The incompetence we experience in just about every aspect of our lives suggests there is enormous room to improve the performance of people and organizations and in the products and services we produce. So the question needs not be, why has mediocrity become the status quo? The better question is “what can we do about it?”
Mediocrity in an organization is a condition of organizational health with no specific onset. It may be a sign of aging – but just as likely something it was born with. It may be a design flaw – and while fatal over time – is also something that can be corrected with a combination of education, behavioral treatment – and usually some parts replacements. While it would be most efficacious to remove the causes, it is also important to recognize and treat the symptoms if the organization is going to survive – or simply improve. The following seven symptoms are far from the range of maladies that contribute to mediocrity and poor performance – but they are most common and all treatable.
Comfort
People concern themselves with being comfortable, which stifles personal and organizational growth. Leadership contributes to the infection by not challenging people and chooses to not “rock the boat” causing the organization to become lazy, bureaucratic and stagnant.
Knowing
People place greater value on knowing than on learning. They become comfortable living in the knowing mode. Curiosity is suppressed, people grow fearful of and allergic to change and the organization becomes unresponsive to market pressures and emerging opportunities.
Excuses
People are more willing to make excuses than take ownership for problems. People tend to prefer problems they cannot solve over solutions they do not like. Unproductive, disruptive and even destructive behaviors are tolerated, potential is diminished or destroyed as individual performance shrinks, hides or disappears altogether. Rigidity takes hold and the rampant finger-pointing can usually be observed.
Entitlement
People become delusional and expect rights but refuse to assume responsibility. Collaboration and any corresponding innovation dissipates and eventually ceases to exist when people have no responsibility for their contribution or individual performance. People can be seen grasping for power while others may grab anything that is not nailed down as if it were their own.
Problem Concentration
Problems are pooled among those who routinely digest them easily rather than being strategically distributed. Serious decisions always rise to the top – and the most competent problem solvers take on the problems of all those who are either unable or simply unwilling to do the work. Those who are malnourished due to problem depravation add further burden to those who may suffer from excessive consumption of problems and can lead to exhaustion, distraction, decreased cognitive function, and in some cases insanity and even death.
Dumb Systems
Sick or dumb systems become sacred cows and cultural symbols rather than tools that assist competent people to be more effective and efficient. They tend to choke-out smart systems – those that support competence and accomplishments. Dumb systems contribute to unhealthy organizational weight gain that will slow progress to a halt, exhaust high-performers and paralyze incompetent people who become the deadwood that eventually spreads cancerous rot throughout the entire organization.
Aimless Leadership
When leadership is assigned or assumed – rather than earned and developed the optical focus turns to what and how – with no perception or awareness of why or purpose. The organization focuses on activity rather than accomplishments and incompetence spreads systemically like a cancer, choking our competence and terminal mediocrity sets in.
The antidote for mediocrity is competence
While mediocrity may stifle growth, growth is what eradicates mediocrity. Growth in any organization is a product of its competence. A fully competent organization is one that accomplishes its aims by employing people who are capable, prepared and conscientious, have in place systems that support the performance of those people and leadership that makes it necessary and possible for people and systems to perform to their fullest potential and drives the organization’s purpose. These organizations have a shared sense of what matters – not only in terms of objectives – but in what is required to meet those objectives. Alignment isn’t a social context – it is a desired functional consequence of going both fast and far together and the engineering required of this kind of performance.
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