
"In the face of change, the competent are helpless."  - robg
http://www.fastcompany.com/node/38442/print
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jongalt
Uhh... I don't think that word means what you think it means.

If you replace 'competent' with 'reliable', the article reads a lot better.
But I still pretty much completely disagree with everything he's saying.

~~~
noonespecial
Yeah. That's what I kept thinking the entire time I was reading this.
Overloading competent with this extra meaning was mildly uncomfortable. Rigid,
process oriented, (and _only sometimes_ reliable because of those things)
would have been better. Blindly trusting process is like fake competence, a
plastic, cartoon version of the real thing.

Real competence is the ability to deal gracefully with exactly the kind of
change the article talks about.

~~~
ojbyrne
I've always used the word "professional." I think it captures it better.

~~~
unalone
I think he's got half of an idea; people who focus entirely on polish are
going to be more resistant to change. Bob Dylan certainly isn't polished. But
you can be unpolished and still be a professional. It just means knowing WHEN
you're unpolished and trying again.

~~~
wyclif
Bob Dylan isn't predictable, but he still had to learn how to cross-pick and
play harmonica like everyone else. It is the _appearance_ of shabby
carelessness that creates the effect the author is talking about, not lack of
competence.

~~~
unalone
I get that he does practice, but, at the same time...

He isn't a good singer. That's not to say I don't love his singing. He isn't a
dazzling guitarist, or more than a decent harmonica player. What makes him
good isn't that he's competent - though I don't doubt that he is. It's his
ability to innovate musically and lyrically that makes his music so acclaimed
and adored.

I've worked with and been friends with all sorts of artists, writers,
programmers. I find that the ones I feel have the most potential aren't the
ones who are necessarily the most competent. In fact, a lot of people who
AREN'T competent have an edge because if they're there, it's because they're
really passionate about what they're doing, not just because they CAN do it. A
competent programmer can do what he's told and churn out okay ideas. It's the
incompetent ones, though, that want to program because they've got IDEAS. And
while they can't be trusted in the same way, they've got a much better chance
of turning out something worth keeping.

Not saying the article doesn't do a terrible job of explaining itself, but I
think that Seth is TRYING to get at a good idea.

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swombat
_Sadly, Wall Street has traditionally rewarded companies for being competent._

Welllllll.. I guess it's a good thing they hired lots of incompetent senior
executives in the last decade, that should bring in plenty of interesting
change as they bypass the 'competent' processes and try out new things!

PS: More seriously, I don't buy this one-dimensional definition of competence.
I think you can be competent and innovative at the same time - I think I am. I
don't think you can reduce risks to near-zero and be innovative at the same
time, of course, but I don't think "not failing" is a necessary element of
"competence".

------
sdurkin
"Every situation has a silver lining, and mine was that I got a big insight
into what competence is. Competent people have a predictable, reliable process
for solving a particular set of problems. They solve a problem the same way,
every time. That's what makes them reliable. That's what makes them
competent."

Totally, completely, and incontrovertibly false. People who are competent are
those that are effective at solving new problems as they arise.

Don't believe me? Ask yourself, what makes a competent programmer?

Your measure of competence is simply wrong. Reputation != competence, and its
a terrible heuristic, especially when dealing with contractors.

------
coglethorpe
"Not so long ago, companies were filled with incompetent workers."

Seth, please come and visit the company I work for. You will find little has
changed.

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fallentimes
That was one of the worst, most ill informed articles I've read this month
(hey, I read a lot). And the only reason I read it at all was because it was
on HN, which was unfortunately due to linkbait trickery.

Edit: I just realized it was written by Seth Godin. Now it all makes sense.

~~~
helveticaman
How does Seth Godin keep making the front page? I guess this validates him as
a marketer. He's not at all impressive (in my eyes) but I suppose he markets
what little he has amazingly well. See <http://xkcd.com/125/>.

~~~
unalone
It's because he writes short articles that usually make sense on the surface
and so people read him because they think it will make them rich.

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sanj
I really want to like this article. Partly because I'd like to believe I fall
into the (appropriately) incompetent bucket.

But it seems to me that I might have a lot of company in there with a large
group of people that simply can't get anything done. And so drop projects
before they're complete and "zoom" off to the next thing.

~~~
akkartik
Hear, hear. Incompetence may be necessary, but it isn't sufficient.

------
nsimpson
You have to take into consideration the author is a sales guy and not an
operations guy. The problem for a sales guy is, "how do I get my prospective
customer to take a risk and shake things up by buying my product?"

An operations guy would read it a lot differently, because it seems to be
implying that you have to choose between predictability and innovation.

As any operations guy knows, the reason Toyota etc. are consistent _and_
innovative is because they have gradual continuous improvement throughout the
company, led from the bottom-up by the employees themselves.

As you can see, Seth has heard of the term "Six Sigma", but I'm not entirely
sure he knows what it means. Not his fault, I wouldn't ask Deming for sales
advice either.

At the end of the day what I took from it is the old message: "what made you
successful in the past is not guaranteed to make you successful in the
future", and a lot of people and companies have trouble letting go and trying
something new.

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tcskeptic
My experience from a decade in manufacturing is that people and copmanies can
also be "competent" (using it in the sense of this article) at the process of
improvement. That is to say not only do they have reliable, repeatable
processes for the tasks they do every day, they also have reliable repeatable
processes for _improving_ those things. Using the example from the article, if
the contractor was also competent at the improvement process, they would have
the ability to experiment in a controlled way with new ways of doing things,
and a repeatable process to apply lessons learned from those experiments to
ensure that the next time they attempt something they improve on it.

Being competent DOES NOT mean you have to be hidebound.

~~~
MaysonL
Yes. Give a man a fish - feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish - he can eat
till the river runs dry or gets fished out. But if a man learns how to learn
to fish, he can learn to do anything.

------
edw519
_They confuse speed with velocity._

We really enjoy your teachings about marketing Seth, just as long as we don't
have to repeal Newton's laws to understand them.

~~~
Alex3917
How is this sentence wrong? Speed and velocity are two different concepts, and
Seth's usage is perfectly cromulent.

~~~
edw519
Spoken like a cunning linguist.

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Elepsis
"Seth Godin is permission-marketing yahoo! at Yahoo!"

Wait, what? Since when does Seth Godin work for Yahoo? Did I just miss a memo?

~~~
dangoldin
The article is dated December 19, 2007

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projectileboy
Hmm. Seems to me that Toyota is doing pretty well being "competent" by his
definition.

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sfk
Competent people are perpetually looking for change and new ways to express
themselves. However, they are looking for _meaningful_ change, not for the
kind of _pseudo-change_ that marketing buffoons like Seth Godin thrive on.

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aptimpropriety
Reading that made my frustration with the "New Facebook Complaint-army" grow
even more.

A new GUI that I don't know instinctively like the back of my hand? Definitely
sucks.

------
t0pj
To summarize: Be ready. Shift happens.

This makes a lot of people uneasy.

~~~
mrtron
To summarize:

Shit happens.

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sabat
When corporations succeed, it's usually in spite of themselves.

BTW, Seth, being a contrarian doesn't automatically make you brilliant.

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sabat
If I ever met Seth face-to-face, I think I'd grab him by the shoulders and
tell him, "Oh, blogga, PLEASE."

