Professional

Professionals are employees who work on conceptual issues. In these situations, you cannot rely on fixed methods, procedures and rules to generate solutions. No, the point here is the professional's personal vision and their ability to convince others of it, so they go along with that vision. To do that, you need very specific abilities.

The Professional differentiates themselves by their capability to think more conceptually. This means that he can see connections within abstract problems and issues that can only be understood and have meaning when they are put into context. This (often personal) interpretation of reality is called vision. The issues that the Professional deals with often involve the innovation of business and operational production processes. Because these issues have a heavy technical component, it is mostly his expertise that the Professional can pride himself on.

The professional can deal with expectations very well, while the road ahead is not yet discovered or even a given. That is why insight and applying that knowledge within the company’s context is very important. Professionals serve as the midriff of the business. They create coherence between the business processes, adjust them and make them work according to the design made by the Generalists.

That is why the Professional also knows the game of giving and taking to make sure that internal and external structural cooperation actually takes shape and works effectively and efficiently. Their scope for this is roughly 1 year. That is enough to realize a project or an annual plan.

The position is intended to realize abstract tasks, as a project or otherwise

• arrange a business or research process so that objectives can be reached
• guide a business process toward the desired direction
• solve issues that have to do with policy;
• determine which systems or methods are needed to reach the objectives, with systems meaning customers/suppliers, clients, programs or installations;
• reach the objectives within one year;
• systematically innovate/renew business processes or products;
• manage interests and expectations of stakeholders;
• solve third-line issues that need a new policy;
• draft and realize the functional design of the business and research processes;
• solve the 'how-question': how do processes need to change structurally to realize the desired expectations;
• establish cooperation with other business processes.

For this position, the employee needs a university degree or, a Higher Vocational Education complemented by an MBA, for example;

• be able to put into practice the most important theoretical insights of her field to explain his approach (vision);
• a strong personal vision and the ability to bring it across clearly and convincingly;
• the conceptual ability to include the situational context (interests and expectations at the policy level) in his consideration;
• to feel confident in extremely uncertain situations;
• to understand how things work, even at a high level within the organization.