The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - The Power of Proactivity | Foundations Friday #105

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Being proactive is a power. It enables us to prepare our minds for hardship better, and proactive Public Safety leaders and Project Managers can provide better contingency plans. In the realm of Public Safety, taking proactive planning action saves lives. For Project Managers, a proactive planning approach saves time, money, and resources, and keeps the quality of our team's work high.Join me for this episode inspired by my soon-to-be-released interview with Larry Hagner of The Dad Edge (https://thedadedge.com/) as I expand on my thoughts and share more advantages to the proactive mindset over the reactive one.Godspeed y'all.

Thank you for being here. For more, go to KevTalksPod.com. Now, let's get logged in and get locked on to the KevTalks Podcast. Three, two, one. Reactive. Reacting to the past rather than participating in the future. Proactive. Acting before a situation becomes a source of confrontation or crisis.

These are the choices we have every day in our lives, whether it's personal, professional, or a mix of both. We can sit back and wait for someone else to do something for us. We can react emotionally and make potentially irrational decisions and outbursts and say things we don't really mean. We can be proactive in our health and our sleep and our diet and our relationships and how we plan for work.

There's so much more to be gained from being proactive than there is from always being reactive. Now, that doesn't mean that sometimes we don't have to react to an unknown situation, but if we were proactive and we did some contingency planning ahead of time for our personal lives or professionally, then our reaction will really just be that we're taking part in our plan. The theme for this Foundation's Friday, number 105,

the power of proactivity, was inspired by a great discussion and interview that I had with Larry Hagner of the Dad Edge podcast. So go to thedadedge.com to learn more about him. Tune in to this KevTalks podcast next week as that episode comes out. But the gist of it is Larry talks about when we're in reaction mode in our relationships with our kids, with our wife, it's usually almost too late. Similarly, in my life as a project manager and before that in public safety, the same thing can be had. If we haven't put the training in to respond to an active shooter, then when we react, we're going to do so with fear and uncertainty and who's doing what. In a less emergent and critical example, in a project, let's say we lose funding or part of

the funding. Did we plan on how we were going to do this project or at least talk about it if we had 75% of the funds or 50% instead of 100%? If we haven't had those talks, whether it's money, time, resources, then we are behind and we're going to be reactive all the time. So I would urge all the folks in public safety and project management in every other industry as well, and particularly in your relationship with yourself, with your wife, with your kids, be a proactive member of that group. Take the time to talk to your kids. Larry has great stuff at thedadedge.com about that to your spouse, to your project teams, to your public safety partners, whether they have the same patch or not.

So embrace the power of proactivity to save time and money and resources and keep quality high and establish relationships and communicate well. But most importantly, to save lives. Literally save lives if we're responding to emergencies together, and also to save the life that you wanna live with your spouse, with your children, with your friends and those around you. You have to be proactive.

You can't sit and woe is me forever. Take a few seconds to do that and then take a step and work towards it and talk to your teammates and talk to everybody else. Thank you everybody for coming to the KevTalks podcast. Go to KevTalksPod.com for more great interviews with other guests that have had more topics about program and project management and public safety stuff. Really, the key to this is like the show used to be called.

The key are the people. What we can share are the processes. And together, we can all make progress. Godspeed, y'all.