The Cost of Chasing Rabbits: Why Ideas Stall Before They Become Value
Ideas are abundant, but value is scarce. This essay explores why organisations chase too many ideas, how premature expectations kill creativity, and why sequencing exploration before execution is the key to turning ideas into outcomes.
Editor's Note: This essay sits within the Cultivated canon on Idea → Value and Creativity. It explores why ideas stall, how expectation distorts creative systems, and why organisations struggle to convert imagination into outcomes.
The Cost of Chasing Rabbits
I’m often described as an “ideas person.”
Someone who paints futures, reframes problems, and imagines what could be.
Ideas are abundant.
Value is scarce.
Every organisation is full of whiteboards, documents, and half-finished initiatives. Concepts gather dust while people move on to the next bright thought.
The gap is not imagination. It is commitment — and the systems that sustain it.
An old proverb says: a person who chases two rabbits catches neither.
Modern organisations chase dozens.
They pursue multiple strategies, transformation programmes, innovation labs, and cultural initiatives simultaneously. Energy spreads thin. Execution stalls. Nothing quite lands. Creativity becomes an act rather than the engine of success.
There is a quieter pattern beneath this: expectation arrives too early.
The moment an idea is tied to targets, forecasts, governance gates, and quarterly returns, its creative energy shifts. Play becomes performance. Exploration becomes delivery. The joy of discovery collapses under the weight of prediction.
Expectation is not wrong.
It is simply corrosive when introduced too soon.
Creativity needs a protected moment
— a space where ideas can be explored without being forced into business cases.
Organisations that collapse exploration into delivery timelines suffocate innovation at birth. They measure before they understand. They optimise before they discover.
The irony is that the same pattern exists in personal work. When a project is allowed to exist for curiosity, it flourishes. When it is immediately burdened with metrics, schedules, and outcomes, it becomes work — and sometimes work without meaning.
The challenge is not choosing between creativity and execution.
The challenge is sequencing them well. Finding the rhythm.
Exploration first.
Commitment second.
Iterate.
Ideas need a season of play.
Value requires a season of discipline.
Confuse the order and you get paralysis.
Hold the tension and you get momentum.
Organisations that learn this cultivate something rare:
people who explore freely, then execute deliberately.
They do not chase rabbits.
They choose one — and walk it all the way to value.
This piece forms part of Cultivated’s wider body of work on how ideas become valuable, and how better work is built.
To explore further:
→ Library — a curated collection of long-form essays
→ Ideas — developing thoughts and shorter writing
→ Learn — practical guides and tools from across the work
→ Work with us — thoughtful partnership for teams and organisations
