As I pondered what subject to address for this week’s coffee break, I happened upon an article that introduced me to the term “strategic incompetence.” In my day such individuals were called “slackers,” but apparently that succinct terminology is entirely insufficient today.
Strategic incompetence is when someone deliberately makes mistakes and acts helpless to induce you into performing their job for them. I first encountered it in graduate school. At that time, business schools were obsessed with teaching you how to function as part of a “team.” They would force you to do “group projects.” In reality, the team typically involved:
- One highly motivated individual who wanted an “A” and was willing to do anything to achieve that goal.
- Between two and three marginal performers who were willing to follow the highly motivated person and do more or less the bare minimum to secure their grade.
- One or two slackers who were utterly worthless, contributed nothing, and were counting on the others to provide them with a good grade on the project.
I typically fell into the first category, and since I already had one master’s degree, producing quality projects was generally easy for me. I quickly developed a group of the second category, who would happily follow my lead if it got them an “A” because they were practical.
Somehow, I invariably picked up a useless remora or two who had no intention of contributing and were occasionally quite open about it. If they were honest in their intentions, and stayed out of my way, I generally let them draft on my progress. One, however, was an egregious liar and malingerer. She actually had the gall to attempt the “the dog ate my homework” line. Seriously. She told us the dog damaged her laptop.
I reported her to the professor and she failed the course. I can respect a clever lie, but I will not stand for someone thinking I’m stupid.
Over the years, I’ve dealt with many strategic incompetents. Some were uncovered and paid the price, while others have been quite successful in duping others who are stupider than they are. Why, at lunch this last week, a former co-worker told me one of the worst I’ve ever encountered had been promoted.
Tell me, Deadsplinterati, have you encountered strategic incompetents? Did you report them to your superiors? Did it fail miserably because the superiors have a vested interest in not admitting their mistakes? Do tell.
I know one. That person won’t be going anywhere up. Made sure of that.
This one has left me holding the bag/work several times and that pisses me off royally. I get that people make mistakes, but I don’t like it when one runs away leaving me as the idiot who has to clean it up (and be the stuck as the one responsible for it.)
Several years ago a supervisor asked me about this person because for some damn reason they wanted to make that one a team lead, I made it clear this person can’t be trusted with higher responsibility.
Turns out, I wasn’t the only one and ever since then no one in their right mind has considered that person for promotion.
I don’t like liars or cheats, but I will note that showing off competence and skill in any workplace will inevitably only lead to more work and not necessarily more pay or other rewards. So there’s definitely a balance needed between “meh, someone else can handle my work” and “oh yes sir please pick me, I’ll take another assignment.”
Most of my experiences with incompetence have been actual incompetence and not an act. And honestly, a lot of my bad experiences with co-workers were actually high performers who acted like dicks to people with less experience.
It’s very difficult for these people to take a role that depends on producing any actual output. I’ve mostly found them occupying management and administrative roles. In marketing we have a job called “account management” where you basically babysit the clients, and function as a go-between for them and the creative staff (which is where actual work occurs). Strategic incompetents always end up in account management, and the one I alluded to rose to director based on her ability to schedule meetings and think of excuses to 1. perform no work and 2. allow no work to pass through the marketing department, thus guaranteeing she would never need to perform beyond a minimal level. She is supported by a cadre of people who share her goals. Oh, this is also a nonprofit, which factors into the utter lack of any sort of performance standards.
I’m not entirely sure other professions have similar roles, which is probably why I have extensive experience with strategic incompetence. But usually such individuals have to keep moving from job to job as they get found out.
Ha, yeah, it varies from job to job for sure. My time in newsrooms had me used to the idea that if you didn’t produce, you weren’t long for the job (which I have discovered is less true outside of newsrooms)
One thing you brought up is definitely, stone cold, 100% true: If their only competence is sucking up to their superiors, they’re a lot harder to dislodge.
Oh, yeah, there was no hiding in the newsroom. I was required to submit 2-3 articles per day. Failure to do so carried swift reprisal and dismissal. You gotta print something.
