Best practices to kill your team proactivity

Arrival of new team members is always breath of fresh air: boost of energy, enthusiasm, strong desire to make difference. Right after someone joins, new ideas start coming: improving process, cleaning up codebase, simplifying workflow. This enthusiasm is great and inspires whole team but sometimes double-edged sword. Simone D'Amico often found himself giving answers like: "It's not priority," "We can't, budget-wise," "We've already tried that," "Maybe later." Sometimes he'd even get bit annoyed by all that enthusiasm, underestimating value and impact it could have. Looking back, result was always same: after few weeks that initial spark would fade away. Message he sent was clear and unmistakable: there's no point in speaking up, no one's going to listen anyway.

Took him while to understand where real mistake was. Problem wasn't saying no to ideas. Two types of proactivity: naive proactivity (comes from enthusiasm of newcomers or those looking from outside, ideas often raw, sometimes unrealistic, but valuable because bring fresh perspectives) and informed proactivity (comes from hands-on experience, from people who face problems daily and look to improve processes, tools, or habits, where small changes can have big impact). Problem is if you handle both same way with "not now" or silence, outcome is same: people learn that sharing ideas doesn't matter.

No doesn't kill proactivity. But cold, superficial, or hanging-in-the-air no does. Sometimes proposals don't take into account context, budget, or what information people are exposed to. Every no carries its own value and meaning. Huge difference between saying "No, we can't" and saying "Not right now and here's why. This part makes sense though we can revisit it once X is resolved / if Y changes." Even naive idea can become growth opportunity if no comes with context, feedback, and openness. Even great idea can kill enthusiasm if ignored. Saying no right way means treating proactivity as signal to nurture, not nuisance to dismiss.

Rejecting naive idea is one thing. Ignoring or dismissing good idea causes deeper harm. Usually person proposing isn't just enthusiastic, they genuinely care. They've seen real problem and want to fix it. Killing proactivity, especially when informed, is same as killing care person puts into their work. How to manage proactivity in healthy way: truly listen, distinguish between raw ideas and proposals with real potential, give clear feedback, explain constraints, point out what works and what doesn't. Track proposals. When ideas disappear into black hole people stop believing it's worth sharing them. D'Amico created Continuous Improvement Hub (outcome of team retrospective): single space where they collect all initiatives with status, priority, and comments visible to everyone. Not everything gets tackled immediately but nothing vanishes. Even just knowing your idea has been heard and can be revisited completely changes how it's perceived. Allow room for micro-experiments. Not everything needs to go through formal roadmap. Letting teams test small, low-risk improvements creates fertile ground for bigger innovations. Teams stop proposing ideas because they realize nothing ever changes. Leader's job isn't just to welcome enthusiasm but to channel it: guide when needed, recognize it when it matters, and above all never let it die in silence. You don't have to say yes to everything. But every no can either kill or nurture: it all depends on how you say it.