That’s how someone I know, with a talent for memorable phrases, once described a colleague. It’s a rather more blunt description of an interesting phenomenon than the one on offer in a research item noted recently by the author of Ask a Manager. The study concludes that people tend to overestimate their own competence.
Perhaps you suspected that, already. But it’s interesting nevertheless, and actually quite pertinent to both sides of our current topic of the relevance of management thinking to practice.
Here’s how I used to describe the equation:
The dumber they are, the smarter they think they are.”
That, of course, is a bit on the blunt side, too. It does seem to have survived testing against experience, though, and it also has the advantage of setting the assertion out unmistakably, with all its aspects in clear definition.
Moreover, it gives rise to a number of corollaries, which are always intriguing. Examining corollaries helps sharpen understanding of all of the main and related ideas, and opens the vista of thinking to a broader application of those ideas.
Now, that sort of language may sound a bit highfalutin when applied to as inelegant an axiom as the one presented above. But I think you will find that a closer consideration of it will generate some questions that are worth asking, questions that challenge common assumptions about how we work, how we think, how we generate and take advice, and how we interact.
The obvious suggestions in the assertion that will serve as our starting point are that dumb people can be difficult to work with, and hard to convince of the errors of their ways. Those points have managerial implications, of course, but the really interesting thing is the underlying presumption that we are able to identify dumb people.
Are you? Of course, many of them really do seem to identify themselves by radiating their imbecility. But are there stealth imbeciles out there, concealing those signals, or disguising them as something else; even as, well, us?
We’ll take a look at that, starting tomorrow, by beginning with the first corollary. See you then!
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Here is a list of all the posts in this popular series:
- Radiating Imbecility
- Rays of hope
- Pulsating inconsistency
- Radiating confidence
- Blind faith
- Mirror, mirror . . .
- Socratic genius
- Socratic ignorance
- Socratic method
- First principles
- The Socratic attitude
- Why we do what we do
- Recon by fire
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Technorati Tags: research, study, competence, management, experience, understanding, assumption, advice, corollary, Dunning-Kruger effect
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8 Comments
Jim,
Love the phrase! Much workplace imbecility evolves from ambiguous job descriptions. We find that when managers (notice I didn’t say HR) do an effective job of writing explicit job descriptions, candidates do a really decent job of self-selection. When managers are clear about accountabilities, deliverables, and the timeframes associated with the longer tasks of the roles, people can self-assess whether they are capable.
Frequently, the root cause of ambiguous job descriptions is that HR, not the hiring manager, is writing them.
Interestingly, when it comes to volunteer working situations where money and prestige are not a factor, volunteers rarely nominate themselves for tasks or projects that are over their heads.
What do you think?
Michelle
Hi Jim,
I’ve come across two ‘dumb’ types in my career:
1. Someone who had a success years ago, and leans on ‘that one time’ as evidence of their knowledge for all future events.
2. “Fake it ’til you make it.” This may be less insidious by intent. People rarely change jobs to ones where they are 100% qualified. Hence the ’stretch assignment’ where we get the opportunity to learn and grow. There is art in finding just enough stretch, so the faking doesn’t last too long.
I am looking forward to where you take this in the coming days!
Michelle - I completely agree! If only managers took responsibility for writing their job descriptions - and utilized HR for support and as a sounding board v. the key writer.
Best,
Joe
Jim,
How could I pass on a title like that?!
Michelle and Joe both offer wonderful examples.
Here’s my latest shot at a related phenomenon: 360 feedback, then coaching, as stealth management of dummies.
Here’s the scenario:
1. Manager/exec can’t make any headway with an individual’s performance no matter how many times (s)he describes the situation
2. Hires an external consultant to gather 360 feedback in the hopes that more similar info will make an impact.
3. Discusses results with direct report. Nothing changes.
4. Ah! I’ll get a coach for this person.
5. My question: For what? The individual has already exhibited imbecilic career behavior by ignoring the boss and apparently there is no sanction for not altering behavior. So why would this person do anything differently with a coach who has no organizational “juice”.
In this case, the imbecilic behavior belongs to the boss. The direct report seems pretty darned clever.
