How use AI to make initiative your superpower
Most people spend a lot of time waiting. Waiting for permission, waiting for the perfect moment, waiting to be told what to do.
But the people who change things? They don’t wait.
People who take initiative, I call them Problem Hunters, are the most valuable in any organisation. They get more done, take pressure off leaders, and inspire others to make things better. I believe it so much I wrote a book about it called Problem Hunter.
If being promoted is a measure of value, initiative is the #1 factor influencing these decisions, twice as important as simply doing a good job according to a global TED survey posted on LinkedIn.
Former US President Obama put it well: “I’ve seen at every level people who are very good at describing problems. People who are very sophisticated at explaining why something went wrong or something can’t get fixed. But what I’m always looking for is, no matter how small the problem or how big it is, somebody who says ‘I’ll take care of that.’”
Initiative is just finding and solving important problems that others shy away from.
When organisations build initiative into their culture, they innovate faster, have higher productivity, and research shows can outperform competitors by 6x over a three-year period.
No one assigns initiative. There’s no job title for it. But the people and organisations that have it? They stand out. They create more value. They become great leaders.
The best part? It’s available to everyone. Right now. No permission required.
Two ways to use AI to help you take more initiative:
Look for frustrations in what you already do: adopt a beginner’s mindset and ask, “what are the biggest frustrations I have with my role?” Ask, “These are my frustrations with my role [type in frustrations] provide a list of ideas of how can I change what I have or do that can make the outcomes of my work, faster, cheaper, or more valuable?”
Take on something new: look for a problem that’s close to what you do but involves parts of the business you don’t work in. Ask, “what can we stop, start, do more of or less of to make [describe problem] faster, cheaper or more valuable?”
Type these prompts into your AI to generate some ideas to test.
I have eight more detailed AI prompts in this PDF download to get you more ideas in minutes not months.
Because when individuals turn into teams that take initiative, problems get solved faster and leaders get more time to lead.
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