An excerpt from Culture Shift
Change can easily create a culture of dependence. Maybe you feel uncertain, or confused, so you decide to sit back until you get a new set of directions. You’ve got questions that need answers. You want help.
It could be that you’re disgusted. Let’s say you don’t buy into the changes, so you figure you’ll hold off until somebody comes around and tells you specifically what to do. After all, “doing nothing” is one of the popular ways people fight changes they don’t like.
Of course, it might be that the culture hasn’t required you to think for yourself. Maybe you assume you’resupposed to wait for guidance, to always turn to your boss for assignments, so you’ve just naturally come to depend on others for your marching orders.
Those days are over. The shift toward a culture of initiative and independence means you must figure out for yourself what the organization needs. Then move on it.
Self-directed behavior is essential in today’s world of accelerating change. For one thing, organizations are learning to run lean, and that means every person must become more self-sufficient. You can’t count on having someone to come around and hand-feed you instructions on a regular basis.
Besides, higher management may not be in a position to help much. Often the boss doesn’t get to see problems as quickly as you do. Or doesn’t understand how to fix them as well as you do. Plus, the boss usually isn’t there when the opportunity to improve things pops up.
So put yourself in charge of problem-solving. You don’t have to have all the answers. Nobody does. Just show some initiative. Come up with your own answers, and there’s a good chance they’ll be better than you could get from anybody else.
You slow down the organization when you go looking for help . . . when you depend on someone else to tell you what to do . . . or when you wage a sneaky war against change by waiting for instructions. Show some initiative, and you’ll see the organization start picking up speed.
