Do Professional Associations Really Regulate The Profession?

There was an interesting article in the 17 September 2008 Vancouver Sun, entitled “Rogue Nurses Leave Quietly”.

It turns out that between January 2006 and November 2007, as a result of participating in various criminal activities, 45 nurses cut a deal with their professional and licensing association, the College of Registered Nurses and quietly quit their profession.

Simply said, the College failed to discipline 45 nurses who broke the College’s ethical code. The College failed its basic mission: To regulate the profession.

These nurses were involved in various nasty acts, including...

• Stealing narcotics for their personal use
• Physically and emotional abuse of patients
• Administering incorrect medication
• Mismanaging blood transfusions.
• Physically attacking elderly residents
• Being drunk on shift

These nurses made an agreement with the college to quit nursing, and in return the College didn’t press charges against them. Basically, they got away with their crimes.

The only trace of their criminal act is a brief listing in the College’s newsletter, BC Nursing.

And some really quit the profession, but six of them re-registered and continues working as nurses.

And this is not even a one off case. On average, 40 nurses per year leave the profession due to misconduct, but without disciplinary hearing.

The only reason the College must publicise these misconducts is if the cases go to formal disciplinary hearing. But, despite the 40 cases per year, the College hasn’t held such disciplinary hearings in years.

So, here you have it...

A friend of mine jokingly says that the people who know their stuff actually do it. People who know it less teach it. And the ones who are hopeless to achieve even the lowest level of competence, they form associations, organise certification programmes and try to regulate the profession they are hopelessly incompetent at.

In my view all these regulation bodies are all about shameless money grabbing.

In 1998, when I came to Canada, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists (APEG) almost took me to court because I “dared” to call myself an engineer in some formal correspondence.

I was told I had no right to call myself an engineer in British Columbia, unless APEG permits me to do so. And it turned out all it would have taken me to obtain this mystic permission was by becoming a member and paying my membership dues. So, then I learnt that this is how almost all professional associations operated. You pay and you can purchase titles and positions.

That's a rather loud and clear message about credibility.

Over the years, I’ve come across only a handful of truly professional associations that don’t merely “regulate” the profession, but actually help and support their members in the quests to become masters of their chosen professions. Two of them definitely are the IEE (Institution of Electrical Engineers) in the UK and BCRPA (British Columbia Recreation and Park Association) here in Vancouver.

I also believe that it’s not the associations that regulate members, but members regulate themselves through their own core values and ethical standards.

And when scumbags join these associations, they carry on as scumbags. Well, member scumbags. Nothing changes.

I bet many of the naughty characters at Arthur Andersen, Enron, WorldCom, etc, were members of various professional associations to buy their titles. But at the end of the day they gave in to the temptation of wrongdoing due to their own personal values, and not even the code of ethics of their respective professional associations could hold them back from cutting corners.

Then the question comes up: Do we really need these “professional" associations?

I suppose, by now you know my answer. Well, hell... no.

Writing and Submitting Consulting Proposals With Clients' Businesses In Mind

Many consulting firms make the mistake of skimping on marketing to save money, and rejoice when they count how much they've saved. But this joy is rather lost-lived when they realise that if they don't market, they have to engage in the ultimate money-wasting activity: Responding to request for proposals and battling it out on price with purchasing and procurement departments and being treated as fungible vendors.

In this article we discuss how consulting firms can improve their processes of writing and submitting client-centred proposals to real buyers and avoid the dreaded bid-judges of purchasing departments. If you like the idea, then check out the September issue of Commando Consulting in which we discuss Writing and Submitting Consulting Proposals With Clients' Businesses In Mind.

Commando Consulting January 2008: Offering Paid Initial Consulting

Over the many years of consulting it's become a common practice for firms to offer free initial consulting before engagements to let prospects "taste" what they have to offer. It's also become an expectation and many prospects expect a bit too much for nothing.

What can be done? I think the answer is to adapt the "start small and build on it" mantra. That is, starting with a small but paid engagement, and then clients can decide whether or not they want to go to the next phase at a higher investment option. So, let's take a closer look at...

Offering Paid Initial Consulting.

Commando Consulting: October 2007 - Five Signs of a Smart Client Acquisition Strategy

As the world of consulting is becoming more and more competitive, consulting firms are basically forced to step beyond haphazard and reactive client acquisition techniques, like word of mouth (hope and pray they come) or the local country club. They have to step up to proactively fill their sales funnels with both short- and long-term opportunities. And this change hits medium-sized consultancies the worst.

Large firms and most solo consultants have always had proactive client acquisition programmes to create leverage, and most tiny firms (between 2 and 10 people) are likely to carry on with their current "fly the seats of their pants" approach. But it's middle-sized firms with an ear count of 100 plus that have to make drastic changes to their operations.

They don't have to, but without systematised client acquisition programmes they will be forced into the stressful world of competitive bidding. And we know that bids, issued by the purchasing and procurement departments, focus on price not on value. So, let's see how to avoid these nasty bidding wars by considering the Five Signs of a Smart Client Acquisition Strategy.

What To Avoid At Presentations

Many consulting firms still live and die by throwing presentations to win engagements. I've just bumped into some good points about what to do and what to avoid at presentations.

Rainmaker advisor, Ford Harding has some advice on what to avoid, entitled 3 x 5 Presentation Don’ts.

And Suzanne Lowe has a great blog entry on Five Biggest Professional Service Presentation Don'ts.

So, if you get your engagements through presentations, it may be a good idea to check out what these experts have to say about improving the quality of your presentations and to avoid the typical traps many of your competitors may be making.

What The Urban Dictionary Says About The Big 4

In case you haven't read it yet, you may want to check out Michelle Golden's blog entry on the Big 4 accounting firms over at the Verasage Institute.

The Good Practice Of Turning Down Ready-To-Buy Prospects?!

Over at Ford Harding's blog I bumped into a great story entitled The Amazing Flip. It tells the story of a firm that basically requires prospects to sell their opportunities to the firm. The firm's default setting of sitting down with prospects is "No," unless prospects can sell their projects to the firm.

It doesn't specifically show from the article, but I can assume that the firm is fully booked with top-notch clients. So, the universal truth is really true that nature abhors vacuum, and if we chase away bad prospects, the n we automatically give way to great prospects and great clients.

The problem I see is that in most consulting firms, rainmakers are not allowed to turn down business. Since so many firms operate on the hooker's mantra of "We do anything for anyone for money," this can be a hard proposition.

In my employment years I was fired twice for rejecting inappropriate prospects. They were either verbally abusive or went a bit too far on haggling. My sales managers told me my job was to turn every hunk of warm meat with a wallet into paying clients.

However, if we consider how much bad clients can cost a firm , this proposition sounds rather practical. Ron Baker at the Verasage Institute rightly says: "Bad clients drive out good clients."

My personal belief is that no clients are better than bad clients. If we have no clients at all, at least we know where we stand and can make alternative plans for the mortgage payment and putting food on the table. But if we are flooded with obnoxious, belligerent ambiguous clients, we never know what can happen next. I've had my fair share of them and probably you too. So, let's be more selective of whom we accept as clients.

Anyway, this is a great article, so go an read the The Amazing Flip.