Certification in other professions

See also my first blog regarding my dialogue at the IPMA World Congress here.

Update 28 September 2014,

Ready to go! Please see this teaser.

Why should we all be certified?

 

Update 28 August 2014

As promised (expectation management => ICB 1.02 stakeholder management), please see an update on my blog in preparing for my presentation at the IPMA WC. Some examples of my experiences last week:

1.) Last week I went to Switzerland for one of my global projects. Flying there, we are confident that the two pilots in the front need to be certified to be allowed to fly this type of plane. Of course they will have other (not specific plane related) certifications. The plane and all individual parts have received a full set of certifications when delivered. Next to that during regular maintenance only certified parts are allowed to be added to the plane. Also the people executing maintenance are certified to execute specific tasks.

2.) This weekend I sailed with my friends 42ft Dehler sail boat, from the Dutch mainland to the Island of Texel. I am relaxed on the boat as I know he is certified:

A. To sail at the coast of the Netherlands
B. As a VHF radio communication
C. As a Radar operator

3.) On Texel my friend and his family planned to make a tandem skydive. As I am a fanatic skydiver (see here) I have organized this for them. The tandem masters have to be certified before taking passenger in “mid air”.

Why should they all be certified?

The key reason is the fact that we want to be in the safest hands possible, mainly when we are no experts in something ourselves. A certificate helps us to distinguish who to select.
Specifically if they, or a product (plane) literally take care of our safety. We already feel safe if we see the captain walking to the plane with his 4 golden stripes on his white shirt, looking energetic and obviously had a good night sleep.
The importance of a certification increases if we feel that the potential risk increases!

If we use the three examples above to our IPMA certificates: the larger the project / more complex / more importance / the higher the risk etc.  Meaning: the more importance to hire a certified project manager.

I believe we all, IPMA and the local certification organisations have to put more marketing effort to stimulate that organizations and project executives automatically ONLY select and hire certified Project Managers for their projects.

2 thoughts on “Certification in other professions

  1. I loved your arguments. Have you also thought about the product definition: IPMA as a Career where certificatons are only inyermediate cheecks.

  2. Dear Bernhard. Thank you for your feedback. Yes I do and gave a presentation about this last months. Key topic: “keep on looking (straight) into a mirror”. See also my blog dated 17-05-2016 with the title “Are you up to date?”