There’s a ton of writing out there on proactive vs. reactive. Whether it is about software development or business development, being proactive and preventing a problem is much preferred over perfecting the ability to deploy resources quickly when a problem erupts.
All of that is, of course, intuitive.
Nonetheless, individuals and organizations still struggle with being proactive and preventing problems. My explanation comes by way of a saying I once wrote on a whiteboard in a co-worker’s cubicle when the powers-that-be in that organization were touting the virtues of responsiveness:
Responsiveness is required only by those who have failed to anticipate.
It’s easy to instruct others to be proactive, mostly because the virtues of being proactive are so intuitive. If you have a keen enough understanding of your environment, however, it becomes possible to predict what might happen and prevent the problem for arising. That, of course, necessitates that you actually have an understanding of your environment.
I followed up that gem with the following:
Anticipation is required by those who have failed to dictate the terms of the engagement.
My inspiration for this was NFL football, where dominant teams dictate to the opposition how the game will be played. Teams with superior running games, for example, will run the ball when and where they want until another team proves that the running game can be stopped consistently.
That scenario translates to other situations, however. Dictating the terms of the engagement is as simple as knowing what your organization actually does, not what you think it does, so that you can go after business that aligns with your capability. It means developing people such that they can grow into management roles, not thrusting technical experts into managerial positions based on longevity or their technical acumen. If not, then you end up with a poor understanding of what your organization can do, and what the people within that organization are capable of, which leads to poor business decisions that, inevitably, yield difficult situations no one could anticipate and everyone must react to.
