I had an interesting discussion today.  In a work situation, who is accountable to ensure you have enough work?  Is it you, or your boss?   In my view it is you.  That being said though, there is a balance between leadership, environment and you that needs to be optimal to encourage you to take the initiative when it is needed.

Personal Initiative

Culture and leadership practices together with your own personal ethic drive how much initiative you demonstrate.  If you have a poor work ethic and the organizational culture and leadership don’t clearly support an expectation of high personal initiative it’s not unlikely to see employees taking longer breaks,  personal phone calls, playing games and other distractions at their desk.

Over the years I have encountered too many scenarios where the work environment, lack of active leadership and low levels of personal work ethic led to inefficient operations.

What are some ways to address these situations?

Leadership – fostering a strong work ethic through example, coupled with clear communication of expectations around personal initiative and using both reward and consequence actions to re-enforce the organizations basic cultural framework are the key actions leaders can undertake to create a healthy and efficiently operating work environment

Personal Work Ethic – this is largely a learned behavior.  Leading by example is key to building a strong work ethic throughout the organization.  This is not just leading by designated managers/leaders,  but everyone can be an example for everyone else.  Strong work ethics from one individual can influence the behaviors and actions of ten others (or even more).   Clearly communication expectations and the appropriate level of reinforcement through both reward and consequence is key.

You can see it is critical to couple leadership behaviors with personal work ethic behavior to achieve strong and efficient operations.

In combination, lack of leadership and poor work ethic rarely improve and this perfect storm can lead to frustration by all stakeholders – leaders, workers and other impacted stakeholders like end customers, associated organization units and so on.