The symptom
You want more initiative around you. Proposals don’t arrive, or they arrive and die.
The signal
“What happened to the last person who proposed something here?”
What’s going on
A team doesn’t run on stated values. It runs on observed consequences. People are excellent statisticians of how you react. Nobody remembers the slide. Everybody remembers what happened to the person who tried.
Which is why passivity reads wrong from the outside. You see a team with no initiative. The team remembers an edit that got reverted without explanation three months ago.
If the last four proposals ended in the same place, that is the thing you built.
Changing the rule isn’t enough. People wait to see how the first initiative gets received. That one counts more than the announcement. And if you don’t run the team, ask the question, make the constraint visible, propose a trial: that is already building the environment.
Check this
Look at the last three proposals made in your team. Not the last three you liked. The last three.
What happened to each one, and how fast? Who got an answer, who didn’t?
Then pick a change small enough that you will actually hold it: clarify a mandate, open an access, reserve time, answer within two days. Take what sits above your role to whoever decides.
After a real chance to practise, look at whether anything moved.
To discuss
Which useful proposal died here without an answer?