These are the first of Stephen Covey's famous and widely quoted seven habits of highly effective people. See, for example, the syllabus for the Dean's Scholar Seminar at the University of Deleware's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, at http://bluehen.ags.udel.edu/homepage/nye/deanschl.htm and/or Ohio State College Extension's Parenting Pathways page for Fairfield County, at http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~fair/parent/parentpathoct17.html
Being proactive means accepting responsibility and acting upon it.
In support of his vision of Total Improvement Management (TIM), H. James Harrington devotes a chapter of his book to the ISO 9000 standard for Quality Management Systems (QMS). When implementing a QMS, he suggests that it is helpful to start with procedures that are closest to the customer. However, he emphatically asserts: " ... there is one absolute necessity. The Document Control system absolutely must be developed and functioning before any other procedure is implemented... [Otherwise] the integrity of the system will suffer, and individuals may lose confidence in the system..." (p. 185)
This quotation is referenced in my short paper on records management metrics at http://users.erols.com/ambur/RMmetrics.htm
