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In a math class, a professor asked this question – Imagine you in the middle of an ocean and have a boat, you travel 500 km north, turn 90 degrees, go 500 km, then turn 90 degrees, go another 500 km, again turn 90 degrees, go another 500 km, where will you be. Immediately so many hands went up to answer the question that is too easy, but the professor identified a pupil thinking deeply but who did not raise hands. When asked why was the pupil not raising hands, the answer was – “I don’t know how to calculate”. The entire class left out a loud laughter, the professor waited patiently for the laughter to die down and asked the pupil to explain the thoughts on the board. The pupil explained that earth is curved so travelling huge distances and turning 90 degrees four times will not take you back to the same location but some kilometres short, but is not aware of how to calculate the exact distance away from the starting point. The professor explained to the class that the pupil is in right direction, this is non Euclidean geometry, how overconfidence blinds people into stagnating at a level.

A confident person taking a gorilla head on

The workplace is no different, but there are no professors to validate confidence vs competence. I was misled a few times and made mistakes in staffing, until I found a way to interview people and identify the indicators for competence. Dunning-Kruger effect explains that most of us will always pitch on better-than-average rating if we are asked to evaluate ourselves. The false confidence that it imparts to below average people and the hesitation it imparts on above average people will be presented and read as an indicator for competence.

Some indicators that helped identify competence and weed out false confidence

  • Humility – This is one of the biggest indicators for me, people who are humbled by experiences have learnt a lot.
  • Grit, Discipline, System – People who have a systems way of working, hanging out on to habits/practices/processes that are simple, yet effective and have a long term impact.
  • Team player – Very difficult to find out in first meetings, some points include openness to share knowledge, ability to receive feedback, challenge ideas but not the person etc.

Falsely confident people will walk in circles when lost, but will give the illusion of progress and that comfort feel of not stuck in a place. Competent people may need the – observe, orient, decide and act loop to work before they can act but will sure help progress.

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I come across people in the spectrum of extremely laid back to extremely driven. Laid back ones or happy me go lucky ones have a strong belief in destiny and are often victim of systems. The driving factor for them is that there is very little one can influence on what is about to happen to them. On the other hand, people with an extreme drive try to keep altering every aspect of what they do to control their destiny leading to a high anxiety state. You can read more in detail about it here on what is locus of control.

What is the healthy state to be in? It is not the middle path, it is towards the internal sense of control that is desired but not on the extreme end. Kids in the initial days have an external sense of control, the sense of control gets more and more internalised as their learning horizon expands and they begin to understand cause and effect very well. This is not a inborn trait, our environment around us and self reflections will shape our sense of control.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Environment shapes how an individual’s locus of control is established. A workplace that is toxic, promotes favouritism, has tight command and control will eventually prime the individuals to adopt an external locus of control. They become less engaged, more laid back and often make poor choices which slowly bleeds into their personal life as well.

It is crucial that a workplace promotes psychological safety if they need individuals to develop a healthy locus of control. Individuals should also understand that complete control is impossible and should develop the mindset to accept things that cannot be controlled, which will result is less anxiety and move on to next set of challenges.

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I recently installed an app to get groceries and milk delivery at home every morning. When I browsed through the catalog, a lot of items were cheap but when added to cart they asked for a subscription fee to checkout at the listed price or pay markup on the items which were much more than what it was listed on the catalog. So I went ahead and paid the subscription fee and when checking out I see that only some of the items are discounted but not all the others. When I looked into the details, the subscription had a fine print that the price was applicable for only 15 items and it auto applied to all the cheapest items, leaving out the bigger items at the markup price.

I anyways continued to order to check the quality of deliverables and over the course of few days I felt that provisions ran out a bit faster than the previous vendor. On checking the details, all the products sold are in the range of 400-450 grams or 400-450 ml instead of the standard measures of multiples of 500. I checked around who these people were and found a patch which proudly claimed that it was a product of IIM alumni. Why on earth someone spends entire early adulthood preparing to earn a good degree just to mislead and profit.

Photo by Wendelin Jacober on Pexels.com

These kind of rots and rusts are evident in the society, at workplace it is hard to spot. While it may not be deliberate act of mislead and profit, it is more of rent seeking that is rusting the workplaces. Job characteristic theory mentions that a good favourable job will promote

  1. Skill variety – To learn continuously and implement
  2. Task identity – Where people understand the larger picture about whatever small they are doing
  3. Task significance – The general good feeling of doing something positive for others
  4. Autonomy – Accountability on actions, elbow room and breathing space. No one constantly telling people what to do
  5. Feedback – To know whether what someone did is good for not in an actionable way so that they can build on the failures

Conventional industrial processes did not worry about any of the above as it was primarily a dead end job. When software was first developed it was very similar. Breakdown the entire work into small chunks, sequence it and give it to people to finish the product. The industrial type work relied on individual contributors working in isolation with a specific skill, as long as they follow the job description the end output however complex it looks can be achieved. The knowledge type work relies on individual contributors working along with others in the group to be successful. It is a key difference, the industrial type of job is a dead end job with no autonomy, skill variety or task significance.

The rots and rusts start from there, young individuals join the knowledge workforce expecting to do big on their career but are stifled by the system that was designed for industrial type of work. Eventually people become victim of systems, they become tired of always being told how to do and what to do. The faster they escape from the situation, the better so they try to get into management as soon as possible. This steps furthers the rot, an individual contributor who did not understand well how to do their work within a team is now equipped to tell others how, when and what to do.

Where do people look up for guidance in a new job role?, it is their peers who are doing similar things. Anything which has a short term gain and less learning horizon gains traction compared to long horizon ones. Example – Click bait to increase engagement but lose the brand value over long run. As long as the increase in engagement is rewarded handsomely this behaviour will continue and the person will move on to another place leaving the after effects to be handled by a successor.

Shanty towns – Locally optimised but a collective failure. Picture from pexels.com

Slowly many anti patterns become an accepted practice and become templates for career growth. A rotted and rusted system will cause more victims of the system. Every one will be governed to optimise for themselves but collectively fail. Agility in software development was a key issue when people were following the industrial type of work breakdown and development, a bunch of people got together and came up with the manifesto to bring agility into software development. What followed after 2 decades is that there are plenty of frameworks and processes but no agility. Ask this question, if a business needs to wait for a release train next quarter to test out their hypothesis and implement that in the following quarter, how is it agile?

People can attend a training for 3 days and become masters in driving agility in their teams, it is like saying you can become a football coach by attending a 3 day training, that is how broken the industry is. Unless an individual realises and resists to contribute to the rot, the rotting and rusting will continue.