I hate...snobbery

Time for a rant. I've not had a great week. Sorry. I promise to be more positive next time.
There are lots of types of snobbery. I grew up in an England riddled with class snobbery. My parents' generation would do anything to "keep up appearances" as the TV programme puts it. Snobbery, and resulting fear and bigotry, is behind a lot of inter-religious stuff and the whole mess that is the public school system. It stokes fear of immigration and mixed marriages etc. On that one, at least in some circles and cultures, we start to move forward. My daughter told me this week that her mates talked about how they all wished they were mixed race - as exotic, usually beautiful, able to draw on diverse traditions without being tied to any. I loved this sentiment - and compared it to the fear-laden rubbish my mum would day, or indeed I myself would have felt in my school playground.
In GS, I fear we suffer terribly from the consequences of expertise or professional snobbery.
What is a qualification or professional accreditation for? Lots of good things. It offers a reliable ladder for rising apprentices, common across borders. It gives some assurance to buyers. And provides some currency for good practice sharing. Without any such standards, the world would have more cowboys. In a way, it is beneficial regulation.
But the risks are there too. It can work like trade union or restrictive practices. It is in the interests of all such clubs to create barriers to entry (thereby gaining value from scarcity), to surround their area with mystique and code, almost like a secret language (value from intransparency) and can act as a barrier to openness and innovation (groupthink, complacency). Finally it can be a barrier to integration and synergy.
Wow, we have all this. In spades. Admit it, YOU are a professional snob. I certainly am.
And look at all the downside consequences. Aren't they precisely our blockers to creating a stronger culture and more value for Shell? Why can't we accept STI? Snobbery. Why can't we talk customer language? Snobbery? Why won't we knowledge share? Snobbery! A senior manager was virtually spat out by the people under them because they had an inferior degree - 25 years before, when technical content of that job was far less important than other factors. Snobbery, snobbery, snobbery!
We are not alone - everyone is at it. My singing coach (otherwise a wonderful woman) can't accept that anyone could perform well, or teach well, without a conservatory qualification. Imagine! This is a sensual art - and she judges her emotion not by what her (trained) senses tell her but what she knows about someone's (20 year old) qualification. That is just sad. And, at least on the teaching (or at least choir directing) side, the range of skills to do that well overlap but are far from congruent from what they develop at the conservatory - for that you almost have to be a stand up entertainer. But aren't we the same?
Legal and finance are worse still. I'm fairly convinced I could pass a chartered accountancy exam tomorrow, based on a one-term MBA primer, a career of tangential experience and some common sense. The bits I couldn't pass would be the meaningless stuff related to their secret codes of definitions and protocols - only there as barriers to entry. Legal even more so - that one is just common sense and a good access to google.
We are all at it in GS, with of course technical snobbery the most prevalent, but we are not immune in the support groups. One way to diagnose snobbery is to look at the level of fear. I believe that the thing most people in GS are most frightened of (all the way to LT) is technical humiliation, being exposed as not knowing something technical that somehow we ought to. Think about it. If that is true, it is no wonder we stick to our comfort zone, and spend more time bewildering customers than exploring with them diagnostically.
Much of the best creativity comes in new fields, before the snobs get hold of it. Think of the internet, of telecommunications, even the industrial revolution or the space age. This is also another reason why incumbents move more slowly than upstarts into new areas. Start ups can make step change in heavy oils, or biofuels, while we are still discussing which skill pools should lead and which follow!
What can we do to reduce snobbery? I don't know. One hope is that my daughter will grow up with the same disdain of professional snobbery that she has of class/race/social snobs. Probably she will...until she gets her professional qualifications and works out that there is value in protecting it. Even if that generation are more open, won't they be stifled, and then adversely influenced, by their "superiors" (look at STI)? It may be that an open generation will either self-select away from the most snobbish companies, and that anti-snobbery can be a vital competitive advantage in the next 15 years.
If so, and I actually believe it is true, we have a long, long, long road to travel.
Who would like to join a coalition of anti-snobbery?
(Of course, the coalition would need to set some entry criteria, have some exams and qualifications, derive a common language of obscure acronyms...we can't let just anyone in after all!