Driving innovation in a chartered body- Building a sustainable professional body for the 21st century
ROAD TO CHARTERED SERIES
A key part of the APM’s transition to a chartered body, is the need to build best practice across a number of aspects which support the profession of project management. As we develop and grow, it is sensible to look to older and larger chartered bodies to see what learning and ideas we can draw from their activities and initiatives.
The eighth paper in APM’s Road to Chartered Series looks at what a number of chartered bodies have done across a number of themes to support the development of a Chartered profession and to advance professionalism in their sectors.
APM has joined the ranks of a distinguished group – professional bodies endowed with a royal charter. The charter is a mark of trust, a recognition that the members of a profession serve not only their own interests, but also those of their clients and the wider public. This is a great asset, and we need to leverage the wholly legitimate advantages it confers. We can learn a good deal by looking at what our sister organisations are doing. This report examines the work of eight chartered professional bodies (CPBs). Some are long established.
Others, like ourselves, are more recent. But all operate in a similar context, needing to compete imaginatively for high quality recruits, meet expectations for swift and economical delivery of services, and affirm standards in the face of an often critical and scrutinising environment.
This report addresses six themes, all relevant to the work of APM, and the new APM strategy :
- promoting chartered status;
- innovation in service provision;
- priming the talent pipeline;
- a more diverse profession;
- public representation and influence; and
- collaboration and alliances.
The paper isn’t a comprehensive catalogue of activities for each body. Instead we’ve focused on measures which are either distinctive or representative of what’s happening on the themes we’ve identified. It is worth noting that APM, despite being smaller and newer to chartered status than the others, already has a host of activities in train or planned similar to the initiatives highlighted in this paper.
However, it is a good time to look at the best practice of other bodies and where shared ideas and collaboration could be developed. This paper represents a menu of options rather than a blueprint. As we seek to embed the processes and procedures for a chartered body into our evolving structure so should we seek to draw on ideas and innovation from our peers where applicable.