Q: How does a consultant answer the question "What time is it?"
A: "Can I have your watch?" (looks at watch) "It's 2:30"
A: An expert traveled more than a 100 miles to tell you an answer you already knew.
Okay, before any of my consultant friends get upset, I love each and everyone of you.
I was asked the other day what I do for a living. My answer "I'm a practitioner of service management". Of course, the follow up question was "You're what?" So I went into explaining what I do. After a few minutes of discussion, my friend said "Oh, so you are like a consultant". I immediately said "No".
As I'm sure you have noticed, doctors are much like consultants. We tell a doctor our needs(ailments) and they suggest a course of action. The difference is a doctor calls what they do a "practice". If you Goolge this phrase (http://bit.ly/YSQLkD) you will find a myriad of mostly comical and a few honest attempts to answer the question. Quora has the best answer IMHO (http://b.qr.ae/Tw4My5). The word 'practice' refers to "exercise or pursue as a profession, art or occupation". The doctor is a "practitioner" (noun) who is trained in the medical practice. While the doctor does consult, his/her main job is to use knowledge to try to help improve the situation for the patient.
I am a practitioner. I practice service management. As a practitioner I must study, read, research, investigate, discuss service management. This does not mean I perfectly understand all parts of service management or that I will help build service architecture correctly on the first attempt. It certainly does not mean that I'm an "expert" either. Nor does it mean that I have to accept the "status quo" because it is written in a book. The essence of being a practitioner is continuing to work your craft until you have a suitable solution for your situation. You may fail many times and that is okay. Get up, dust yourself off, learn from the failure, try again. Or more simply put, keep on practicing.
No comments:
Post a Comment