Proactive people care

"Proactive" is one of those over-used words that you come to hate, even at the same time feeling that it has a rightful spot in the language.  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People provides a nice definition for "proactive", one that I felt captured what it should mean, elegantly and directly.  (For all I know, maybe the author coined the word himself.) 

In the world of things that you care about, you can only affect some percent of that.  Having a proactive mindset means working to expand your influence over as many areas of concern as possible.

A side aspect of this definition: if someone you work with isn't proactive enough, maybe they haven't figured out why they should care?  (And if that's something that concerns you, maybe you need to try to influence them.)