Provable Fluency

It’s a concept that I made up formed from two words, and it’s derived from a decade plus years helping 13K+ military veterans translate their experience into a language that Corporate America understands and get hired for those positions.

“Provable Fluency” is the combination of three key things: experience doing something, a job + described in the accurate words and concepts appropriate to that job’s career field + one or more certifications professionals in that career field achieve to “certify” their experience to others, i.e., hiring managers or customers.

For example, today the word project manager means someone paid to plan and deliver projects through others, to others, in organizations, regardless of whether they do so in a follow-the-plan manner, a adapt-to-the-customers’ evolving needs manner, or some combination of both.  Which means today’s project manager needs to be able to speak predictively, i.e., in terms of scope and requirements management to stakeholder expectations, or agilely, in terms of product, features, and benefits to the end-users, i.e., internal and external customers.  Both project and planning delivery methods have their own unique tools, techniques, and processes, each with a different name.

For another example, an “OPORD” means “Operational Order”, and it is the military term for a plan to accomplish a temporary unique endeavor delivered to the organization through others to others; a “Project Plan” is the name for the same thing in predictive projects, a plan to accomplish a temporary unique endeavor delivered to the organization through others to others; and a “Product Road Map and Release Plan” is the plan to accomplish a temporary unique endeavor delivered to the organization through others to others agilely.

If the professional project manager has experience planning and delivering projects predictively and agilely, they are able to talk about each project using its accurate terms and concepts, which allows the listener to discern their wide, deep experience.  And if they also possess a predictive-heavy PMP and an agile-heavy ACP from PMI, they literally “certify” that experience, which helps the listener not only understand their experience, but accept that experience as valid.

They demonstrate “provable fluency”.