Change Agent - Issue 31

Horror stories used to start with "It was a dark and stormy night." No longer. Now they start with "My wife and I decided to add a couple of rooms onto our house."

My wife and I recently decided to enter the house of horrors. But we were determined to avoid disaster. So we took our time and found a competent architect. That was our first mistake.

Then we searched until we found a competent contractor. Great references, solid reputation. That was our second mistake.

Our criteria for the project were, in order, "fast," "good," and "cheap." We were clear about our goals. We set specific dates, and we delivered our objectives in writing.

Unfortunately, our contractor and our architect had both built their reputation, the center of their competency, around "good." "Fast" was not a concept that they really understood. Try as we might, argue as we did, nothing would change their focus. Order windows before the building permit comes through? Too radical. Have two teams working on the project at the same time -- one upstairs, the other in the basement? "Well, I guess some might do it that way, but you hired us for our reputation. So you've got to trust that our way is the best way."

Hey, if these guys were building a skyscraper, it would take them 40 years to complete it.

Every situation has a silver lining, and mine was that I got a big insight into what competence is. Competent people have a predictable, reliable process for solving a particular set of problems. They solve a problem the same way, every time. That's what makes them reliable. That's what makes them competent.

Competent people are quite proud of the status and success that they get out of being competent. They like being competent. They guard their competence, and they work hard to maintain it.

Bob Dylan, on the other hand, is an incompetent musician. From year to year, from concert to concert, there's just no way to be sure that he'll deliver exactly what you're expecting. Sometimes, he blows the world away with his insight, his energy, and his performance. Other times, he's just so-so. And, unlike a truly competent musician, Dylan never delivers a song the same way twice. Remember Dylan's Grammy-winning "Time Out of Mind" album? About the only thing you can be sure of is that when he plays a song from that album in concert, it won't sound anything like the studio version. No, Dylan isn't competent. But he is brilliant.

Over the past 20 to 30 years, we've witnessed an amazing shift in U.S.-based businesses. Not so long ago, companies were filled with incompetent workers. If you bought a Pacer from American Motors, it wasn't all that surprising to find a tool hidden in a door panel of your new car. Or, when you were trying to put together that shiny red bicycle late on Christmas Eve, it wasn't out of the ordinary to discover that not all of the parts were inside the box. Back then, it wasn't uncommon for shipped products to be dead on arrival. Everyone from lawyers to senior executives to receptionists was dropping the ball on a regular basis.

Then we got sideswiped by global competition, discovered a whole new approach to working, and found religion. We bought into not one but a whole series of revolutions. We reengineered. We bought computers. We adopted Six Sigma quality-management systems that ensured that every process would be robust enough to turn whoever was involved in it into a competent automaton.

Now the receptionist can't lose your messages, because they go straight into voice mail. The assembly-line worker can't drop a tool, because it's attached to a numerically controlled machine. The telemarketer who interrupts your dinner is unlikely to overpromise, because the pitch is carefully outlined on paper in script form.

Today, it's much harder to make a bad car, because robots are measuring everything. It's much harder to be an incompetent directory-assistance operator, because computers are handling so much of the work.

Oh, there's one other thing: As we've turned human beings into competent components of the giant network known as American business, we've also erected huge barriers to change.

In fact, competence is the enemy of change!

Competent people resist change. Why? Because change threatens to make them less competent. And competent people like being competent. That's who they are, and sometimes that's all they've got. No wonder they're not in a hurry to rock the boat.

Just think of the risks that come with embracing anything other than competence. What would that mean to my contractor? A fresh approach to project management -- one that could prevent me from standing in my house as snow blows in through that hole in the wall where the window should be -- would expose his team to all sorts of risks. It would mean that his reputation as a competent builder would be threatened. Of course, it might also mean a fresh perspective on building, a chance to invent a new, time-sensitive approach to construction, even the possibility of revolutionizing an industry with a reputation for making customers unhappy. But the risks of jeopardizing that Good Housekeeping label of competence are just too high.