Change Agent - Issue 31

Do you work for a competent company? A company in which people are hired because they've done a certain job before, in which the upward path is slow and the sideways path is nonexistent? Such companies are especially frustrating to the internal (or the external) change agent. Sadly, Wall Street has traditionally rewarded companies for being competent.

Charlie Trotter's, in Chicago -- one of my favorite restaurants -- has an incompetent chef. Every night, he offers a different menu of innovative dishes. And sometimes those dishes fail: The beet-kumquat-chocolate soufflé is not worth the calories, or the blood oranges really don't add anything to the poblano mousse -- you get the idea. But I'd much rather let this gifted, incompetent chef cook for me than go back to the restaurant that I ate at yesterday in Boston. Staff members at this restaurant will happily make you a banana-orange juice, and they'll gladly offer you a carrot-spinach juice. But they'll refuse, with total amazement at the request, to make you a banana-carrot juice. For just one moment yesterday, I had a flashback to that scene in "Five Easy Pieces" when Jack Nicholson tries to get the maddeningly competent waitress at the frustratingly competent restaurant to bring him some wheat toast.

In the face of change, the competent are helpless. Change means a temporary or permanent threat to their competence. But among the competent, the smart ones realize that change is inevitable, that shift happens -- and thus that they are doomed. Hence the tremendous discomfort among our happily competent population.

In the face of change, some of us are becoming competent at zooming: Our tool set includes the ability to move from opportunity to opportunity -- doing the same thing, only differently. It's this new breed of competents, of people who in another age might be labeled "incompetent," who are going to lead us through the changes that we encounter. Whom should we hire to become zoomers? Who are the people, and what are the companies that can take on new challenges, new opportunities?

Here's the weird thing: I think that the incompetent among us are stars in the making. Not the folks who are incompetent because they can't do any better. No, I mean the folks who had the option to become competent but chose to try something new.

The next time you review résumés, try ignoring all of the "perfectly qualified" applicants. In fact, disqualify everyone who is clearly competent to do the job at hand. Do what Southwest Airlines does: Don't hire people with experience at another airline unless you're sure that they can unlearn what they've learned at that other airline. "Competence" is too often another word for "bad attitude." Instead, find the serial incompetents -- the folks who are quick enough to master a task and restless enough to try something new. The zoomers.

It's sort of surprising that so many of the new companies that are creating wealth today are run and staffed by very young people. Because they have very little work history, these people haven't fallen prey to becoming competent. They don't have to unlearn bad habits. They're not interested in maintaining their competencies -- because, frankly, they don't have any.

But this reliance on the young is dangerous. Why? Because as these new companies get locked into a successful business model, they create a layer of very successful, very young, and in some cases very arrogant managers. And these managers are the most dangerous competents of all: the ones who will do everything in their power to fight the next round of necessary changes, because they're in love with their newfound competence.

Some of the companies that have radically redefined their industries are already seeing rough times. Netscape lost its way and blew its huge lead, not because of Microsoft but because Netscape's own rapid success caused the company to stop innovating. Netscape did a totally competent job of working to leverage its lead -- but competence was exactly what the company didn't need.

The newly competent in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are guilty of another common mistake: They confuse speed with velocity. The culture of these revolutionary companies is to sprint as fast as possible -- all the time. Cars fill the parking lots at these companies on weekends. Want to reach someone in an office cube? Call at 10 PM. One woman I met last week lists on her business card seven different ways to contact her!

But this embrace of hard work and fast-for-fast's-sake misses the point. It doesn't take a lot of time to change your business plan radically, to reinvent your marketing proposition totally, or to redesign the way you deal with consumers completely. No, it doesn't take time; it takes will. The will to change. The will to take a risk. The will to become incompetent -- at least for a while.

Velocity is a company's ability to zig and zag and zoom -- to make significant changes when significant changes are necessary. And you can have velocity without speed: Driving around in circles may make your speedometer look impressive, but it won't get you across the country very fast.

Give me five serially incompetent 9-to-5 executives with a focus on velocity, and I can change the world -- over and over again. I may even get this addition on my house finished.

Seth Godin (sgodin@fastcompany.com) is permission-marketing yahoo! at Yahoo!