The cult of competence

By Brian Wheeler
BBC News Online Magazine

A new survey says one in 10 people is incompetent at work. Nobody will be very surprised to learn this, but will anyone actually own up to being in a member of that special 10%?

Frank Spencer set the gold standard

Incompetence at work is the last taboo.

People will joke about being rubbish at most things. DIY, driving, even sex.

But your chosen profession, the thing you are actually paid to be good at, the thing you spent precious years of your life training to do, that's a different story.

In 2000, Kevin Keegan stunned the football world by quitting as England manager, after his team lost to Germany.

"I told the players that is me, finished. I feel I fall short of what is required for this job," he said.

False dawn

Not long after, Education Secretary Estelle Morris quit her job, saying "second best" was not good enough.

Full story: One in 10 workers 'incompetent'

For a brief moment it seemed as if disarming candour about your own hopelessness was the future.

But it proved to be a false dawn. The cult of competency continues to rule.

A survey of 72,100 employers by the Learning and Skills Council found that 10% of workers were not up to their job.

Bosses said inexperience was the main problem - though lack of motivation and their own failure to train staff were reported by almost a third.

A fifth of job vacancies were unfilled due to skill shortages, and business was being lost to competitors.

The sinking feeling that comes from hitting the wrong key and the screen going blank is well known to most people, or the kind of gulp you take when you realise you've ordered two million in black just as white is coming back into fashion.

The room falls silent as you walk in. People look away. The boss asks "how's everything going?"

Or, more tragically, you spend 30 years in the same job being passed over for promotion and end up taking orders from the teaboy.

It's never happened to me, of course.

How about you?

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Are you incompetent? Or are you just spectacularly in the wrong job? Here are some of your stories.

The definition of the word incompetent should have my name beside it, I've work as a Foreign Exchange Consultant for well over a year I still don't know the difference between a spot deal and a forward contract, i really don't know how i do it, day in and day out. Make a great cup of tea though!
Anon, London, UK

When I first started work 30 years ago for a well known High Street bank, the world of computers was still very young and the rigorous safety systems of today were not in place then. The bank's entire branch network of old fashioned terminals was controlled from a small room where I had started working only months before. One afternoon, in a burst of enthusiasm, I wrongly keyed the system shutdown command and closed all the branch terminals two hours before they'd finished the days business. On those old systems it took another two hours to get everything back up and running again, and branch staff all over the country had to work late to finish everything off. I somehow managed to wriggle out of it with a series of excuses and some creative story telling - which must have been very good because I'm still working here!
Mark, Nottingham, England

I was working for a French bank a while back and my boss asked me to park his car in the bank's underground garage. I really should have told him I can't drive but thought 'What the hell, I'll give it a bash'. I wrote off four BMWs and a Jaguar in the ensuing carnage. On the upside he never asked me to park his car again.
Bob, UK

I'm currently a manager of an analysis team, however, I don't know how to do any analysis! Don't laugh - I didn't apply for this role, just inherited it after a company restructure... up to now, I've managed to plod along, but don't know how long I can manage before I'm caught out. Saying I don't know how to do it is just so hard.
Anon, Leeds, England

I managed to kill a computer through a mixture of in competency and bad luck. It took three days to reinstall the operating system and all the software, had I been more competent, it would have been quicker. The company then contracted me out to do more work that was beyond me for someone else. Eventually I left, but I had been earning loads of cash. That's IT.
Anon, Southampton, UK

1 in 10? We're over quota in our office!
Craig, England

I agree that there is a lot of incompetence in the workplace - I am an example. I often find myself struggling to produce work of any value and spend most of the time chatting to my friends on the phone. It's amazing how easy it is to cover up through constant brown-nosing and whining about how much work I do!
Anon, UK

You bet! Arrived to work here (bank) as an outrageously overpaid 'business analyst' nearly a decade ago. Unqualified, inexperienced, slacker, general bad attitude - just in the right place at the right time. I have done precisely zero ever since. Managed to get away with it as the staff turnover in the department is high and the fresh out of the box graduates that they usually put in charge rely on my 'experience' to run the team. Ha! However, I have only recently come to terms with the fact that I really am bad at my job. I laboured under the illusion that I was some sort of maverick trouble-shooter that everyone liked and respected, in reality I am tolerated as a somewhat harmless buffoon able to get on with the more pointless tasks. The abilities that I bought to the role have long since been superseded and I have never needed to retrain, as the pimply youths that join the team are faster and better at the job and naive enough to pick up all the balls that are dropped. I used to send them out for the tea and now they rise up through the ranks to become my boss and my boss' boss. Arrgh! I was once sent for 'career counselling' and the recommendations they came back with included: arboreal technician (lumberjack) false ceiling contractor roadside repair agent patent clerk (European law) oceanographer I'm not kidding! Not one vaguely to do with finance or databases or them horrible computer things. They won't make me redundant as I'm too expensive. I won't leave as I'll never get another salary like this. They can't fire me as I do just enough to get by, I'm in the Union and know the law and our HR rules very well. You could replace me with a clockwork monkey and no-one would notice the difference.
Dave, UK

I've always been incompetent since schools days. But I've risen through the ranks of my company until now I'm sales manager. The key to my success has been - get someone else to take the blame. I delegate everything, that's my forte, my biggest decision is who to pass the blame on to.
Alex, UK

I'm reasonably IT literate (I'm a programmer), and once went for an interview for an IT job. At the interview, I got on so well with the manager and team members as we talked about cars (etc) , I forgot to ask some of the more gritty details of the job, and they forgot to ask which languages I programmed in. On my first day of work, imagine my horror when I discovered they were expecting me to be an expert in a totally *different* area of IT from which I had experience in... Unsurprisingly, I didn't last very long in the job
Tigger the VB guy, United Kingdom

I am a useless teacher. I am technically competent in my subject (technology), however in today's education system being a good administrator and paper pusher seems to be more important. I hate filling out paperwork, always avoid it if possible. This in turn apparently makes me an "incompetent" teacher. Even though my pupils do well in exams.
Mark, UK

I'm not sure if I'm incompetent or lazy. I've been self employed for 6 years and have never made a profit. Generally I just sit around for most of the day. Wife has a good job though.
Kevin, Hertford, UK

I am a crashing disaster. I spend most of my time rearranging paperclips, sending inane e-mails to my friends and making endless cups of PG Tips. I don't think I've done anything productive for years.
Anon, London, UK

Has anyone evaluated the competence of the surveyors?
Chris Green, Bristol, UK