My two cents…
Michelle,
This is an excellent example of systemic exacerbation of the problem, and of a systemic solution. Often, as you of course know, it is our weaknesses (or imbecility, if you will) that cause us to create these systemic fault lines, such as the sort of exportation of line manager duties to HR that you astutely point out. It is by a kind of rectification of duties that we can help systemically emphasize our strengths and avoid institutionalizing our weaknesses.
Your use of the way things work in voluntary organizations is insightful - sheds good light on the issue. Voluntary organizations have to be efficient - Peter Drucker called one of them the most effective organization in the US - commercial outfits need to have this lesson driven home. Many of them feel that not-for-profits are amateurish, but examples like the one you offer need to be made more use of in this regard.
In any event, you’re certainly right to identify procedural shortcomings as a potent generator of apparent imbecility. Your point that this need not always be the case, and that the procedural errors are setting people up - and the organization that depends on them - for a fall, is excellent.
Thanks for the great contribution!
Hi Joe,
Your first example is a true classic. It’s very much like one I’ll be referring to later on.
The “fake it ’till you make it” situation is a real poser - it’s one, like Michelle points out, we sometimes set ourselves up for without realizing, putting people unintentionally in a position where they’re more-or-less forced to do that, and also one that the fakers sometimes set up, hoping things will just sort of work themselves out - they’ll either grow up to the job or it down to them - in the end. That’s a good catch, really - a good category of “dumbness” with an insightful explanation for its cause and continuation.
Some people even fake idiocy, as we’ve discussed before here, as a kind of task, or extra-duty, overload protection mechanism.
These are great examples!
Thanks as always for your visit, and for your work and your writing!
Hello Steve,
What a great example - as aways, fresh from the trenches. A kind of imbecilic contagion. Mix a real imbecile with a corporate culture that hasn’t been vaccinated, and the imbecility insinuates itself around the nodes in the network, and even right into the culture. What a great example!
You’re actually, similar to Joe with his first example, anticipating me a bit, but from a different direction than Joe’s. The main point is that often, when we find the enemy, in this sense, it turns out to be us. Imagine that!
Thanks so much for your visit, your terrific comments, and your amazing series on change!
Don’t forget the Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, employees tend to rise to their own level of incompetence.
Hello Cam,
That’s right - we promote them for what they are doing well now, until we wind up putting them in a job they can’t do - and they may overestimate their competence in this regard because, after all, we promoted them. Who’s the real imbecile in that picture?
That’s good! Thanks!
14 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] Last week, Joe Raasch, who authors The Happy Burro, touched directly on this in a comment here. He said that one of the dumb types we routinely encounter is the person who “had a success years ago, and leans on ‘that one time’ as evidence of their knowledge for all future events.” We are all complicit in this, inasmuch as we initially encourage, then tolerate, and finally simply fail to challenge this attitude and its consequences. [...]
[...] We began this part of our current series by discussing the danger of overconfidence among the incompetent from two angles: 1) the incompetent who are overconfident, and 2) the overconfident who are incompetent. Here, again, is the original axiom, together with its first corollary, that cover these points: [...]
[...] When we put these two together, then - knowledge and ignorance - the issue seems to boil down to this: the smarter they think they are, the dumber they are. So, let’s venture another definition: [...]
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[...] Now, of course, you are likely to look for advice and ideas to help you accomplish this, and you are wise to do so. But in the course of this search, I venture to insist that you will also be wise to bear in mind the considerations we spent the better part of last month discussing, beginning with the piece, Radiating imbecility, a month ago today. [...]
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[...] Or it could be described, as noted here before, as self-identifying imbecility. But the relevance of that discussion in the context of this one is that sometimes the collision of that imbecility with our stunned or bemused reactions to it, not to mention with the real world, can spark a brilliant profundity that might have remained hidden, otherwise, behind the unnoticed veils woven throughout our day-to-day lives. [...]
[...] But in assuming we can figure out ways to deal with that, we may be overestimating ours. In a comment to yesterday’s post, Steve Roesler, who authors All Things Workplace, provides a powerful [...]
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