Many good foresight or business courses teach students to be proactive vs. reactive to change. Anyone who has read The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People will tell you that the very first habit Covey lists is to be proactive. Covey explained that to be proactive “means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.”
When a person is in control of an expected or anticipated occurrence, they have taken proactive measures. When a person is reactive, they are responding to something that they had yet to have anticipated.
In leadership courses, they often give examples of a proactive vs. a reactive leader. The following chart gives an example of the different mindset of these two styles of leaders. Click on the picture for more information.
Carol Shultz’s article Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches to Your Business and Talent explained two cases that demonstrated how reactive companies lost employees for different reasons, and the associated costs.
There are a number of theoretical models for change that include the importance of being proactive. Some of these include:
- Lewin’s Three-Step Model for Change
- Bullock and Batten’s Phases of Planned Change
- Kotter’s Eight Steps
- Beckhard and Harris’s Change Formula
- Nadler and Tussman’s Congruence Model
- William Bridge’s Managing the Transition
- Carnall’s Change Management Model
- Senge’s Systemic Model
To read more about these and other models for change, click here.
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