The why people become incompetent at work | Hacker News Reader

The why people become incompetent at work

bbc.com

12 pointszenit-mf-14 comments

I am really curious to learn from HN community their thought about the following statement "“There's been this belief that if you do an MBA or other forms of management training, then that means you're [automatically] a good manager, but all of our evidence shows that that's absolutely not the case,” says Goodall. In healthcare, for instance, “a lot of people think we should let the doctors do the medicine and let the managers run the hospitals, but the research shows that actually that's wrong. You need doctors to lead other doctors, because they understand what they need in terms of being an employee.”

> "There's been this belief that if you do an MBA or other forms of management training, then that means you're [automatically] a good manager, but all of our evidence shows that that's absolutely not the case,"

as an mba holder myself, i can only say what i know, but i went in there with the explicit knowledge that im going to be learning the tools of business and management (statistics, accouting/book keeping, finance, marketing, strategy, management control etc) and that to be a real manager you have to be experienced actually managing things (and learn what works and fails, how people are really motivated etc)

i guess if some people go into mba programs expecting to be managers or able to manage people right from the start, they are very likely to be in for a rude awakening

maybe i live in a bubble, but do people actually expect that just getting an mba = compitent manager??

One would certainly not want to argue with the statement that many people are incompetent, or at least not very good, at what they're paid to do. On the other hand, much of that alleged stupid and incompetent behavior turns out to be not stupid or incompetent at all if one spends a little time and effort on reflecting upon it. The opening example of the article, the Department of Education requiring applications to be sent by registered mail, is a perfect example. Why won't they accept an application unless it's sent by registered mail? If there is ever any kind of challenge, possibly resulting in litigation, over the way they handled an application, they have to have a complete paper trail of the process. An important part of that paper trail are the details of when and by whom the application was received. It would be a sign of incompetence on their part to accept an application that was not sent by registered mail.

I come across examples like this all the time. I find it amusing how often alleged stupidity and incompetence reveals more about the accuser than about the accused.

Title has become mangled, should be "The reasons why people become incompetent at work".

TLDR, the Peter principle: "Every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence – Laurence J Peter".

A quote I didn't know, he apparently also said that competence is in the eye of the beholder.

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