Reactive and Proactive Management: Covey's Quadrant 2

Proactive or Reactive?

Every time something breaks, explodes or crashes, or someone is cheated, the immediate response is inspections, punishments and the like. This policy is called "reactive."

Point solutions do not always lead to systemic change, and when changes are made, they tend to take the form of bans. Inspections do not change systems; they identify who is at fault within existing decision-making systems. This approach yields short-term fixes and nothing more. Take, for example, a gas cylinder that explodes in an apartment building. The response is to check every building for permits to use gas cylinders on the premises. A couple dozen households get punished, and that is it: we wait for the next explosion. Yet the cause of the explosion has not been addressed. The same can be said of any other problem: a pyramid scheme, a broken manhole cover on a road, a building put up where a playground should have been.

I recently read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In it he describes quadrants of daily tasks that need to be dealt with. I will not describe all of them, but right now we are handling matters in Quadrant 1, which contains the important and urgent tasks. Important and urgent tasks are reactive responses to everyday problems. According to Covey, "highly effective managers should focus their efforts on Quadrant 2: important but not urgent tasks. Dealing with Quadrant 2 tasks prevents Quadrant 1 tasks from arising." In other words, this means solving systemic problems so that they do not turn into urgent problems that, in turn, demand a reactive response. This is the proactive way of solving problems.

It is very hard to escape Quadrant 1, which is why there is never any time left for Quadrant 2. I hope that one day we will spend 80% of our time on Quadrant 2 and resolve all of our accumulated problems systematically and proactively. It is precisely a proactive mindset that drives development.