Robert A Heinlein: an American science fiction writer believed that a competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Hi readers!
Jim Colin: an American author once said,
“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline: a problem that largely goes away if we have the right people in the first place or the right place”.
This quote gives me an impression as if Jim Colin said this for Pakistan.
What is this incompetence that required a huge brigade of bureaucrats to ratify or cover malpractices of the Government functionaries and politicians?
It is the inability or the ineptitude to do something successfully. An incompetent person is the one who is not qualified or lacks qualities such as knowledge, skill, or ability(s) needed to do something well.
Incompetence, therefore, is a word used to describe such situations and the quality or condition of being incompetent which can destroy any organization. In law, it is known as a condition of lacking power to act with legal effectiveness. collectively, incompetence is considered a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activities.
Dear readers! do you know that human incompetence and stupidity are the great evils? Peter J Laurence wrote in his book “Peter’s principles.”
“I have noticed that, with few exceptions, people bungle (ruin) their affairs, everywhere I see incompetence rampant and incompetence triumphant (winning) hence, I have accepted the universality of incompetence.”
Smile readers as it is not only Pakistan that is overly blessed with this evil but it everywhere.
Yesterday, I was reading an article titled “the consequences of incompetence”. It was published on LinkedIn on February 14th, 2024, exactly at the time when I started writing this blog. What a coincidences?
Please read this article at
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/consequences-incompetence-mitch-smith-oorvc/
The article says, “Developing core skills can increase organizational success and eliminate incompetence”.
I quote here magnificent example that the author used to explain the above quote (the words within brackets are mine and not of the author.
The author says, “When organizations fail to recognize or address the shortcomings of their leaders, they face consequences such as increased employee turnover (think about PIA), diminished productivity (think about steel Mill), eroded trust (think about our democracy), and misalignment with organizational goals (think about those who meddle with democracy)”.
What do you think dear readers ? Pleas comment.
The presence of only one incompetent person and/or leader/boss in an organization can leave behind repercussions whose effect can be far-reaching and can be irreversible. The persistence hiring and promoting incompetent leaders can be attributed to various factors, but the repercussions are often profound and far-reaching.
The question is why incompetent people are hired in the first place? Is the system of hiring is flawed?
Yes, In Pakistan, it is 100% true because in most of haring, superficial qualities such as charisma or cult (out of ordinary alternative) are considered. (Pakistan is paying unaffordable prices since long for such hiring in various departments).
It can also be seniority overshadowed by actual leadership qualities during the hiring process . I am used to a promotion process based on seniority cum fitness but at certain stages it is converted into fitness cum seniority, (for management positions) but parameters of seniority and the fitness differ with different people sitting in evaluation/hiring board and that’s where things turn, and problem starts arising.
Personal biases, favoritism and perception can also be the reason (I have personally witnessed this). But my view is that once an incompetent person is hired and if he becomes the Boss than he will always select more incompetent subordinates to feel elevated/comfortable. How hard it is to work with such people can be anybody’s guess (My personal experience is that it is easy and comfortable to work with tough but competent boss rather an incompetent one. I have very tough time working with such people (no dearth of whom in Pakistan). I sometime feel banging my head against the hard wall while working with them but, I considered it a challenge instead of a curse (of course being a human I sometime used the words that are not polite to show my anger especially when I know other are lying and cheating me in assignments given to them. But not many people can express such courage. Hence once incompetence, there will be incompetence forever.
Another question is why do incompetent people reach the top?
- We noticed time and again that skilled craftsmen often end up with leadership responsibilities like for example a skilled car mechanic, baker, electrician, or plumber, etc., but they cannot become good leaders because they are craftsman. The older we become and the longer we stay in the organization, the sharpen our instincts becomes especially when it comes to expose incompetent leaders. Most people at some point has to work for a bad boss but they do not leave organizations (accept as a last resort), but bad bosses do, and the board accept this because they have overseen the selection process and admit that it was a wrong choice (I have witnessed this),
- We are generally unwilling to measure the performance of our leaders because we do not have tough metrics to do that,
- The influence of external politics in an organization can also be a factor especially where leadership gets inclined towards cheap popularity: a political game in which cunning, tricky devious and deceitful manipulative leaders thrives and flourish. This explains why incompetent leaders reproduce copies of themselves. Such bosses can do everything to sabotage the career prospects of talented and ethical employees focused on helping organizations rather than pleasing their bosses,
- The most important factor is that as a nation we fail to understand what actually the leadership is? and ignore its science at the expense of flawed leadership models and the accompanied unreliable evaluations. We collectively admit that change management is nonsense whereas it is a professional knowledge without which, probability of failure is significant. It is because of this attitude that 70% of all change projects actually fails.
Change management is an application of a structured process and set of tools to be used by people leading the change to achieve a desired outcome .Change management can be applied by helping individuals who are impacted or affected by a change to make his/her personal transitions successful so as to enable them to engage, adopt and use a change.
He further described that,
Organizations usually fail to achieve their objective because their management focus on selecting leaders on confidence rather than competence, charisma rather than humility, and narcissism rather than integrity (we have experienced the worst of all this). He emphasized that,
We must focus on competence, humility, and integrity because these are proven qualities to make people better leaders.
Competence is a function of experience which can be detected with knowledge, and intelligence. Detecting it should not be hard as long as those tasked to detect have competence and expertise in this field.
Humility and integrity can be assessed with science-driven psychometric tests (used by employers to assess intelligence, abilities, potential and personality) and 360 degrees feed backs (an assessment system in which employees receive confidential, anonymous evaluations from the people who work around them).
The hiring board in the organizations must learn to distrust their instincts that are often assumed as a valid tool in social and behavioral sciences. Just like other science, there is also a science to understanding and predict human behavior. Using data and predictive assessments (even if the results are not according to our intuition) will help us detect true leadership potential and select the right people.
What do you think dear readers!
I am, as I am saying, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary. Believe me it’s not me it’s Billy Joel: an American singer who said this.
See you next week,
Take care, Bye.
