According to the Spanish dictionary, profession is the job, faculty or trade that each one has and exercises publicly. A professional is said to be someone who exercises an activity as a profession, while professionalism is the cultivation or use of a certain discipline or art as a means of profit.
Having clarified this we have to think about the history of the professions, from that of shoemaker, through that of blacksmith, clerk, doctor or carpenter.
Now, anyone who develops an activity for profit is a professional? In principle, you must cultivate or develop a certain or certain discipline that gives you the skills for normal and correct performance. It would be possible to say then that the one that develops a certain activity and does not do it with a correct performance is not professional ?, or is it simply a bad professional?
What do all these questions point to, or what are their reasons for being? Its raison d'être is the notable lack of professionalism or professionalism that is detected in organizations, both by managers and officials, and by employees and operators.
Regardless of how expert a person is, what is serious is finding people lacking the minimum requirements to carry out their work correctly and effectively, the lack of a work ethic, the lack of knowledge of the basic requirements of the activity they carry out, the lack of aptitude and attitude to perfect and improve.
They are not minor issues. If we take a company, and more than 75% of its members lack professionalism, be it as a seller, administrative, turner, trucker, or any other activity within the organization, we will undoubtedly have a very low performance. Even in the case of people with qualifying degrees, we can find ourselves with a lack of professionalism, both for their attitudes and for their technical abilities, and the lack of updating their knowledge.
Unfortunately we find in companies with people lacking the science, art and technique necessary to carry out their work with excellence.
The high degree of competitiveness, the use of high-tech equipment and machines, continuous advancement at the scientific-technical level, and living in an era of knowledge and information, do not give rise to companies lacking real professionals. Professionals in each and every one of the tasks and activities that take place in it. The person in charge of receiving phone calls should be as professional as the cleaning man. Each one must be an expert in their work and be in a position to achieve both effective and efficient performance, since it is not enough to achieve objectives, but must also do so with the least consumption of resources.
It is necessary that the management of human resources is professionalized, but also forces the other members of the company to become professional.
A clear example of the lack of professionalism is given to the continuous and repetitive commission of errors or failures by the employees, or in the lack of management, supervision and leadership capacity by the managers. Neither the former have the minimum capacity to learn no longer from the mistakes of third parties, but from their own mistakes, and the latter are not concerned with cultivating and developing the basic and fundamental skills for their activity as managers.
The lack of professionalism responds is the result of a culture, and the same is appreciated in each and every one of the labor events. From the footballer who does not kick free throws for lacking a good punch, as if it could not develop, and what is even worse, how many hours do you spend learning and perfecting your talents or virtues? Or the case of the footballer who misses a goal by hitting him with his less skillful leg, as if it could be accepted that a person who makes a living playing football could not learn to hit him with both legs.
Something similar to the above is true of journalists who start talking and show their lack of knowledge of geography or history.
But this is unfortunately seen daily by doctors, lawyers, engineers, programmers, accountants, economists, politicians, judges and teachers, among many others. With this we have not only companies, but also a society lacking minimum levels in terms of quality and productivity.
Perhaps the title should be not "professionalism in organizations", but rather "lack of professionalism in organizations".
We live in a society where the live is lived, but the live is not the suitable means to achieve a better society, nor is it the way that allows it to compete satisfactorily in the concert of nations.
Only when each one carries out his work with authentic professionalism, discipline and work ethics, will society as a whole be able to take its first steps towards a path of improvement and continuous improvement.
