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I suppose it depends on which definition you want to use \u2026 to be certified as \u201cinsane\u201d or \u201cendorsed authoritatively as having met certain requirements?\u201d<\/p>\nI suppose it depends on which definition you want to use \u2026 to be certified as \u201cinsane\u201d or \u201cendorsed authoritatively as having met certain requirements?\u201d<\/p>\n
If it is the former, having been a Change Manager for many years, I sometimes think you have to be certified as \u201cinsane\u201d given everything thing you have to deal with (LOL<\/em>). However, this discussion is about the latter\u2026 \u201cendorsed authoritatively as having met certain requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the past year I have taken part in many LinkedIn discussions about certification in the context of Change Management. So, I thought I would try and crystallise what I have said previously into this short article<\/p>\n First of all, let\u2019s take the two \u201cprofessional bodies\u201d currently vying to represent the global change community:<\/p>\n Both these bodies purport to represent the “change agent” community but with ACMP membership standing at around 2,000 and CMI membership in excess of 1,000 (in the absence of any official figures that\u2019s an educated guess) I would hardly call that representative when you consider that membership of \u201cchange\u201d groups here on LinkedIn exceeds 100,000.<\/p>\n The ACMP is developing what they call \u201cthe Standard\u201d which will also come with the Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP) recognition and the CMI are creating their CMBoK but also have accreditation:<\/p>\n So there are two organisations, supposedly acting with the interests of the global \u201cchange\u201d profession, who are on the face of it going about things in two totally different ways. I think this is divisive and not good for our profession.<\/p>\n I believe this incessant push for certification\/accreditation is a “self-serving” move by these bodies which is more about revenue (although both say they are \u201cnon-profit\u201d) as opposed to one that is best for the “change agent” community. Unfortunately we are a diverse and fragmented profession and whilst I applaud these bodies for trying to bring some order and rigour to it I am not sure they are going about it the best way with their different professional programmes.<\/p>\n OK, enough of the ACMP and the CMI. \u00a0Let\u2019s now take a look at \u201cchange certification\u201d in a wider context.<\/p>\n If you do a Google search on \u201cchange management certification\u201d you get over 1,000,000 hits. Whilst not all of these will be specific to a certification program if you take just 1% of that figure (11,140) it just gives you an indication of the plethora of Certification Programs there are out there on Change Management. Setting aside Prosci & Kotter (arguably to two best known programmes) and the ACMP and the CMI the following are just a few of the \u201ccertification\u201d programmes that came up in my Google search:<\/p>\n I have done what I call a \u201cquick & dirty\u201d piece of analysis of some of these and have found they all contain a similar DNA:<\/p>\n Again this is my personal opinion but the organisations offering these programmes are purely focused on \u201crevenue creation\u201d (much like the ACMP and the CMI) as opposed to adding value to the change profession.<\/p>\n The question I have is \u2026 can a person who has attended one of these programmes and gained their coveted certificate really call themselves a \u201cchange\u201d professional and practise change? For me there are two answers to this question:<\/p>\n I remember a comment in one of the discussions I mentioned earlier which someone posted in support of certification which went something like \u2026 \u201cso that you can prove to the world that you can do the job (in which case you need a professional accreditation)\u201d. Absolutely not! There are many ways to prove that you can do the job such as recognition through references, recommendations and endorsements here on LinkedIn which are from clients, co-workers, team members alike and to me mean more than having a certificate on the wall and letters behind my name.<\/p>\n Going back to my comment about being a \u201cdiverse and fragmented profession\u201d, to illustrate this, the following are a selection of comments (I have tried to keep these balanced between the \u201cfor\u201d and \u201cagainst\u201d) from change professionals in answer to a survey I undertook some while ago here on LinkedIn regarding this very subject:<\/p>\n So there you have it. This is and will be an ongoing debate I am sure and once again I will use a favourite phrase of mine \u201chorses for courses\u201d \u2026 some will see the value of certification which will probably be those just starting out in the professions but others will not which will probably be those of us that have been practising change for a long time and have a \u201ctrack record\u201d of success that does not require a \u201ccertificate\u201d to prove we can deliver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I suppose it depends on which definition you want to use \u2026 to be certified as \u201cinsane\u201d or \u201cendorsed authoritatively as having met certain requirements?\u201d If it is the former, having been a Change Manager for many years, I sometimes think you have to be certified as \u201cinsane\u201d given everything thing you have to deal… Change Management \u2013 Do You Need to Be Certified?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[591,593,590,594,592],"class_list":["post-1177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organization","tag-acmp","tag-association-of-change-management-professionals","tag-change-management-certification","tag-change-management-institute","tag-cmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1179,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions\/1179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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