Accountability and change, what really depends on us in complex contexts

They happen when we are acquired by another group, when a line of business is sold, when certain functions are merged or a team is disbanded and redeployed.

They happen when the company changes market positioning, shifts focus from product to service or decides to enter a new market.

They happen even in the most operational things: in processes that change, in new management systems to be learned, in procedures that become more standardised.

And when things happen to us, when we cannot exercise real control, how do we decide to direct our responses and energies? What questions do we ask ourselves and through what lens do we read the context around us?

Among the key principles of human nature, we can identify one that helps us understand what guides our responses. The first and fundamental rule of an effective person: the rule of proactivity.

This word is now common and overused in management literature and practice. I think it is useful to pause for a moment and understand the depth of what a concept like this can yield and try to better understand why some of us are more inclined to take responsibility and some less so. Being proactive means more than just taking the initiative. It means recognising that, as human beings, we are responsible for our responses. Our behaviour is not a function of the conditions we live in, but of the decisions we make. We can subordinate impulses and feelings to values, and it is in this space that our ability to influence what happens is played out.

Responsibility' - literally 'responsiveness' - is the ability to choose our response or reaction. Proactive people accept this responsibility, they do not blame their behaviour on circumstances, situations or conditioning, but relate it to a conscious, value-based choice.

If our lives depend on conditioning and situations, it is because we, by conscious decision or inadequacy, have chosen to allow these things to control us. And in making this choice, we become reactive. Proactive people are not meteoropaths: whether it rains or the sun shines makes no difference. The starting point is a value, and if their value is to work with a high quality, it does not depend on whether the weather is favourable or unfavourable.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. The reactive person is driven by feelings, circumstances, situations. Those who are proactive are driven by their values: deeply considered, chosen and internalised values. Proactive people are also influenced by external stimuli - physical, social and psychological - but their response to stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice.

Unfortunately, when the tendency is not to take responsibility, a reactive reading of the context and situations emerges strongly. How many times, at the coffee machine, during a lunch or a meeting, have we heard that colleague say: 'this stuff should be explained to the decision-makers', 'those above have no idea what is really going on', 'we pay for choices made elsewhere'.

Why do we do this? Because we are more reactive and less proactive, because for years and years we have explained away our unhappiness in the name of contingent circumstances or other people's behaviour, because it is easier. On the other hand, until a person can say with deep conviction and honesty: 'I am what I am because of the choices I made yesterday', he cannot even say: 'I choose differently now'.

What is interesting is that in our private lives, not our working lives, the proactive nature and thus the ability to influence the system around us manifests itself crystal clear.

We get our flight cancelled for holidays booked with so much effort and commitment. Do we stand there passive or do we do everything to find a solution? We double-park our car for five minutes, come back and find the policeman taking down our number plate to fine us. Do we stand there passively or do we do everything to find a solution?

In private life, when faced with the unexpected, we make this choice every day.

The parcel we have been waiting for for days is 'delivered', but there is no trace of anything. Do we just stand there passive or do everything to find a solution? The Wi-Fi at home stops working just when we need it most. Do we stand by passively or do everything to find a solution?

Perhaps it is worth pausing for a moment on this point: not because it is right to be proactive, but because it pays off. It pays off for those who want to work better, be better off in their own context and reduce that feeling of frustration that, day after day, ends up wearing down more than the objective difficulties.

Perhaps the question is not to change the context, but to stop being subjected to it. Not out of a sense of duty, but out of an elementary form of personal convenience.

*Consultant of Newton Spa