After that, no amount of writing on deadline could faze me. None of the places I’ve worked required anything near that level of output. In fact, to tie it back to Meg’s “curse of the competent,” I typically hide my speed unless absolutely necessary, so I’m not asked to work at peak output.
And no, I don’t consider that sandbagging. Years ago a manager told me he didn’t want his people working at 100%. His reason? “If there’s an emergency and I have to ask them to do more, they’ve got nothing left.” So he kept us at about 80% or so, but when people called in or there were other issues, you were expected to step up without complaint.
Where I’ve worked, strategic incompetents are pretty easy to get rid of.
In engineering, if you don’t know your stuff then you can’t bluff your way through (and as a group we’re pretty vicious when it comes to weeding out the phonies.)
In manufacturing, unless you’re management you can’t entirely escape scrutiny.
However, we have plenty of strategic incompetents as managers. They annoy the hell out of me and can sometimes set me off, but I don’t deal with them on a regular basis (or ignore them) so they don’t piss me off like ones on the floor.
At my old job we used to call that “the curse of the competent”
I’ve seen more of the type who want to pretend they don’t understand something in order to prevent something from happening.
“Maybe I’m just being stupid, but I don’t see how X, Y and Z… Let’s get more data, let’s push back the project, let’s avoid committing any money.”
They’re usually counting on some kind of power dynamic that prevents anyone from speaking out to say “Yes, you really are stupid.”
Part of the fraudulent civility dialogue is designed to reinforce this power dynamic and prevent people from calling out deliberate stupidity.
There’s always that one guy who claims not to know how something works because “I’m the new guy” even though they were hired two years ago. Or my other favorite, “I’ve been on night shift.” Not for the last year, you haven’t.
That’s why I proposed name tags with a listing of skills because we had a number of folks use similar excuses to get out of work (or use it to get overtime they weren’t qualified for.)
A few of them got literally labelled when the truth came out.
I think it’s more common in relationships and friend dynamics than work nowadays.
I have friends with husbands who end up doing tons of shit because the husband always does it wrong or won’t do it all so they just do it. We’ve all had those friends where they just pretend to be horrible at making plans so someone else does it.
It’s easier to get away with it in social settings than work settings because your boss can find a reason to fire you, but chances are that sibling or cousin is just going to keep dealing with you because nobody wants to upset Grandma.
SHHHHH! Some of my friends did that to get out of wedding planning.
I would have done the same like picking plates with faces of sad clowns and suede tartan tuxedos with blue ruffles for the groomsmen.
Unfortunately for me, I did that to my sister and she got pissed pissed pissed with me because she knows I’m a pretty good planner.
Yep, I’ve heard it called. weaponized incompetence
My mother-in-law is a master. She’s learned that incompetence = attention. So she’ll demand a smartphone but claim she can’t use it. That means several hours of trying to explain to her how it works. On her part, she deliberately ignores everything, only to wait until we’re all back home, and then demand that we come over and explain everything again. Her typical refrain is “You go too fast for me.”
It’s all an act.
I’m back. Thanks to @bryanlsplinter and @bluedogcollar for covering the Coffee Break and Happy Hour.
Did I miss anything important- births, deaths, illnesses, marriages, promotions?
@Hannibal, I missed you! But @bryanlsplinter and @bluedogcollar did a superior job in your stead, no weaponized incompetence here at DS.
I dropped two of the unhappiest Happy Hours I could possibly come up with, in the hopes that we get Farscy filling in next time.
*hides*
LOL, weaponized melancholia.
@Elliecoo I missed you too. I intended to check in more often but we stayed pretty busy. And drunk. There was soooo much drinking, lol. But I agree, DS is a very competent bunch.:)
Most of those people in my experience are in the executive suites. They make declarations that have zero basis in reality and when those grand designs inevitably fail their consistent response is that we just didn’t try hard enough, or we didn’t commit to the vision or some other bullshit because they were 100% not about to admit they were wrong.
Given the choice between being right and being happy they will pick being right every single time.