Bulldozer00's Blog

It’s prolly just me, but I can’t seem to fully accept that most people equate niceness with competence – especially in the guild of layered management. Oh sure, there are lots of cases where people are both nice and competent, but there may be more cases where people are both nice and incompetent. What does your experience indicate?

One reason why there may be a lot of people who are both nice and incompetent is because niceness can camouflage incompetence – at least temporarily, and at most, till retirement. If you’re nice, your boss won’t scrutinize your work output (if he can understand it and isn’t incompetent himself) as closely than if you’re not nice. Thus, it’s better to be nice and incompetent than to be mean and incompetent – duh. Hell, niceness counts so much at top tier DYSCOs that it’s better to be nice and incompetent than not-nice and competent. Niceness trumps competence at these back asswards citadels.

If you’re a DICster, where it’s easier to “measure” competence by the material results you either do or don’t create, the cover up of incompetence by niceness doesn’t work nearly as well than if you’re a BM, SCOL, CGH, or BOOGL in a CCH org. Why? Because it’s much harder to measure middle management output. Most managers don’t create much of anything (except for angst and turmoil), so how can their performance be meaningfully measured? Plus, the senior managers who are supposed to do the “objective” measuring of their appointees don’t want to look bad by admitting that they knighted incompetent subordinate managers and incompetent, elite staff members.

So, what about me? I’m not nice and I’m incompetent, so this blarticle doesn’t apply to me. What about you?

Note: One way for a senior manager to measure a “junior manager’s performance is to ask junior’s people how he/she is helping them to grow and do a better job. Do you think this is done often in the corpo world? Even when this skip-level technique is miraculously performed, do you think honest feedback is obtained? Why or why not?