Achieving great results by being proactive

If this was one of those TV commercials about funeral & insurance policies, it would go something like this, “Don’t you just hate it when clients tell you what to do? Well, with being PROACTIVE you are covered”.

Put simply, being proactive means thinking and acting ahead - basically, this means using foresight and creating the time, space and opportunity. It's a great method for avoiding more work down the road but also can be extremely important for preventing disasters, planning well for the future and for instituting systems at work, in study, and at home that make life easier for not just you, but others as well. Many of us look to proactive people as the instigators of action and creative ideas in society.

So why is being proactive important? Well let me make it clear, in public relations and in any field for that matter, a proactive approach gives you more control over your planning and enables you to set the agenda. You get to decide how best to present the image of the company or client.

Being proactive is also a great way of not letting the client become the one in control of the PR. You have to be in control and you have to set the pace and define the strategy and actions. If you aren’t proactive then clients often feel the need to take these functions back, rendering the PR practitioner powerless.

Being proactive also means that you work to create the results that you and your business will experience, rather than waiting to react to what other people are doing.

Here are some suggestions that can help you become a more proactive person.

- Know which tasks are priorities and which can wait. If you aren’t already skilled in setting priorities then study and use the action priority matrix

- Evaluate your procedures and processes as you use them. If the word SYSTEM were an acronym it would stand for: Saves You Stress Time Energy Money. So build systems that achieve this but also keep improving them.

- Try to anticipate things you will need to know. If you don’t try to anticipate, it won’t happen. Make it a practice to think ahead.

- Develop a mindset that looks to solve problems instead of dwelling on them.

- Define the problem (what is it exactly?), and then decide what needs to happen to overcome the problem and how you’re going to do that; and get on with it

- Examine critically how you might perform those tasks more efficiently. Create a plan, procedure, checklist or routine to accomplish the task and then look for steps in the process to eliminate, consolidate, or shorten.

As a PR professional you should aim to be two things: proactive and useful. Being proactive will help you in your client, media, and co-worker relationships-even if it is a simple thing like updating people on the things you’re responsible for before you are asked. Being useful applies to those relationships as well. The more useful you are, the more trusted you become.

Having said all this, we need to also understand that being proactive is a learned skill, it is being courageous in taking risks. Being proactive is learning from one's own mistakes and learning from the mistakes of others. Being proactive is about creating desired results and moving yourself forward.

Let us all start being proactive!