Strategist or Practitioner?

I think many of us default to titles like “expert,” “guru,” and “maven” because we can’t rustle up the right word. Some titles feel too broad. Some are too narrow. Some just don’t help us stand out from the pack.

Rather than spending a few minutes thumbing the pages of a thesaurus, we settle on silly titles that cater to the whims of our egos but that mean nothing. The result? Titles that do little to sell us.

Words like “strategist” and “practitioner,” at least, mean something; they tell us what you DO. What do experts — genuine or self-appointed — do? Give me a lowly practitioner anyday. He may not have mastered his craft like the expert, but at least I know he’s working at it.

Great topic! Here’s my take on it. I may be wrong but here’s my opinion. When i think of strategy I think long term. When I think of practitioner I think of tactical day to day operations. I do believe that you need both to achieve success. The strategist provides the direction while the practitioner manages the operation to make sure the tasks get accomplished to achieve the goals.

How about a hybrid worker – someone who can offer important strategic thinking AND get sh*t done?

Bryan | @BryanPerson

I also wanted to point out something for those that are saying “both”. In the upper echelons of practitioners versus strategists, there is no such thing as “both”. You are either amazing at one or the other, or only decent at both.

You can’t rise to the top if you split your focus, time and attention towards bot strategy and the actual act of doing something.

In my world, ideas are a dime a dozen, and it is the implementation of those ideas that separate the successful from the unsuccessful.

To use the strange coach analogy. While some skills might transfer over, coaching and playing at the same time doesn’t always work well.

The coach needs to oversee the game, and understand everything from a big picture standpoint, while the player needs to perform their task and hopefully score a point without worrying about where their fellow team mates will be.

Again, I think people need to start figuring out what they want to be, and specializing only in that as companies are looking to hire the best talent they can find at the lowest price rather than looking to hire a generalist / swiss army knife and make due at a slower pace.

If I ran a company, I know I wouldn’t hire 10 generalists that were good at multiple facets of the business I was running. I would hire 10 specialists, and lock them into the key tasks that the specialize in.

@brandingdavid

I agree that it is very, very difficult to do both (strategy and implementation) at the same time–and many of us are called upon to do exactly that. And clients benefit as a result.

Here’s a real-world example that highlights the difference between the two roles.

I had a client with a long-standing, mature community. It’s core founding members had been there for so long that they had established quite a clique that was, in fact, quite intimidating and not welcoming to new members.

As a strategist, the message most of us espouse is that the core members of your community are your most valuable. They are the key influencers, the early adopters, the elders the most faithful and the most active of your members and are exactly the people to cultivate and get close to.

As a practicioner, I could see that these folks were indeed responsible for 50% of the activity on the site–most of it between themselves and whenever someone new tried to join in, the ‘old guard’ were creating if not an outright hostile environment (ie: “we’ve been here for years, and that topic has already been discussed.”), then certainly one that was not welcoming. Their sense of entitlement…the golden egg that most communities seek to develop…of ‘we ARE the community’ was preventing any community growth.

Since I wear both hats of practicioner and strategist, my implementation plan was this:

1. educate the long time users on how their actions were not welcoming and suggest alternatives.
2. when that didn’t work, offer an alternative spot for founding members to hang out, AND create new spaces for new folks to gather.

(but at some point, the entire community needs places to intermingle).

When #2 didn’t work:

3. clearly explain the rules of engagement to the old guard and warn them that their actions/behavior was violating the terms of use for the site. Naturally, this stirs up the hornets nest of “we’ve always been like this, and if the new folks don’t get our sense of humor, that’s their problem. we built this place…”

In the end…

As a practicioner, I wound up kicking out a lot of founding members. Of the top 50 posters on the site, ended up banning around 30 or so.

The result?

As a strategist…I noticed that the # of active users rose–more people were posting more frequently to more than make up for the loss of the old-timers. Our ‘core’ group of users who logged in more than 10 times per month increased by a factor of 5.
There was more participation occuring by more people and the diversity of opinions was/is of more value to the client.

I don’t know of a single strategist who would advocate getting rid of the core group of users. It goes against the notion of why you create a community.

But *in this case*, we needed to prune the core/founding members in order for more to grow. And that’s something that a practicioner would see, not a strategist.

(btw–I was confident in the result because I’ve worked in RW non-profit organizations, which are wonderful training grounds for building community. In many cases, a non-profit doesn’t begin to really flourish until AFTER it gets rid of its founders and folks who got the organization started. It’s a painful, but often necessary step.)

It’s not easy to do both jobs at once, but it IS possible. Since we are in a nascent industry, CM’s are often called upon to do both and should train themselves accordingly.

I’m @feste1.

Asking which is more valuable, a strategist or a practitioner depends on your needs and definition of each. Is the difference between strategist and practitioner the same as the difference between talent and skill? Or is it more likely the difference between a creative director and a designer? Both have talent, both have skills. Their difference is that the designer will generally execute what is laid out by the creative directors vision. Before designers get up in arms, let me clarify. It’s not that the designer has no vision, it’s that an art director or creative director has more experience developing a vision based on strategy and practicality. There is a deeper understanding of all aspects of a project, rather than just the visual ones. In most cases a creative director is the most experienced designer.
I would say that a social media strategist is grown from a social media practitioner through experience. So, when you get a strategist, you are likely getting a practitioner as well. In many cases the execution of a SoMe strategy will fall on someone less experienced, perhaps a corporate employee, simply due to it’s nature. SoMe executions shouldn’t be one and done but should be continuous. Rather than pay a more expensive strategist, a less expensive option is to train someone less expensive to execute the strategy.
I ran a (unfortunately) short term SoMe engagement for a major network. I developed the strategy, executed most of the technical assets then trained 2 others to execute the daily Facebook and Twitter content. It would not have been practical to have a creative director responding to posts, friend requests and Twitter.
Think of it this way: you can catch a man a fish and he eats for one day, or you can teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.