Professionals and practice

Interesting discussion at my current client, about what to call the change management organisation. At the moment they planning to call themselves 'the Change Practise', but the desired effect - of being compared with legal, medical an other sorts of professional 'practise' - is being undermined by a barrage of ribald jokes about 'still having to practice' - exactly the opposite of what was intended.

The difficulty, as far as I can see, is two-fold. On the one hand, the business and IT managers I work with aren't professionals. They are often quite good, but they have none of the attributes of doctors or lawyers. There are few qualifications and none of any real substance. In they UK a doctor trains for five years and be formally qualified to a very high standard before they are permitted to treat people independently, but how many weeks does it take a modestly experienced manager to master Prince2? Nor are they obliged to join professional bodies exercising legal powers to strike them off if they aren't competent or are guilty of malpractice.

As for the values to which a manager is subject, there aren't any. Their only obligation is to do the job well enough not to get fired. No professional values, and absolutely none that transcend the interests of their employers - who in turn are under no obligation whatsoever to respect their managers' professional standards or concerns.

And last but by no means least, the quality and performance standards to which real professionals - especially doctors and nurses - are held simply do no apply. Just imagine what sort of state we'd all be in if the average doctor had as many failures and complications as the average project or programme manager!

On the other hand, businesses seem to be under the impression that selling something vigorously enough will somehow make the 'message' true. The discussion this all started from included a very senior member of the executive insisting that we could not call ourselves change 'management' because they wanted the name to convey not just management but also professionalism and leadership. But are they doing anything to empower their managers to lead? No. Are they inculcating a real professionalism? No. They like the sound of these words but, having no real idea what they mean, think that simply reciting them enough will somehow make them true.

So managers are not professionals. Is there any prospect that they could be? In the public sector, perhaps, though the erosion of the independence of civil service under the influence of consultants of all kinds makes that harder to imagine. As for business, absolutely no prospect at all. Managers are too in thrall to the interests, priorities and outrageously anti-professional powers of the businesses they work for.