Real-world examples of proactivity: actions and lessons

Examples of proactivity are more useful when you examine actions: which problem someone noticed, what they proposed and who worked with them. The three documented episodes below come from technology and education. They offer ideas to consider without explaining a person's entire career or establishing why they succeeded.

Tim Berners-Lee: turn a problem into a proposal

CERN's archive records that Tim Berners-Lee prepared an information-management proposal in March 1989. He described information loss within the organisation and the possibilities of linking material through hypertext. The project later became the World Wide Web; CERN also acknowledges Robert Cailliau and other colleagues. CERN's account of the first proposal.

Our practical interpretation for a small work task is to describe the difficulty and the change you suggest. If a team loses track of project decisions, for example, you could collect a few cases and propose one shared decision record. This is an illustrative analogy, not an attempt to reproduce the scale of the invention.

Steve Jobs: show what the proposal means

Apple's historical account states that Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone at Macworld on 9 January 2007. The presentation brought together a phone, a music player and an internet communications device. Apple's account of the first iPhone.

One aspect worth discussing is how to make an idea understandable through a use case. In your project, that might mean a draft page or a sample report that lets someone explain what they understand. The presentation itself cannot establish that every risk is justified or that one person produced the whole result.

Malala Yousafzai: organise work with others

Malala and Ziauddin Yousafzai founded Malala Fund in 2013 to champion girls' right to education. The fund describes its work through supporting organisations and advocating for changes in education policy. Malala Fund's history and approach.

A useful question for your own initiative is who already works on the problem and what help they need. Before starting a separate project, you might speak with an existing team and agree on a manageable contribution. Community work involves different conditions and risks; another person's life story does not prescribe how much personal risk you should take.

Separate the event from the explanation

We discuss these episodes as examples of initiative, not as psychological assessments of the people involved. A source can establish an event; its meaning still involves interpretation. For the underlying concept, see our explanation of proactivity and its limits.

A familiar example usually describes a visible outcome. It rarely includes every similar attempt that did not work. A story about a well-known person therefore cannot tell you the probability that your own decision will succeed.

Turn an observation into a small trial

Choose one approach: describe a problem, show a sample or find a partner. Record the intended result and what you want to learn. In the illustrative decision-record example, a review question might be: “Can we find the latest agreed decision for this task?”

Agree on the trial with anyone whose work it affects. Our proactivity exercises can help you prepare, while the distinction between goals, projects and tasks can help define the next action. Afterwards, keep your observations and decide whether to continue.