The answer for me is the fact I’ve gone to moneysavingexpert for financial advice on numerous occasions, rather than dealing with a lengthy wait on hold in a phone queue, a queue in branch, and then sitting down with someone who spends their time trying to upsell me to something I don’t want before managing to screw up my details for the thing I actually need.

Those organisations that operate as middlemen simply have to figure out what value they can provide, and fast, or they’ll be gone and no-one will miss them.

The answer for me is the fact I’ve gone to moneysavingexpert for financial advice on numerous occasions, rather than dealing with a lengthy wait on hold in a phone queue, a queue in branch, and then sitting down with someone who spends their time trying to upsell me to something I don’t want before managing to screw up my details for the thing I actually need.

Those organisations that operate as middlemen simply have to figure out what value they can provide, and fast, or they’ll be gone and no-one will miss them.

The problem with a lot of the institutions that are now in trouble is this. It is hard to see a service. How good is the midwife for example. The only way to tell is the way the service is made tangible: props (for want of a better word) and accreditation or rather, the group of people who know the business and will vouch for her/him (and preferably share cost of mistakes).

Two things follow. 1. Amateurs can join in, display the right props, and it will take time to catch them. It is amazing how long doctors and university teachers, who aren’t qualified, go without being caught.

2. Professions stop controlling themselves and get into selling qualifications. After all you don’t get caught. Right?

Well sometimes the profession does get caught – Enron, credit crunch, newspapers. Sometimes the failure is not game changing. Somethimes they simply have to pay off the damages collectively – the accounting firms had to sell their consulting arms, for example. But it is all an accident waiting to happen and everyone in the game nows. Everything is slightly off. Too much compromise. Too many nepotistic appointments, and so on.

The critical damage comes when they stopped delivering value. It happens for lots of reasons – probably what went wrong with the dinosaurs.

I’m afraid in the professions there is nothing to it but to do our jobs properly. When we do, then we see the process that you described. People are relieved to deal with us – palpably. (We set that as the goal, second yr out of varsity – ‘immediate relief’). But there is another level too that must be managed and that is hard for the ordinary person to judge. When the profession has outlived its competence, for whatever reason, people notice and start complaining but it is hard to put your finger on what is wrong and every small issue can be dealt with as an isolated mistake rather than a system failure. In established institutions, there is a long delay before there is the big blow up. When it happens all manner of people who exited feel vindicated but that is small consolation.

Just as I saw your tweet, I had been looking up definitions of back, middle and front offices and I am still perplexed as to why we haven’t had accounts of what happened in the bank. Banks are set up to to manage risk and it is puzzling what all those people were doing all this time.

That said, cars run for a while without maintenance. So do insitutions. Best always to move to something that feels vibrant. Value proposition – competence. We have to have faith to deliver the services we spent years learning in formal education and practically. And sometimes it takes faith because doing a good job is not always correlated with reward and pragmatism is hard to distinguish from corruption.

Happy to thrash this out more. As a business psychologist, I am used to the difficulty of differentation. Can’t always differentiate ourselves from amateurs but I am used to the problem. And I know that once a customer has experienced better service, they will be back. When they experience bad service, they are willing to DIY or to go with charlatans, and for the profession, the gig is over. It is a matter of time, that’s all.

The role of the internet has been to allow alternative institutions to spring up. We’ll see more old occupations disappearing the way of old trades. If they have been on the ball, they would have take the internet on board and morphed to fit in with it.

Enough. Plenty. Hope you enjoyed your break. Good luck with the next venture!

The problem with a lot of the institutions that are now in trouble is this. It is hard to see a service. How good is the midwife for example. The only way to tell is the way the service is made tangible: props (for want of a better word) and accreditation or rather, the group of people who know the business and will vouch for her/him (and preferably share cost of mistakes).

Two things follow. 1. Amateurs can join in, display the right props, and it will take time to catch them. It is amazing how long doctors and university teachers, who aren’t qualified, go without being caught.

2. Professions stop controlling themselves and get into selling qualifications. After all you don’t get caught. Right?

Well sometimes the profession does get caught – Enron, credit crunch, newspapers. Sometimes the failure is not game changing. Somethimes they simply have to pay off the damages collectively – the accounting firms had to sell their consulting arms, for example. But it is all an accident waiting to happen and everyone in the game nows. Everything is slightly off. Too much compromise. Too many nepotistic appointments, and so on.

The critical damage comes when they stopped delivering value. It happens for lots of reasons – probably what went wrong with the dinosaurs.

I’m afraid in the professions there is nothing to it but to do our jobs properly. When we do, then we see the process that you described. People are relieved to deal with us – palpably. (We set that as the goal, second yr out of varsity – ‘immediate relief’). But there is another level too that must be managed and that is hard for the ordinary person to judge. When the profession has outlived its competence, for whatever reason, people notice and start complaining but it is hard to put your finger on what is wrong and every small issue can be dealt with as an isolated mistake rather than a system failure. In established institutions, there is a long delay before there is the big blow up. When it happens all manner of people who exited feel vindicated but that is small consolation.

Just as I saw your tweet, I had been looking up definitions of back, middle and front offices and I am still perplexed as to why we haven’t had accounts of what happened in the bank. Banks are set up to to manage risk and it is puzzling what all those people were doing all this time.

That said, cars run for a while without maintenance. So do insitutions. Best always to move to something that feels vibrant. Value proposition – competence. We have to have faith to deliver the services we spent years learning in formal education and practically. And sometimes it takes faith because doing a good job is not always correlated with reward and pragmatism is hard to distinguish from corruption.

Happy to thrash this out more. As a business psychologist, I am used to the difficulty of differentation. Can’t always differentiate ourselves from amateurs but I am used to the problem. And I know that once a customer has experienced better service, they will be back. When they experience bad service, they are willing to DIY or to go with charlatans, and for the profession, the gig is over. It is a matter of time, that’s all.

The role of the internet has been to allow alternative institutions to spring up. We’ll see more old occupations disappearing the way of old trades. If they have been on the ball, they would have take the internet on board and morphed to fit in with it.

Enough. Plenty. Hope you enjoyed your break. Good luck with the next venture!