Since this blog bears this name and my answer to the question may be different than you expect, let’s break this down a bit. Among the many identities we always play in life (e.g. sibling, student, friend, coach, fundraiser, administrator, etc.) and no matter what you do, I invite you to start adding the role of “pracademic” to your mix.

Pracademics care about the world of on-the-ground practices in peoples’ lives and contexts, and seek to understand the world through higher-level, meaningful concepts that can make sense of or provide new directions for those experiences—never losing sight of the need for both.

For instance, the following short clip from Undercover Boss illustrates what happens when many executives’ heady, grand strategies for running a business meet the day-to-day, heartfelt realities of their employees’ working lives.

Every episode, executives are shocked into taking on the role of pracademics. They realize that adjusting their high-level ideas in response to on-the-ground, qualitative discoveries always stands to benefit the organization and its people.

Staying profoundly open to deep and broad information flows, pracademics constantly toggle between data and insights. Trista Hollweck, Deborah M. Netolicky, and Paul Campbell find those applying this role “embody new possibilities as boundary spanners . . . for knowledge mobilization, networks, community membership, and responding to systemic challenges.” Pracademics cast a wide net with the ultimate goal of improving understanding and action.

Pracademics hold their conclusions tentatively, leaning in on the idea that there’s always more learning available. This means pracademics stay open to the possibility that they could be better informed about anything.

And that means opening space for communication with others at every opportunity, making listening the top skill to master. If your response so far is, “wow, that’s something that flies in the face of a lot of other roles out there,” you’re right—and that’s why I’m making this role invitation a foundation for this blog.

The world is full of foils for performing this identity. Turn to social media and you’ll find yourself in swirls of dance videos, snippets from articles, food pics, and political quotes that provide lots of disconnected information but often few meaningful, actionable lessons. Turn on cable news and you’ll find a lot of “we’ve got insights! (but little or cherry-picked data).”

With a commitment to alternating between data and insights, and vice versa, the pracademic mindset counters the propagandistic roles we’re subtly invited to play in life. It’s the opposite of closing yourself off from engagement with others and the world, unrelenting nihilism or cynicism, or setting up your life in such a way that your biases are confirmed at every turn. A great parallel term is “reflective practitioner.”

So that’s the invitation, my friends. This is “Part One” because the concept of “pracademic” continues to evolve. In a future post, we’ll get more into others’ work on the concept and the many other benefits of adding this role to our personal and professional lives.