I recently finished reading John Miller’s excellent (and rather short) book QBQ (The Question Behind the Question). The focus of the book is about taking responsibility rather than handing out blame, even when blame feels like it might be more appropriate.
One piece of taking responsibility is choosing to push things forward without waiting for instructions. Depending on your role at work this might be tricky, but I love to see this kind of thing. John put it this way:
“It’s better to be one who is told to wait than one who waits to be told.”
This is something we’re working to instill in our team and it’s heading in the right direction. Many employees (at any company) have a fear of messing up and getting in trouble (or getting fired), so they’d rather play it safe. In my view, as long as the intentions are good the outcome is less important. We certainly want positive outcomes, and if things go poorly we might use it as a lesson on how to improve next time, but I’ll never fault one of our staff for trying to do more to serve our clients.
If you’re in a role where you always choose to wait to be told what to do for fear of making a mistake, it’s worth considering what kind of environment you’re really in.
