ABSTRACT
Let’s suppose that we asked people from three different professions, say tax lawyers, carers and psychiatrists, to each build an organisation of their own. We wouldn’t expect that each would come up with the same formula for motivating people, approaching strategy or setting up an innovation framework. But often that’s exactly what we do. We somehow skip past the fact that people spend their entire lives investing emotionally, mentally and socially into who they are as professionals, and focus instead on the organisations they currently are part of. We talk about building the right kind of cultures for our companies and institutions. Suffice it to say that with the cohort of Millennials, or Generation Y as they are known, this has never been more important.[1] Companies such as Zappos, the online shoe company, and Netflix, the online media streaming service, are very vocal about the importance of their cultures to their success, yet the issue of professions and their impact rarely enters the debate.
