Skills circulated without custody. Know-how moved freely, shared generously, then detached from consequence. Roles were drawn broadly enough to remain flexible, yet narrowly enough to avoid custodianship. When something worked, it was attributed upward. When it did not, it was quietly corrected, absorbed into workflow, and left unexamined.

Around this, a language took hold. Policymakers spoke often of becoming world-class. The phrase travelled easily through documents and meetings, offering recognition while keeping its demands conveniently undefined. Leadership sat above the work, fluent in benchmarks and international comparison, confident in steering a sector they had never practised within. Direction arrived as strategy. Control was exercised at a distance, including the budget, apportioned carefully and most often modestly against the whole. Authority presented itself as supposed neutrality, even as it determined scale, tempo, and limit.

Results were nonetheless required. Impact was tracked. Visibility was expected. Professionalism, however, was treated as ambient rather than specific, and specialist knowledge as interchangeable rather than earned. Support tended to materialise only when a fellow specialist reached a position of power and could act as advocate, leaving others exposed, expected to deliver regardless, as though expertise were optional so long as outcomes appeared favourable. It was not uncommon for misaligned tasks to be assigned without question, like asking a blacksmith to produce a painting and then assessing the result as if the conditions had been equal.

Professionalism thinned into a surface condition, its language intact while its substance dispersed. The promise of policy and planning held, visible and persuasive, as a painted mirage.