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.