Incompetence is the failure to deliver on agreed terms. It is the failure to meet expected standards. Incompetence is not synonymous with capacity deficiency; it is the inability to fully utilize capacity. Incompetence is being content with a below the par performance. It is a consistent diminishing value addition and a persistent less than satisfactory output.
The worst tragedy that can befall an organization is to be peopled by incompetent personnel because the quality of the workforce is the primary determinant of the fate of an organization. The competence or otherwise of a workforce will tell on the output of the organization, its income generation as well as its public perception. Incompetent personnel cannot operate at full throttle. Incompetent people cannot give their best. Consequently, in a competitive industry, organizations where incompetence is pervasive will struggle to catch up with the rest. The best such organization can be is a laggard.
While it is traumatic to have an incompetent workforce, it is catastrophic to have an incompetent leader. While a competent leader who is saddled with incompetent personnel knows what to do to get out of the rut, an incompetent leader is permanently at sea. He cannot show others the way because he is lost himself. He is like a blind person who cannot help other blind people find their way. It is terrible for leaders to be incompetent because it gets to a point that an incompetent leader becomes paranoid, believing that the subordinates are after his job. This gets worse as the leader becomes jealous of competent subordinates, moves against them and frustrates them out of the system to ensure that no one can challenge his incompetence. This is what Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a management expert of British descent, calls Injelititis, a mixture of incompetence and jealousy. For a company peopled by incompetent personnel, the only way to go is down.
Effects of incompetence
It has been said that Africa’s greatest challenge is not corruption, as bad as that is, but incompetence. It is incompetence that has been responsible for the high level of poverty on the continent. Nigeria has a humongous deposit of petrol, yet the country imports refined petroleum products. Nigeria has a huge gas deposit, yet this is flared while Nigerians have to depend on generators for electricity. Nigeria has the second largest bitumen deposit in the world, yet Nigerian roads remain among the worst in the world. Some of the world’s longest rivers are in Africa, some of the world’s largest lakes are in Africa, the continent is also home to some of the most fertile soils in the world, yet Africa is the global poster boy for hunger. Africa is rich in gold, diamond, copper, bauxite, uranium, oil and gas, yet it never fails to win the prize as the continent with the world’s poorest people. Contrasted with Singapore, a country so deprived of natural endowments that it has to import water from one of its neighbours, Africa is a proof that incompetence is a disaster.
A system in which incompetence is allowed cannot escape certain effects. Here are some of them.
High cost of production
One of the major functions of organizations is ensuring cost reduction. This is achieved principally through the reduction of production cost. But many organizations are unable to do this because of incompetence. In Nigeria for instance, imported items are cheaper than locally produced ones because of the high cost of production. Companies spend a fortune on power generation, since the state has failed to make constant power supply available. Companies also spend a lot on transportation because the roads are bad and the state does not have a dependable railway system. As a result of the high cost of production, made in Nigeria goods are not competitively priced. Since they are not competitive, they are not the preference of Nigerians. This affects the producing companies’ revenue generation and capacity utilization. As a result, they cannot employ as many people as they ought to, neither do they pay as much tax as they would have paid, had they been able to maximize their capacity.
Low profit
When incompetence is dominant in a system, the company cannot be as profitable as it ought to be. Economies run in cycles; there are boom and bust cycles. When a company is managed by competent hands, in difficult times, the personnel will rise to the occasion and calm the storm, mitigating the adverse effects of the bad times on the organization. In a season of boom, the workforce also advances the course of prosperity. But it is not a given that these will happen. Companies die in every season depending on the competence of those manning it. An incompetent workforce will consistently turn in poor results, while a competent workforce will consistently turn in good result.
Ineffectiveness
The hallmark of incompetence is ineffectiveness. Incompetent people are not excellence driven, neither are they result oriented. They discharge their duties halfheartedly and go about their business haphazardly. So, the outcome is predictable; the system is not effective, precision is lacking, morale is low and products are sub-standard.
Wrong or poor deployment of resources
Incompetent people find it difficult to properly deploy resources and this results in poor performance. Africa is rich in resources but because the majority of those in leadership positions on the continent are incompetent, the resources are improperly deployed with the effect that the people are poor. One of the cardinal functions of leaders is to deploy resources to produce desired results. But that is only possible when the leadership is competent. With incompetent leadership, resources are poorly deployed and opportunities are freely frittered away.
Causes of incompetence
Incompetence does not just happen; several factors are responsible for it. Here are some of them.
Vague vision
People are motivated to be at their best if they have a compelling vision. But no vision can compel any desirable action unless it is very clear. Therefore, one of the major causes of incompetence is vague vision. When a vision is foggy or fuzzy, it is difficult to follow it with precision and this leads to a laissez-faire attitude which is the precursor of incompetence.
