We are not our Qualifications
They are just a veneer
I’m writing this as thousands of schoolchildren find out how they have fared in a set of three-hour exams that they are told will shape their futures. In order to keep the market for qualifications happy, the results will be passed through an algorithmic process to ensure there is an elite at the top so only the “deserving” get to go to the top universities.
The collateral effect, of course, is that this downward pressure will, at the other end of the scale, cause people to fail who otherwise would have passed. Whichever way we look at it, we are fiddling with the results to fit a model based on win/lose thinking, and perhaps the biggest issue of all behind this charade is that in ten years’ time, today’s results will be entirely irrelevant. Those who find themselves on society’s fast track will be there because they either had the good sense to choose wealthy parents or because they are very talented outliers. They will not be there because they passed a set of exams that ChatGPT could have passed with ease (Does technology know it's making an effort?) Many of those who run our companies and politics have aced their exams, but, generally, if we want to know why they are where they are, look at their parents.
One of the great joys I derive from reading is that often the seed of the answer to something I’m trying to understand is not to be found in the work of experts in the field. Nowhere, I think, is that more true than in leadership. I cannot readily think of a field where more has been written or more courses sold to less effect than leadership. They talk of reams of “qualities” and “traits” and other elixirs, and then, on page 97 of David Graeber’s “Dawn of Everything”(short book review) was a short paragraph of simple truth:
It’s often people who are just a little odd who become leaders; the truly odd can become spiritual figures, but even more, they can and often do serve as a kind of reserve of potential talent and insight that can be called on in the event of a crisis or unprecedented turn of affairs.
Not the sort of thing, though, that we teach in business school or put on resumés.
What matters, at the end of the day, is our intent and character. When they are on display, nobody looks at our qualifications, which is something to remember when we are packing for the journey to what we want to become. Qualifications are there for other people who don’t know us to make quick judgements to see if we “fit” the machine they are responsible for (and to).
In a couple of decades, probably significantly less, those getting their qualifications today will be rummaging through the attic looking for a bag to pack because the path that their qualifications have led them down is not taking them where they want to go.
In financialising education, we have created a market for qualifications as a proxy for people. It’s where we find ourselves starting, but we don’t have to accept it as the way things are. Qualifications are no more than a veneer.
What matters is what lies beneath it.
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So true Richard. I completely agree with everything you've said. Proven to me by the CIPD when they told me that my MSc HRM degree did not qualify me for graduate membership... Only for many years later, 5 years ago to be precise, to be told by the new CEO, who I wrote to with my grievance, that it was because they did not have a membership 'ladder' (I hate that analogy) for 'self-employed' HR Consultants. The only reason I am proud of achieving it is because it enabled me to create a new model of motivation...