taking initiative you will accomplish little more than exerting effort over a problem that you can not come to a conclusion on. Also if you don’t have practice solving different types of problems, no matter what they are, then you will have no idea where to begin when it comes to taking initiative. I think this is where people get the idea that taking initiative is doing the crap work because when you are first starting out you have to practice the above two things before moving onto the next step in the process.
- Going down the wrong path for too long without knowing better can lead to failed initiative and then not learning from these experiences or not taking the time to reflect on failures.
Dictionary Definition of initiative
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- A beginning or introductory step; an opening move: took the initiative in trying to solve the problem.
