Some words seem designed to get under our skin. Maybe it’s because they’re overused, maybe because they remind us of a particular workplace, or maybe we just don’t like the way they sound. “Proactive” is one of those words for some people.
A listener named Irwin Weiss wrote to us about his dislike of it, prompted by something he heard from his local school superintendent. The school district had decided to reroute its buses around a bridge that’s in poor shape, even though the government says the bridge is safe and hasn’t closed it. The superintendent explained that the district was acting “proactively in advance.”
That phrasing caught Weiss’s attention. And for good reason: “proactively in advance” is redundant. If you’re doing something proactively, you’re already doing it in advance.
However, someone might add those extra words for emphasis. “Proactively in advance” really drives home the idea that the action happened before there was an immediate need to take it. "Proactive” itself isn’t redundant. Someone can be active without anticipating a future problem or need. Being proactive means taking action rather than waiting to react.
The word also has a longer history than its corporate-jargon reputation might suggest. It originated in psychology in the 1930s, in the phrase “proactive inhibition,” and by the 1950s had broadened to describe people or actions that anticipate problems and take initiative.
To hear more about how “proactive” went from a psychology term to a staple of the business world, and why some people find it so irritating, listen to the audio above.
