What you are asking for
You want the team to take initiative. Someone changes a way of working without consulting you. Your first question: “Who told you to do that?”
What the system hears
“Will I still be able to propose something if this attempt doesn’t work?”
What that produces
The whole team reads your reaction to the first initiative. If it is about permission, everyone concludes it is safer to ask about everything. If only the happy outcome gets applause, nobody tries anything that might fail. Either way, you get the opposite of what you asked for.
Start with what the person set out to improve. An agent rewrites a standard reply to make it clearer: that is exactly the initiative you wanted. If they touched a refund or a contract, the question of limits comes up. It comes after, and it is about the rule.
If the boundary was not clear, it is up to you to set it, with the team. A rule written before the action protects the people who dare.
The decision
Choose one kind of initiative you want to see. With the team, write down what gets decided alone, what needs a second opinion, and what is off limits. Give a concrete example of each.
On the next initiative, start with the intent and the effect. Repair first if something is breaking. A month later, ask whether the boundary helped people act, and adjust it.
Ask whoever changes a shared tool to announce the change and how to roll it back. Give a contact who can be reached the day an attempt hits its limit.
To discuss
Which recent initiative ran into a boundary nobody had written down?
Check it elsewhere: Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety and team learning is in Already written.