What it means to take initiative

Taking initiative is Courage to take challenges beyond the purview of our day to day work. Doing day to day work is business as usual.Every individual has his own unique strong points. Taking initiative is giving the best to what you are good at both outside and as a part of your day to day work. For example, if you are a good musician, you can take initiative to build a music band in the organization. It is as sstraighht forward as that.

I believe every new heights made by an organization is a result of initiatives taken by one or other employee in the organization. Extrapolating this theory, if everyone takes conscious decision to take initiative to explore best in self and there by contribute to the organization, the power of organization to scale new heights will be enormous.

The following are some thumb rules/basic lessons I learned from various initiatives I could take.

1. Once started, under no circumstance, one should drop the initiative
2. No reason for backing out can stand before us, if you are strong like a rock. Instead only our discipline will make others feel that the initiative is longstanding.
3. Our commitment to the initiative will be time tested.
4. Our commitment will also be tested by others first before they welcome the same.
5. Keep adding value to your initiative.
6. Take it for granted that there will be criticism. Combat it with the belief that you know the best on what you are doing.
7. Welcome criticism with an open heart, weed out the emotions and understand the core message, analyze if there is any key takeaway for you, do the mitigation.
8. Believe that your initiative will be a huge success.
9. Believe that likeminded people will slowly start accepting you as a leader and will start following you.

Once you have initiated an activity, it is no more an initiative, it is a live program. Hence to keep it alive on an ongoing basis, you need to instigate life in to it by way of introducing new strategies and new people centric sub initiatives.

An initiative has to be nourished and re invented through multiple other small initiatives until the initial objective is met. It is also quite possible that you find larger purpose/benefit out of a small initiative that you have started off. If you ever find it that way, redefine the objective of the initiative there by taking it to new levels.

Last but not the least, an initiative calls for a lot of perseverance from the initiators and support from the beneficiaries. The result of all the hard work will be directly proportional to the gravity of the above 2 factors. It is imperative that one cannot live without the other.

Now step back and we can see that at any point we are always a part of an initiative – either as an initiator or as a beneficiary. Choice on to what extent we should contribute is always with us. But doing the same with awareness is highly important and is mandatory.

Know your worthiness and dream BIG

Many times we look at Business icons like Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Ramadorai and likes just to wonder how they got to these highs in their career with out even wanting to think about the effort that they have made to be there.

No body is born with 100% skill. Naturally we may have some skills inherited in your genes. This I believe nature has given to us to help us make a beginning. In this challenging world, to expect any thing more than that would be little foolish in my view. Hence I like to believe our natural skill set is just 10%(figure for the sake of putting here :-)) of what in total we can build in our career and in our lifetime. The right perception about our career, focus and hard work pays when it comes to building the rest 90%.

The secret of your success lies in setting the right perception about your career. For this, knowing the below I think will help.

Know your own worthiness at two levels

a. For the current demands in organization
b. For future prospects in organization and your aspirations

Let me explain what I mean by above.
Knowing your worthiness is all about exploring yourself , identifying your core skills and the heights that you can scale in area where your skills and capability match. In other words, your ability to think where you need to be after 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years . If not, no better time than now to do it.

Simple examples of such a chart is

• In 5 years - to be a Project manager, 8-10 years to head a Delivery unit, 15-20 years - business head/VP, 20- 30 years - CEO/COO, 30-40 years Chairman of a company, to be in board of directors etc and so on.
• Or it can be - In 5 years - to be a tech lead, 10 years - to be a solution architect, 15 years - technical consultant and so on.
• Or it can be - In 5 years - to be a Project manager, 8-15 years to be a Business development manager, 15-20 years to be a business development consultant, 20-30 years to be a CMO and so on
• Or it can even to set up a company of your own, create job opportunities and much more

What this exercise does ?

This to me is exactly what we call as setting a vision for ourselves. This exercise quickly sets a structure to your career plan. Subconsciously this also sets correct measure and expectations (with yourselves)for your current worthiness in any role that you may aspire and also in your aspiration for the future roles that you would like to handle.

One of the greatest gifts God has given us is the power to dream. The beauty of a dream is that it doesn’t have any rules or limits. Hence you can dream just about any thing in this world - even things which doesn’t exist in this world.

Every great step starts with one single step.
Every step that you takes builds confidence and positive outlook in you and several such step takes you to higher roles and responsibilities. The small steps you have taken will be your investments for your future. I believe this is the only right way to shape your career. It should be gradual and steady and should align with your capabilities. That means … no short cuts!

However, There is one way you can regulate the speed at which you reach new heights.. by taking those small steps and learning from mistakes more frequently. Imagine you setting your goals on a daily basis and evaluating it at the end of the day there by setting new goals for the next day!.. There is no limit to the heights you can reach.

This means that the entire horoscope of your career path can be drafted by you.

Now the question is , what the first step should be. Simple! Start your first step by dreaming.Dreaming about you and your organization's future, its road map, success and glory.

• If you want your company to grow in terms of number of employee base, start dreaming hundreds and thousands of people working around you along with you
• If you want company to grow in size and spread, start dreaming a delivery centre in every part of the world
• If it is for organization's social cause, start dreaming on how the villages in India are transforming and prospering due to our contribution.
• If it is in terms of luxury, glory, comfort and so called 'status', then go ahead dream of huge glass mansions in your own IT park with Hi-Fi facilities.

Dream big, that’s the only first step to making it real. Lets start with this cash less investment.

P.s. Don’t forget to take the second step immediately.. Dreams with out subsequent effort is good to nothing. Keep performing .. Keep re-discovering yourselves.

Make a smart move - Work for tomorrow, today will be taken care of

There are certain abilities which comes with your own nature, but there are certain other abilities which need to be cultivated. One of the best that I can think of at the moment is the ability to 'work for tomorrow'

Specifically from the organization perspective all it means is to move our working culture from 'fire fighting mode' and enable us to be the 'builders of tomorrow'.

If an organization is growing, definitely it is because of some people who naturally hold this ability. Imagine if all of us cultivate this.

I my view, ability to understand matter well in advance about specific scenarios and make the move to counter or resolve the probable issues or requirements proactively as much as possible holds the key to cultivating this ability. More over, there is fun in doing your job if you are in this state.

This will also enable us to be in the dream state of always being in performance based leadership.

1. Understand managers vision for the team and client and keep doing things in background in advance so that when the right time comes the data is ready or necessary steps are either already taken to tackle the situation or can be taken with immediate effect.

2. Understand what client would want. Provide solutions at least on paper for exactly what he might want in future. The ability to anticipate the issues/hardships the client might undergo in future, letting them know on a timely and professional manner in advance and to seek suggestions from them to whether you would like to give a solution for that proactively is some thing which will client's confidence to highest levels.

These kind of approach asks for lot of proactive measures which will definitely take time from your normal BAU work. But the moment you see these as investments for future, the dimension of this activity takes new shapes and will encourage

There is a joy in working this way.

Hope this blog will encourage some one other than me also to start taking proactive and timely steps towards redefining client's confidence/satisfaction and there by probability of new/repeat business as much as it is already helping me.

Start defining your's and your client's targets.. You dont need to work for every day targets any more, for, your target's will always be medium to long term. Happy working days :)