In a world that is constantly changing, why are there so few of us to specialize in the craft of organizational change management? Here is my take on the subject.
Last week I had a great conversation on the scarcity of good people in our profession. One of the participants to the discussion mentioned how hard it is to find someone who masters the dimensions of our profession (communication, learning, organization and performance) and who is at the same time a credible counterpart for the business. A few hours before he had interviewed candidates who claim to have the credentials but who are unable to show any evidence of having practiced the craft.
Not a Certified Pilot
The *evidence* we are talking about in this case is not a certificate or academic proof. What a practitioner needs in the first place is *street credibility* and having been exposed to a broad variety of situations that make up the fabric of their professional self.
Airline pilots refer to their street credibility as *flight hours*, but those are mostly gathered in good weather conditions. We need more than that, because there is no use in hiring a practitioner who has never performed in bad weather (by the way: ‘good weather’ is not a likely condition when an organizational change practitioner is being hired).
A Midwife Instead
In my opinion, the comparison with a midwife is a better match for more than one reason:
- The conditions of a childbirth are less predictable than the weather conditions right before an airplane takes off;
- Midwifery is done from an in-between position: you are not the mother, not the child, not the gynecologist and not the nurse. Nevertheless, your expertise is the very process of birthing and all its dynamics;
- You are not the smartest person in the room, but you are definitely there to make sure that the experts (doctors and nurses) and the mother and child go through the process of birthing smoothly.
- Finally – and this is often forgotten – your job is to make sure that mother and child can make it on their own.
In short, midwifery is not a popular position to be in, because you don’t get to be the an expert (like the doctor) or the owner of the end-state (like a parent).
Inconvenience is Key
In my opinion, this is precisely the reason why it’s so difficult for anyone to stay in the profession for a longer time. My theory on this is that it is simply too embarrassing to be an organizational change practitioner in the field. To sum up:
- When you are in the cocoon of the project-room you are always the dummy in the room, surrounded by experts;
- When you are in the field you are always the dummy in the room, surrounded by experienced people;
- Yet your job is to connect both of them in such a way that milestones and budgets are respected.
Rocket Science
In all honesty, the specific actions that are required of us are not rocket science. The art is in the way we accomplish them:
- The project plan that has been set out by the experts is only an indication for our actions, the real indications come from trusting the process;
- The toolbox of deliverables can be opened by any person who has freshly graduated, but the point is in making sure the tools get accepted by the experts and that the owners start using them;
- Finally – and this is where our profession needs a radical makeover – the end-state of a project is only achieved when the technical architecture of a project is covered with a social architecture (think of the mother and child being able to take care of themselves)
So there you go; it’s much more comfortable to be an expert or to be in another profession. Yet, I believe that the *generalist* career of a practitioner makes a worthwhile profession. Not through certification, but through experience.
(image: fragment taken from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwifery)
