Are Certifications Important?

There are different kinds of certifications.

“Are you a certified nut?” asked a co-worker years ago when I suggested that our group do something counter-intuitive to address an ongoing problem. Although this co-worker was questioning my sanity, they had overlooked something that I thought was far more insane, which was that we were continuing to run the same process and expecting the results to improve. I was able to persuade the team to try my idea, and it worked.

“Are you certified to do this?” another client asked me years later, when I suggested changes to a rack structure design. I argued from experience and common sense, but the client’s managers chose to continue with their design, ignoring my suggestion because I was not a Registered Professional Engineer. The design still failed, and the PE called in to assess what had gone wrong made the exact suggestion I had made.

A few months ago, Kasturi Sawant posed this question in a discussion in the Operational Excellence group on LinkedIn: “Why are Certifications Important?” Kasturi is an executive for an Indian firm, KnoWerX, that is a mix of consultants, trainers, and certifiers. The firm’s mission, to empower individuals and organizations to be successful through lifelong learning, is a valid and noble vision. They want to be a resource to provide individuals with best-practices knowledge and certification in their respective areas, and to provide organizations with consultancy services and training for their employees.

Unlike so much of the typical marketing chum that people throw out on the discussion boards of various LinedIn groups, Kasturi’s question was interesting, and had the potential to spark some conversation. Posed as a question, it struck me as a weak manifesto; “Innovation plays vital role everywhere. It can be seen in our houses, in our society, in the workplace, and so on. Innovation is important for companies of all sizes and all types, and it can help organizations to satisfy their customers' needs efficiently. But to develop innovations one should have complete and updated knowledge in the particular field. Certification will help to develop awareness, to compete … and to satisfy customers.”

It did not take long for people to challenge the notion of certification. This group of over 44,000 members has a core of serious practitioners in LEAN, Six-Sigma, and true Operations Management experience. That is why I like to visit the discussions, read the posts, and hear what people are saying about the notion of operational excellence. That is why I jumped into the conversation—after sensing blood in the water from some of the first hits.

“Certification without purpose is a waste of energy and resources (including money). Never have a logistic in search of a strategy. Rather, make sure any building of capability is aligned to a corporate strategy and overarching engineered program,” commented fellow We Are The Practitioners writer Joe Paris.

Mohammes Hamed Ahmed Soliman added, “Certificates are [proof] of your abilities to others, and not [proof] that you have these abilities! Certificates don't actually improve your ability without a self-development and self-education.”

Others said that certification was just a third party indicating an individual's proficiency in an area, like a reference. The idea was that certification programs ensure an common language and agreed-upon set of expectations and definitions, meeting a minimum set of criteria. Others suggested that the certification programs provided a gatekeeper function.

But does certification lead to innovation? I find it hard to make that connection. Perhaps a company can be innovative in developing a certification program in such a way as to generate more revenue or profit for the organization creating the certification program.

The Contrarian View

Please let me present a contrarian view, the view of the person looking at the letters behind your name on your business card.

We have seen these business cards in meetings. This card reads:

Peter J. Cotontail, RPM, CSCP, CSCP, CPIM, CSPM, SCPro, CSPM, HMFIC

How much trust do you put in the organization granting the certification? What do you know about the organizations that grant these certifications? How much do you know about the certification? How rigorous is the process? How does the certification subject apply to my needs?

I worked for an executive who always poked at the person who presented a business card with an "alphabet soup" of certifications behind their name. Sometimes that poke came at the beginning of the meeting, when this executive asked, "What do the letters mean?" Sometimes it came in the middle of the meeting, just before the executive abruptly ended the meeting by saying, "I was right on my first impression, you were good at taking a test."

Once, after one of these abrupt endings, and after the adviser had left the room, the executive said, "The only letter that matters behind a name are MD, Esq., DMD, and PhD, and I sometimes doubt PhD." He believed that most certifications indicated only that you could take and pass a test. He did make allowances for professional engineers (PE) and accountants (CPA) because of the rigor of the certification process and the stamp of authority of government agency. However, this same executive held some of these same people in contempt because "just passing the test does not mean you know what you are doing."

A few years ago, a colleague struggled through the PMP certification process. She is an above-average project manager, able to execute process-change projects. She struggled through the PMP process until she learned to answer the questions on the exam exactly as they were in the book, even though her practical experience told her the book was wrong. She wanted the PMP in order to add it to her CV, to make the statement that she was a "trained professional." In the end, however, she said it did not help her secure any more work.

In the past five years, almost every "professional" organization that claims to be "the" professional organization in supply-chain has rolled out a certification program. CSCMP, ISM, SCORE, WERC, MHI, APICS, ASTL—they all have certification programs. Of all of them, the only ones that have rigorous programs are APICS and ASTL. A number of for-profit organizations claim to have certification programs, and the only path to obtaining their certification is to take their classes (for a fee) and then take the test (for a fee). There is not "test out" option.

The phrase "Buyer Beware" applies both to the client who is looking at the alphabet-soup business card and to the person presenting the card. That certification you worked so hard to get may be the exact thing that blocks your entry.