Unless a vision is properly articulated, the workforce cannot be adequately motivated to be on full throttle in getting it actualized. Therefore, leaders have the responsibility to state the vision in an unambiguous manner to get the people to be totally committed to it.
The Nigerian civil service is characterized by incompetence because many civil servants have no idea what the civil service raison d’être is. They have no understanding of how the civil service can contribute to the wellbeing of the society and the improvement of the economy. So, they have a lackadaisical attitude to their responsibilities. They have equated showing up with productivity. Many of the civil servants are engaged in private businesses that they do; so they do not give their whole to the job they were employed to do. Consequently, urgent matters are not handled with urgency, serious issues are trivialized and state affairs are personalized. As a result of the brazen incompetence of the civil service, it has become a cesspit of corruption, a drain on the society and a cog in the country’s wheel of progress.
Indecision
Former United States of America, Ronald Reagan told a story of how he came to understand the need to be decisive early in life. An aunt had taken him to a cobbler to have a pair of shoes made for him. When they got to the cobbler, he asked Reagan whether he wanted round or square toe shoes. The young man vacillated, and to help him, the cobbler asked him to come back with a decision a day or two later.
A few days later, the cobbler ran into Reagan on the street and asked him what he wanted but he still was not sure what type of shoes he wanted.
Three weeks later when the shoes were delivered, Reagan was shocked to see that one shoe had a square toe and the other a round toe. He had a pair of shoes but it was useless to him.
Reagan said many years later that, “Looking at those shoes every day taught me a lesson. If you don’t make your own decisions, somebody else will make them for you!”
Decisions shape destinies. The quality of life a person enjoys is a function of the quality of his decisions. How strong, stable and successful a company gets is determined by how sound and profound its decisions are. The prosperity or otherwise of a nation is an indication of the kind of decisions leaders of the nation make. Individuals, organizations and nations are at the mercy of the decisions made by them. They first make their decisions then the decisions make them who or what they eventually become. Rich or poor, energized or enfeebled, progressive or retrogressive, respected or reproached, decisions make people so.
Making a bad decision is better than not making a decision at all. The undecided cannot be great; they cannot even be outstanding because the time they ought to expend on positive activities is wasted on deciding on what to do. So, by the time they make up their mind on what to do they are so much out of time that they do a substandard job. Undecided people are usually incompetent because they never make up their mind on what to do and whatever they choose to do eventually, they fail to give it their best.
Those who vacillate when it comes to decision making are like the Buridan’s ass. The ass, which was equally hungry and thirsty, was placed between a stack of hay and a bucket of water. Although the ass was both hungry and thirsty and had both food and water, it could not make up its mind which one it should go for first. It later died of hunger and thirst though the solutions to its problems were within reach.
The undecided are confined to the life of ordinariness.
Ineptitude
Ineptitude is the outcome of stopping to learn on the job. The world changes at a dizzying speed that knowledge becomes obsolete almost as soon as it is acquired. So, failing to acquire new knowledge on the basis of knowing enough to earn the current position is a recipe for incompetence. As observed by Goldsmith Marshall in his book, What Got You Here Can’t Get You There, different skills and competences are required for different levels. So, the skill or knowledge that commended one for the current position is inadequate to get one to the next level. Therefore, to remain relevant and to guard against becoming incompetent, self development must be seen as an unending journey. Incompetence is a pointer to knowledge gap. The remedy to the knowledge gap is continuous knowledge acquisition. Those who keep updating their knowledge can never become incompetent. Knowledge updating can be done either formally by enrolling for an academic programme, attending seminars and workshops or informally by reading books, journals or surfing the internet to get relevant information. Knowledge is so commonplace these days that it is only those who do not want to learn that will not learn.
Just as birds cannot fly without flapping their wings so can men not enhance or increase their competence without an unflagging commitment to self development.
Sentiments
One of the major forces responsible for incompetence is sentiments. Those who are sentimental are unable to detach their personal interests from their decision making process. Therefore, rather than make decisions for general good, they make decisions based on sentiments. Sentimental considerations are responsible for nepotism and favouritism. Those who are nepotistic or given to favouritism will overlook merit and reward those who do not deserve the reward. By doing so, they force the system to operate below its capacity, do less than it can, earn less than it can, and be less than it should be. Nepotism cannot be hidden for long. Very soon it will be clear to all that the individual bases his decisions on other considerations outside merit and he will be categorized as incompetent.
Last line
To escape incompetence, we have to deliberately move against the grain. The average man revels in those things that make incompetence thrive. Unless a deliberate decision is made against incompetence, it will be as constant as the Northern star.
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