On Competence

Sh! Whisper it quietly, but some dinosaurs (*) encourage incompetence, i.e. people who don't understand the job. It works something like this. The company hires someone based on their own assessment of their competence (i.e. a 'good' CV and interview), or promotes then through the company to above the position where their natural skills are adequate (see the Peter Principal, Parkinson's Law etc). And then the real problems start. Not being able to do a defined job is bad, but not being able to judge if your own staff are doing a good job can be disastrous. And if you've built a position of influence because you present well (see CV and interview comment above), you can put yourself in a position to destroy large parts of the right sort of company.

* Dinosaur = large monolithic company. More on this soon.