Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.
-- Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle (1969), chapter 1
The contact lens bit is funny, so one may overlook what he's really saying: "Competence is in the eye of the beholder."
Really? It makes me doubt that the Peter Principle is so interesting after all. If a carpenter builds your garage and the roof leaks five places and the door keeps falling off, is it a subjective viewpoint to consider him incompetent? Or to consider him competent if he builds it in three days and it's absolutely perfect? I don't think so.
Everything is a matter of opinion and perception. Surely you'll have arguments regarding someone's competence no matter what they accomplish, or what they botch, whatever the case may be.
ReplyDeleteMe, I'd define competence as the ability to accomplish what one sets out to do in a satisfactory manner. If you're trying to build a garage and somehow end up with a bike, you're probably a mad genius of some sort but you're not especially competent for the task at hand.
That doesn't make you incompetent. Really, the objective basis to measure competence is results. Someone who knows their strengths and weaknesses, and how to utilize them, is competent, and it'll show in everything that person does.
But if you're looking for someone to build you a leaky garage, that guy seems pretty competant. I think the incopetance is not finding the right guy for the right job.
ReplyDeleteAnd all this time, I thought The Peter Principle was about sex for one.
ReplyDeleteEo,
ReplyDeleteDo you know how easy it is to be called "incompetent" by a boss who just means you're totally incapable of doing things precisely HIS way, no matter how absurd his way is?
I've already been called "lazy" for not finishing an avalanche of work in spite of staying up all night over it. (Okay, so maybe exhaustion made me doze off for five minutes at that one moment, and I did take a few lightning-fast bathroom breaks...)
BTW, that unfinished work was just some stupid paperwork with no consequences. Everything vaguely relevant WAS finished and perfect.
Ray hoped...
"And all this time, I thought The Peter Principle was about sex for one."
Funny you should mention this precisely today...
I think I'd be supremely competent for that high-paying job. Not 90%, either: always 100% in THIS line of work! And with dedicated enthusiastic alacrity.
:-)
If there are objective standards of competence, then we are all objectively incompetent. Objectivity is not the human way. We are first-person creatures trying to pretend like there's a third person omnicient judge out there, and there ain't.
ReplyDeleteThat said, if anyone on this list wants to build me a garage, I'll happily accept and call you competent!
It's been a while since I've read teh Peter Principle but it basically states that in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. He will tend to be promoted until he finally reaches a position in which he is unqualified to fill.
ReplyDeleteI think the quote refers to how many incompent people find ways to appear competent.
That quote doesn't appear in Chapter 1 of my copy. Might be from a later edition.
I always thought that statement meant that in a hierarchy system, competence is defined by those farther up the chain. And since, by Peter's Principle, in a hierarchy people tend to be promoted until they are no longer competent, it stands to reason that the people judging subordinates to be "competent" are themselves no longer so.
ReplyDelete