Competence

I've been thinking about this quite a lot lately, and not just because of the egregious example of the lack of competence among our nation's congressmen, who have been making much of their efforts to agree on a budget which was supposed to have been settled nearly a year ago. Who wants to bet that next year's budget will also be late? But then I've grown used to this sort of failure, both of competence and character. I used to work for the federal government. What I'm more interested in is the very notion of competence.

The word is from Latin, competere, to be fit, especially fit to compete, as in a competition. You would think that competence, like other forms of fitness, might be acquired through exercise and practice, but I don't think that's really the case. After many years of experience, I've come to the conclusion that competence is more like style: some have it, some don't. If it's an acquired characteristic, then it must be acquired very early, perhaps when we are first learning to interact with the world.

What makes one person competent and another not? I've been studying this lately, and I'm not sure what the answer is. Like many things, it's complicated. The competent individual is often also confident and self-assured. But, believe me, I've encountered many incompetent people who have supreme self-confidence, so that's not the key. You might suspect that competent people are smarter than others, but surely everyone has encountered very brilliant individuals they would not trust to take out the garbage. No, it's not a matter of intelligence. I suspect it has much more to do with some deeply ingrained desire to get things right.

Nearly all of the people I know who are consistently competent at what they do take a very personal interest in getting things right. And I think that's the key. They do it for themselves, not so much because they care in some abstract way to please someone else, but because they invest something of themselves in what they are doing. Close enough is never good enough. It's got to be just right, because there is a right way and a wrong way, and they don't like to let something go until they're satisfied with what they've done. They are, in fact, perfectionists, in the root sense of bringing things to completion. Something perfect is something done thoroughly, completed, finished, with nothing left over to be attended to.

I have no idea whether or not there are more or fewer competent individuals in the world just now. I suspect Congress has always attracted incompetent people, those more concerned with image than substance, needy sorts who want credit for things they've never done or even been able to do. Just read some American history. What I'm more interested in is those with whom we have our daily interactions. We live in a culture where we have accepted that the vast majority of humans are not competent. That's why we have so many automated processes. You can do most everything now by interacting with a computer instead of a human being. But when you come up against something where you must interact with another human, then you will see what I mean.

Recently, I retired from that federal job I mentioned, and I've had to fill out many forms and submit them to various agencies and institutions in order to get my retirement annuities started and eventually deposited in the proper bank account. It so happens that both my wife and I are doing this at the same time, so we frequently fill out the same application, making the same request, at the same time. After doing all that we can online or by mail, eventually we will have to call up and speak to someone on the telephone. And while that can be an adventure in itself, depending on the elaborate computer assisted, voice activated, customer service menu, once you actually get someone on the other end of the line, it's really a matter of the luck of the draw.

Invariably, one or the other of us will get someone who is thoroughly competent and efficient, and the other will get someone who seems to have stumbled into the wrong office that day. The result is that with identical requests one of us is done in a matter of minutes, with no need for follow-up calls, and the other gets involved in a complicated interaction that seems to go nowhere and requires numerous follow-up calls and emails to get everything sorted out. And this seems to happen no matter what agency or institution we are dealing with. One goes smoothly, the other not, whether it's Social Security, TIAA-CREF, or the dreaded OPM. Some folks are competent; some ain't. I don't blame them or anyone. I'm just remarking on something I've noticed lately.