A Big Day for Incompetence

That is what the title of the email from Barbara Teszler of HarperCollins said -- and this isn't an April Fool's joke (well, if it is a joke, it applies to every other day too). BusinessWeek online published a sneak preview  of the new foreword  I wrote to 40th Anniversary edition of The Peter Principle (I will talk about the Foreword tomorrow) and INC Magazine published an interview I did with them on the book called The Peter Principle Lives On.  INC editor Leigh Buchanan did a masterful job of organizing my distracted ranting into a fun time. Note how most of the questions are better than the answers!

I especially like this Q and A between Leigh and me:

Question: "Competent leadership" doesn't exactly inspire awe. Leadership is supposed to be exalted, and competent smacks of low expectations. Maybe we should rehabilitate the word. In Search of Competence! Where's Tom Peters when you need him?

Answer: [Management professor] Jim March argues that simple competence -- having people who are willing and able to do their jobs -- is what really makes organizations run. Leaders don't matter that much. They are like light bulbs: You've just got to find one that works.

Note I have already blogged about simple competence, and have a BusinessWeek opinion piece coming out next week called "In Praise of Simple Competence," which was partly inspired by the Peter Principle, and of course Jim March and the weird times we are in too.

Comments

[Dwayne Phillips]

Sigh, I belong to several community organizations. I recently retired after 28 years of working for the Federal government.

In both cases I craved and still crave for simple competence. Things like:

. the ability to read a calendar
. the ability to take notes in a meeting
. the ability to write a sentence
. the ability to express a coherent concept
. the ability to say "no"

At several times in my "government career" we had an exercise wherein we would list the stages of competence that a person should possess to move up in the ladder. It was embarrassing to suggest that people should not move up to a mid-level without first being able to write a paragraph (such as the ones in the blog post).

People scoffed at my suggestion until I showed them paragraphs written by people at the highest grades in civilian government.