Working with Communications, Service and Technology the industry standard for most appears to be “Reactive” in that something happens the organisation reacts rather than trying to forecast events and working proactively to remove risks and handle issues before they become problems.
The best example in most workplaces is the “email an issue” – this occurs when ever a mail is sent from person a to b and the mail contains an issue of some kind.
In my experience person a will not have a plan for followup to the mail with the issue, it has effectively been passed on to person b from their perspective but nothing has really been resolved, now if person a is affected by the issue directly chances are that at some point additional mails will go out to person b, with the same method.
In most cases person b will reply (at some point) and here we really see the reactive approach, because once that reply is sent if it in anyway requires a response b will sit around and wait for person a to reply.
A proactive approach would be to create a plan for when b will check for a reply and request it again if nothing has come and align the plan with person a.
It’s rather simple really:
- Align expectations
- Create a plan and followup
Which for some of us can be summarized by the principle: Due diligence
If i should recommend one principle to adapt for how you accomplish your assigned tasks it would be “Due diligence” in the sense of working proactively rather than reactively.
Don’t wait for the issues, seek them out and remove them, find a risk plan a reaction or more.
Jordfaar.com 