Every organization needs a few idea practitioners to help them stay ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, most organizations struggle to recognize, leverage, reward or keep idea practitioners…
When I read this article about 22 years ago, I felt the authors had identified the role organizational EXPLORERS play in keeping their workplaces, cultures and businesses vibrant. I had met a number of people who seemed to be playing an “idea practitioner” role in their organizations, I and always found working with them to be a joyful, productive and sometimes even transformative experience.
Unfortunately, as the article points out, most organizations struggle to make sense of how idea practitioners contribute and how to make space for them. Idea practitioners often focus on EXPLORING big picture and long term scenarios even when they are in roles in which they are expected to keep their heads down and EXECUTE on the smaller tasks that have been assigned to them by those above them in the organization. Also, since idea practitioners often pass ownership of opportunities over to someone else before those opportunities have been converted into projects generating measurable results, idea practitioners sometimes seem to be nothing but stirring up problems. Generally, the ideas they are trying to put into practice require changes to the status quo as well, and this can be threatening to those who have been successful in the current set up.
And yet, an organization doesn’t make space for at least a few idea practitioners risks walking headlong into obscellence. It’s employees may become so good at EXECUTING on what they ALREADY KNOWS how to do that they FAIL TO EXPORE AND LEARN WHAT THEY WILL NEED TO KNOW how to do 2, 5 or 10 years in the future.
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Over two decades ago, I transitioned from studying 13th century Japanese leadership history supported by sociology, anthropology, political theory, economics and literature (Asian studies allows you to mix and match ideas from different fields) to trying to pay my bills as an organizational development consultant working in the private sector with real people in modern organizations (mostly in Japan).
Although I would be making my living in a world where accounting was the common tongue, I was still actually more interested in continuing to improve my academic/professional Japanese (as well as my historical, sociological, literary knowledge of Japan) than in expanding my knowledge of organizational management or anything else related to business.
To kill two birds with one stone, I used to read the Japanese Harvard Business Review instead of the English edition. This enabled me to learn more about the topics that I wasn’t terribly interested in (management and business) by studying something I actually was interested in (Japanese).
This picture is from the HBR article that helped me begin to put together a story of what sort of contribution I might want to make in the business world.
The article describes a category of employees the authors called “idea practitioners.” Idea practitioners are employees who are constantly searching for a new idea, tool, process, model or system to introduce to their organization. They do this to satisfy their own curiosity, but their curiosity sometimes leads to huge changes and impact in their organizations.
Who wouldn’t love to get paid for doing that kind of “work”?
I decided to make it my mission to help organizations create space for people to proactively search for and play with their own ideas (together with their colleagues) in the context of their work:) Maybe some of them might even bloom into full-blown idea practitioners someday…
Within a year or two of taking on this mission, I began to find management interesting enough that it didn’t make sense to read slowly about it in Japanese when I could read and learn about management more quickly in English, so I switched from the Japanese version to the English version. When you follow your interests, you never know where they’ll lead (or drag you kicking, screaming and whining as the case may be;)
I did some of my most interesting work during this period when I proactively used the “idea practice” concept as a theme. One of my major clients got a prestigious award for creating a great work environment for the employees and my contact told me that my colleagues and I deserved most of the credit for the award. Ideas it seemed did have value for some clients.
Still, for various reasons (mostly the challenge of finding other clients that bought into the idea practice concept) I eventually left the idea of idea practice behind to focus on more obviously practical forms of consulting that were easier to explain to customers with budgets.
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Recently, I found the article again when I was searching through old materials to prepare for a project with a new client…
The article is still relevant. Most organizations still seem to struggle to figure out what to do with idea practitioners. Most companies (for understandable reasons) put a premium on execution rather than exploration, but idea practitioners tend to be more interested in exploration than execution.
Idea practictioners don’t find it satisfying to focus exclusively on how to “execute” on the targets their managers have set for them in a given month or year, so they often end up looking around for some new theory or tool they can bring to the workplace instead of doing what is written in their job descriptions. To some people around them it can look like they are wasting time (and maybe they are) doing stuff they like instead of doing the job assigned to them (like everyone else).
Despite (or perhaps because of) this lack of focus, they also sometimes get people around them to bring new approaches to work and those approaches sometimes move the organization forward toward breakthroughs. At times, they kickstart transformations that someone else finishes and gets credit for (after they’ve either voluntarily moved on to another project (because they got bored) or to another organization (because the executioners caught up with them;)
I would hesitate to call myself an idea practitioner. The ideas I bring to my clients aren’t all that novel and they are rarely put into practice very broadly. But I have enjoyed working with colleagues and clients who were more accomplished idea practitioners.
I must admit – even after all these years – I’m still not really all that interested in the practical aspects of running a business or managing people for the purpose of execution. I’m much more interested in trying to create space where people can take initiative on their own to find ideas they can use to solve problems as part of their work – even as part of someone else’s work;)
An aspiring idea practitioner to the end it would seem…
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From the Diamond HBR, June 2003 issue:
「組織を「ゆさぶる」ヒーローは誰か
アイデアの具現者が企業を動かす」
イノベーショんを生み出す組織の真のヒーローは新しいアイデアを発掘し、具体的な効果と関連付け、社内に売り込み、最終的に組織へ導入する、「アイデア・プラクテイショナー」である。彼らのアイデアは、組織を活性化し、企業を変革へと導く。企業はこのような貴重な経営資源の価値を十分に認め、その発掘・教育に力を注ぐ必要がある。
From the original February 2003 HBR article “Who’s Bringing You Hot Ideas (and How Are You Responding)” by Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak and H. James Wilson:
“There’s an unsung hero in your organization. It’s the person who’s bringing in new ideas about how to manage better. Mind you, we’re not talking about product and service innovations. The people who cook those up—and they are heroes of the organization, too—are celebrated loudly and often. We’re talking about the person who, for instance, first uttered the phrase “intellectual capital” in your hallways, believing that better management of knowledge assets could yield a competitive advantage. Or perhaps it was the notion of “real options” as an antidote to overly risk-averse capital investment analysis. Or, depending on how long the person has been around, maybe it was even “total quality management.”
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Agency (主体性) + Purpose (志) + Growth (成長) + Connection (繋がり) + Contribution (貢献) = Meaning (意義)
© Dana Cogan, 2025, all rights reserved.