Credentials

I once knew a man who decided he wanted to enter a certain profession, and after he had gained entrance, decided he would get every designation possible in as short a time as possible. By dint of hard work and aggressive planning, he soon had the entire alphabet after his name. Quite impressive, if you’re impressed by that sort of thing. I wish I could say he lived happily ever after, but he didn’t. Hubris can blow up in your face.

Wall certificates are funny things. I have a bunch, and I’m glad enough for them. But they are not the measure of my worth– far from it. But what I’m truly worth, or what you’re truly worth, is the subject of another Friday Briefing. Today I want to think about credentials.

A credential is a permission to lawfully conduct a certain activity. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not say whether you can do it well, or not. It just says you’re allowed to do it.

Take, for instance, my taxi driver’s license. Just before going to law school, I took Ottawa’s taxi driver’s course and exam and obtained my license to drive taxi in Ottawa, allowing me to earn a few extra necessary dollars. As far as I know, it’s still valid. But those of you who have ridden with me, especially when I get lost, would probably not pay me to take you from Point A to Point B, unless you were out of all other options. Credentialed, yes. Good at it, not so much.

This is why credentialing plays such a small part in understanding the Alignment Doctrine. Holding credentials to practice law, or medicine, or gas-fitting does not mean you can do any of those things well– in fact, you could well be a credentialed disaster.

Professional bodies often do not understand the difference between credentialing and the ability to practice the art. In legal training, for example, the emphasis is on learning content, rather than skills. It is one thing to get an A on a contracts exam, and an entirely different thing to know how to advise a commercial client. It’s fine to know all about the Rule in Foss v Harbottle, but entirely something else to find creative ways around it.

The ancient guilds put the horse before the cart. Anyone who dreamed of someday becoming a master craftsman had to begin as a lowly apprentice, typically carrying out the nasty, grinding, routine tasks of the trade, but under the watchful eye of the master, gradually learning skills until they could sit the journeyman’s exam. And even after that, there was much more practical perfection of skills before they were recognized as a master craftsman.

Make no mistake– without credentials, you are not allowed to practice many a profession, and that is as it should be. But also make no mistake– with credentials, there is no guarantee that you can practice your profession well. Only when your innate aptitudes, shaped by your experience, and perfected by your training, all come into play will you become a master of your profession. And only then will you love what you do, and only then will your ideal clients beat a path to your door.