Honestly Speaking
I am currently reading “The Win Without Pitching Manifesto” by Blair Enns. His message is clear: position yourself as an expert. Do not be a generalist. Become the first choice for a specific problem.
Sounds reasonable. And yet I sat there thinking: does that apply to me?
I spent over ten years at Volkswagen. Driver assistance systems, safety-critical development, coordinating projects, designing systems, negotiating requirements. I know how complex technical programs work in practice and where they break down.
And still: when I write the word “expert” about myself, it feels wrong.
Because I have no PMP. No PRINCE2. No formal certification in project management.
And there is that thought that keeps creeping back in: am I missing something essential?
The problem is not my qualification. The problem is how we measure expertise in the first place.
Certifications are visible. They have a name, an issuing organization, a date. They signal clearly: this person learned something, was tested, and passed. That is real value. Earning a methodology certification takes genuine effort.
Experience is the opposite. It is invisible, messy, and hard to communicate. Nobody issues a certificate for “recognized that a project was already failing in week three.” Nobody signs off on “wrote a requirement so clearly that engineering and validation reached the same conclusion without a meeting.”
We have learned to measure ourselves by what is formal and provable. And everything else we do not count.
This works in both directions. The newly certified project manager thinks he lacks practical experience. The seasoned practitioner thinks he lacks the certificate. Both are focused on what they do not have.
Impostor syndrome does not come from being incapable. It comes from not counting what we can do as the thing it actually is.
Expertise is not a permission granted from the outside. It is the result of problems genuinely solved. Of situations where you were wrong and understood why. Of methods learned and applied because you knew the context that made them work.
Certification and experience are not opposites. Each builds something the other cannot simply replace. The question is not which one is worth more. The question is why we are so quick to talk down our own contribution.
I am still working on stopping that in myself.
In many companies, this is exactly where unnecessary time losses and structural problems arise. Often this goes unnoticed for a long time — until projects start to stall.
