Have you ever procrastinated? Some times I have been faced with this situation at work: that I see something I know should be done, but, unless the boss tells me to do it, I will not do it. To my benefit, I should say it does not happen often.
When your boss is autocratic he helps you by making a point to order you all you have to do. You then just follow his orders and you are ok.
It is when you get a laissez faire boss that your initiative comes into play. A laissez faire boss does not tell you all you have to do, but he sure has an outcome for the whole thing in view. Then, if you see something that must be done and he did not directly tell you to do that, it is entirely up to you to do so. You take a challenge and you run a risk.
In this situation you need initiative. You could also call it self-discipline or a bias for action. It does not matter much. But it does require will-power. You see something, you think: “with all that I have to do…”, you may avoid it or you may put yourself through some extra strain in order to do that. This is the hero solution for the problem.
There is a solution though, which is more practical and the one normally adopted by business: someone takes the decision of what has to be done - and someone else does it. This way the pain of having to do without being told so is solved. And the person who gives the orders does not go through the pain of doing it also. This is how and why bosses were invented.
Let's look into other possible solutions for the problem outlined in the beginning.
A worker or a group of workers is assigned a territory and, not a set of tasks, but an outcome. This could mean that workers are given the goal of keeping and area in a certain condition at all times and they must do whatever necessary to keep it that way.
This way the worker has a permanent order in mind and he just does whatever necessary. Moreover, if he does so as a routine, it will just make it easier given the acquired experience and help him.
Another way to face the problem above is for a bunch of workers to arrive somewhere, totally without any kind of leadership, and all look around and say: “well, we have these things to do here. I can do this…”. And someone could do something else. They would discuss, negotiate, put their hands to the work and the job would be done.
This would be the self-organising way, as I like calling it, of doing anything in groups.
In all this there is not only, by my side, the intent to save the suffering of the worker, but also to sort out the motivation and the level of achievement there deriving.
When we are told exactly what to do and how, we do it, but just. Our resourcefulness in terms of energy, creativity and commitment ends there.
When we are given to take the initiative of doing without being told, we go through some struggle, but if we are allowed to develop our own way of doing it, we may develop commitment and do it systematically and then with less pain.
Now, if we are allowed to take the initiative of finding out and negotiating with colleagues what to do and such, because no expectancy impended upon us, because we chose to do whatever, because we chose the way to do it, and because we control the results, we develop a feeling of ownership of work, processes and results.
There could not be any higher mind-state for the worker of any organisation and nothing higher for management to look for.
