The Initiative Gap: When Employees Wait to Be Told

I have interviewed enough people to know that competence and initiative are not the same thing. Two employees can have similar qualifications, similar experience and even similar technical ability, yet become very different assets to an organisation.

Let me call them Tunji and Taiwo.

They joined the same organisation around the same time and were given similar responsibilities. When their manager assigned a task, Tunji would do exactly what was requested. If something was unclear, he waited for further instructions. If another department delayed information he needed, he waited. If he finished his work, he waited for the next assignment.

Taiwo approached work differently. She completed what she was asked to do, but she also looked around the assignment. If she noticed that information was missing, she asked for it. If she anticipated a problem, she raised it early. If she finished a task and could see what the next person would need, she prepared it. She was not trying to take over anyone's job. She simply developed the habit of asking, “What needs to happen next?”

From a manager's perspective, that question matters.

Organisations exist because there are problems to solve. A company sells a product because it solves a customer's problem. A service business exists because someone needs a service. Departments exist because the organisation has problems that need to be managed. So when I am deciding who can handle greater responsibility, I am not only looking for someone who can complete only instructions. I am looking for someone who can recognise problems and help move them towards solutions.

Recent research supports the importance of this distinction. A 2024 systematic review of 1,708 peer-reviewed articles on workplace proactivity found that the field includes behaviours such as personal initiative, taking charge, feedback seeking, employee voice and job crafting. A 2026 meta- analysis covering 298 articles, 308 studies and more than 107,000 participants similarly found that proactive work behaviour is associated with whether employees feel capable of acting, have a reason to act and have the energy to act.

This is also why I would be careful about simply calling employees lazy when they lack initiative. Sometimes the organisation has trained them to wait. If people are punished whenever they act without permission, ignored when they raise ideas or given no room to exercise judgment, eventually the safest thing to do is wait for instructions. Research on proactivity recognises that the work environment and motivation matter alongside the individual employee. But employees also have a responsibility.

A wise man used the principle of going the extra mile. In a workplace, I do not interpret that as permission for an organisation to exploit its employees. It means that there is professional value in doing more than the bare minimum required to move a responsibility forward. There is a difference between doing more work and taking more ownership.

Tunji may continue to perform his assigned duties perfectly well. Taiwo, however, is gradually demonstrating something different: judgment. She is showing that she can see beyond the instruction and understand the objective behind it.

That distinction may not matter on the first day. It can matter considerably when the organisation begins asking, “Who can we trust with this?”

Promotions are not guaranteed by initiative, and employees should not be expected to provide unlimited extra labour without appropriate recognition or boundaries. But from the employer's side of the table, it is difficult to ignore someone who repeatedly makes the work easier, identifies problems early and requires less supervision.

The question I would therefore encourage every new employee to ask is not simply, “What was I told to do?” Ask: “What problem was I hired to help solve?”

That is where initiative begins, and sometimes the difference between the employee who keeps waiting for the next instruction and the employee who eventually receives the next responsibility is simply the ability to see what needs to happen before someone has to say it. The organisation does not only need people who can do the work. It needs people who can anticipate the work.