Initiative

The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and honors, for but one thing, and that is Initiative.

What is Initiative? I'll tell you. It is doing the right thing without being told.

But next to doing the thing without being told is to do it when you are told once. That is to say, carry the Message to Garcia: those who can carry a message get high honors, but their pay is not always in proportion.

Next there are those who never do a thing until they are told twice: such get no honors and small pay.

Next, there are those who do the right thing only when Necessity kicks them from behind, and these get indifference instead of honors, and a pittance for pay. This kind spends most of its time polishing a bench with a hard luck story.

Then, still lower down in the scale than this, we have the fellow who will not do the right thing even when some one goes along to show him how and stays to see that he does it: he is always out of a job, and receives the contempt he deserves, unless he happens to have a rich Pa, in which case Destiny patiently awaits around the corner with a stuffed club.

To which class do you belong?

Elbert Hubbard wrote that about a century ago.

I was reminded of it the other night after speaking with a friend regarding a person formerly in his employ about whom my friend remarked, "Both supervising him and counseling him weren't in my pay grade." I responded with the advice I have given the Progeny since an early age.

Simply show up and you're ahead of 75% of your competition, do your job and do it with your best effort and you'll be in the top 10% of that second group. Then apply some initiative to your efforts and you'll never be let go by your boss, because you will be the most rare and valuable asset in their business.

The problem with a lot of folks is they think they are in that last "valuable asset" class, when they can't even be depended on to show up for work.

Another Hubbardism comes to mind: Why not try to be the best, there is so little competition.