Being a Practitioner Is No Longer a Choice

Leadership positions are often achieved by demonstrating your craft. You do high-quality work, consistently. You show your character and determination, consistently. Over time, people notice, and responsibility follows.

Then something quiet happens.

The craft gets left behind

Once leaders attain those positions, they tend to lose touch with the very craft that got them there.

The calendar fills up. They move from meeting to meeting, dealing with people and politics. The work itself becomes something they hear about rather than something they do. Reports replace experience. Summaries replace detail.

None of this feels like a loss at the time. It feels like the job. But over time, leaders lose touch with reality.

Why it matters more now

For a long time, this drift was survivable. The craft changed slowly enough that a leader could step away from it for years and still recognise it on return.

That is no longer true.

With emerging technologies like AI, we need practitioners who remain at the forefront of their craft. Not observers of it. Not sponsors of it. Practitioners.

That means developing skills broadly, going deep within our domains, and staying grounded. It means staying in touch with what is happening now, not with what was happening when we last did the work ourselves.

As the pace of change increases, people and leaders are likely to become obsolete very quickly. No single failure causes it. It comes from a slowly widening gap between what they believe the work looks like and what it actually looks like today.

The decisions that depend on it

There is a second reason, and it is more practical.

We can’t manage change, deal with resistance to change, or make sound business or technical decisions if we are out of touch with the current state of the business arena.

Consider a leader approving a new system. If they have not worked with current tools, they judge it against an outdated picture. They underestimate what it demands of people. They overestimate what it will deliver on its own. They read resistance from staff as reluctance, when it may simply be people seeing something the leader cannot.

The decision is made with confidence. It is just made about a reality that has moved on.

A need, not an option

Being a solid practitioner is no longer a choice. It is a need, both to stay relevant and to make a difference in the organisations we serve.

This does not mean leaders should do everyone’s work. It means they should stay close enough to the craft that their judgement is grounded in how things are, not in how they used to be.

The questions that remain

Here are some questions to ponder.

When did you last do the work yourself, rather than review it?

How much of your understanding of your own domain comes from first-hand experience, and how much from what others tell you in meetings?

And if the pace of change keeps increasing, how long before the picture in your head no longer matches the reality in front of your team?