Incompetence breeds incompetence!

What happens when your Director is incompetent?

Perhaps not surprisingly, but incompetent people frequently recruit and surround themselves with others who are equally lacking in competence. They also treat with disdain and often side-line those who are competent, thereby compounding an already bad situation.

It is of course the only way to stay safe and remain uncriticised when you yourself are incompetent!

Or is it?

In reality of course all you do is surround yourself with a false sense of security whilst those in the rest of the organisation who are competent, but outside your sphere of influence, whisper about you behind your back and moan about you every time your incompetence impacts their ability to do their job successfully.

This does of course have no impact on someone who is incompetent and also blessed with (suffers from?) zero emotional intelligence. Some people can be incompetent all their lives in every job they ever do, but never know it.

‘Ignorance is bliss’ as they often say!

Unfortunately though, the impact of the incompetent in an organisation is great. You might even see some of those who are competent eventually leave the organisation due to a belief that the organisation has no interest or skill in managing poor performance.

Others will get caught up in the downwards spiral of incompetence and in turn become incompetent themselves through failure to develop skills, learning how to play the blame game, and developing a skill set that is all fluff and no substance.

Never one to rant without any real purpose 🙂 , I thought you might like some tips in how to identify and manage the incompetent, for surely they should not be allowed to get away with it? The impact on others and the organisation can be so great. Life is simply too short to be around such people. Here are my ideas….

1. Special powers to identify incompetence…

Answer yes to any of these questions, then progress straight on to special powers #2

• Have they spoken for 5 minutes in a meeting, but have yet to make one relevant point?
• When you suggest they have not done something, do they get this look on their face that suggests that somehow you are failing?
• Do they spend more time on their self presentation than on what they actually do or say?
• Do they always ask a subordinate/special advisor to answer questions put to them?
• Have they ever actually attended a meeting on their own, or do they always have people around them?
• Behind the mask of professionalism, do you get any sense there is anything at all trying to get out?

2. Special powers to weed out incompetence

• Remove their budgets for external consultants and the employees who are solely employed to cover their backs. Then you will see them start to squeal!
• Measure their outputs, pin them right down on what they actually do in the day rather than what those around them do in the day. And now the squealing gets louder!
• Do the annual staff survey and analysis during their two week summer break and you might find you get very different results than you normally get.
• And while you are getting the evidence you need, freshen up on what you need to do to instigate formal disciplinary action on grounds of performance. No shying away, no head in sand, just get down dirty and start that formal disciplinary process. A hassle I know, but it will be well worth it when they are out of the business.

Or… save time, energy, and stress and just be done with it… sack them!  Just make sure you get legal advice first and check your wallet to ensure you can afford to pay them off properly. You really don’t want this coming back to bite you in the backside. 🙂

Thoughts, ideas, opinions, all welcomed of course. Please use the comments box below.