Many people start the New Year with a number of clear goals and good intentions. They want to change ‘something’ or ‘some things’ in their behavior because they were not satisfied with the way they did it last year. They want to improve. Very often these goals are not realised or these intentions are not met. Why?Mainly this is caused by the difference between Procrastination and Proactivity.

The crucial difference between procrastination and proactivity directly influences the productivity of your company or department and the quality of tasks and processes that needs to be done. 

A top manager influences his/her company’s culture for 80% with his/her management style. Management behaviour is copied and followed top-down in every organisation like ‘water always flows downward’. If, as a top manager, or as a manager of a department, you actively stimulate Proactivity in your company you will not see much Procrastination.

What is Procrastination?

Procrastinators carry out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or they do more pleasurable things instead of less pleasurable ones. They postpone important tasks to a later time, sometimes till the "last minute" before the deadline.

You can see it in practical routines like:

• filling the day with low priority tasks
• reading e-mails several times without working on them
• sitting down to start a high-priority task, but then, almost immediately going off to have a cup of coffee leaving an item on the To Do list for a long time, even when knowing it has priority
• regularly saying "Yes" to unimportant tasks that others ask them to do, and filling the time with these instead of start with the important tasks already on their agenda waiting for the “right mood” or the “right time” to tackle the important task at hand.

Why do people Procrastinate?

Procrastination is often more emotional or avoidant oriented than task or problem-solving oriented. Emotion oriented coping reduces stress, associated with putting off intended and important personal goals, an option that provides immediate rest, pleasure and is consequently very attractive to procrastinators.

For procrastinators it is easier to postpone difficult tasks than putting energy in start working on them.

What is Proactivity?

Proactivity or Proactive behavior means: ‘taking responsibility for one’s own life, rather than looking for causes in external circumstances or other people’. (Viktor Frankl).

Proactivity refers to anticipative, change oriented and self-initiated behavior in actual situations. Proactive behavior is acting toward a future situation, rather than reacting.

It means taking control and making things happen rather than just adjusting to a situation or waiting for something to happen.

Proactive employees generally do not need to be asked to act, nor do they require detailed instructions.

Steven Covey

In his book ‘The 7 habits of highly effective people’, Covey starts with Habit 1: Be Proactive: ‘’your life does not just ‘happen’. Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you.

The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear.

Just remember that every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results.’’

How to become proactive?

Being Proactive means taking responsibility for your own life, instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which you have little or no control.

Proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control.

Proactive people work on the things they can do something about like health, children and issues at work.

Reactive people focus their efforts on things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather.

Gaining awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive.

Why is a Proactive Culture crucial for your company?

Now the financial crisis is behind us, most countries and companies are performing well again. Because they changed their vision and strategy, invested in their people, they worked on their country or company culture. Nevertheless, top people are still wrestling with their ‘old cultures and habits of thinking’. Politicians and Top managers regularly seem to be stuck, not knowing how to move further. In spite of the new strategies on paper, they prefer to follow the well-known, old models and old habits. Not because it will work in today’s marketplace but because it feels good, it feels safe.

It is the old management tradition, based on power and rational, anti-social management.

In this new era of fast economic and social developments this does not work anymore. Politicians and managers realise that but do not know how to handle this. And in some cultures, ‘not knowing’ or ‘not having every answer’ is seen or felt as a weakness.

Fortunately, most leaders know they have to rely on and trust the competences of their people. They know and admit that the top does not need to have all the answers; that is why you hire employees with knowledge and skills. Using their competences will bring you and your company to the next level of development.

And especially now, in this era, every leader and manager should stimulate Proactivity in his/her organisation.

If only for one reason: your competitor is implementing a Proactive culture already!!

For you as a manager the benefits to stimulate your employees to be(come) Proactive will make a big difference for your company and your own daily workload.

Having a Proactive workforce means a.o. that:

• You can rely on your people to do their jobs with more enthusiasm
  • They take more initiatives
  • They deliver a better quality
  • They come up with - creative – ideas for improvements
  • They are more productive
• You can lead by the ‘Management By Exception’ principle and save much time by delegating
  • You only need regular check-ups instead of constant controlling
  • You have more positive energy for other activities to do your own job better
  • You can spend more time on your strategic and management tasks
• You will experience less stress

All together for your company it means that your people are more satisfied and motivated, your productivity goes up, your turn-over goes up, your profit goes up, and, most important of all:

Your Customers will experience the positive difference.

Whatever you decide, I wish you a Happy and Successful New Year.

(PS/Z.R.)

www.balance-consultancy.com

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