Building a Culture of Initiative
By: A Staff Writer
Updated on: Sep 02, 2024
Building a Culture of Initiative
It’s not just up to YOU. Empowering your team with initiative makes your business more resilient overall.
We want ‘doers’, but our actions often discourage the very initiative we crave.
- Reward the attempt, not just the outcome: Effort and creative problem-solving matter as much as success.
- Publicly celebrate initiative: When someone takes a positive risk (even if it flops), acknowledge their hustle.
- Autonomy breeds initiative: Micromanagement kills it. Let people own their work as much as possible.
- “What do YOU think?”: Make this your default question to encourage your team to think, not just follow.
- Blameless postmortems: When things fail, focus on the “why?” to fix the system, not punish the person.
- Hire for initiative: Skills can be taught, a proactive attitude is much harder to instill. Prioritize this in interviews.
How does your current environment (or past ones) either encourage or discourage initiative?
Delegate ONE small task with minimal instruction. Let the person figure out the ‘how’ even if it’s not YOUR way.