L’Usine Nouvelle – What is “kakistocracy”, which is very common in the world of work according to you?
Isabelle Barth – It is management by the incompetent. This very old term was brought back into fashion in 2018 by former CIA director John O. Brennan who posted a tweet against the kakistocracy of American President Donald Trump. It is distinguished from the simple incompetence of a manager by its systemic dimension: an employee working in a kakistocracy has the feeling that incompetence is very widespread in his company and even valued, in promotions for example. To confirm this feeling, he must take a step back: the question is not whether or not to like his manager, but to identify tangible evidence of his incompetence.
A boss who is uncomfortable with this concept may dismiss it, believing that his employees are complaining for nothing. However, at a time when we want to retain talent and preserve their motivation, we must be attentive to these situations, even if they are based on feelings, because they generate underperformance.
When can there be a presumption of kakistocracy?
In companies, when internal recruitment favors loyalty, networking and clannishness over competence. Or when the founder of a company places his relatives in management positions by having lower demands on them than on other candidates. Some employees are also confronted with the “competent trap”. In short, the manager prefers to promote less competent people than the hyper-competent one, who could overshadow him and whose expertise would be too complicated to replace. This causes suffering for the hyper-competent employee, which can go as far as the shame of working for incompetent people.
The use of consulting firms for missions that could have been conducted internally is another possible marker of kakistocracy, when it masks the incompetence of management for example. Finally, we find it in the administration, when competitions allow professional developments based on knowledge that has nothing to do with the reality of the coveted positions.
How can we combat this trend?
Because it is systemic, kakistocracy is very difficult to overthrow. The incompetent in power does not want to demolish everything. The diagnosis is already a first step towards healing. For the rest, very strong decisions are needed, such as a change of management team decided by a new board of directors. Otherwise, competent employees leave quickly. Or they become whistleblowers, with all the risks that this implies. For his part, the incompetent stays at his post because he is afraid to face the job market.
Another solution is to feminize teams up to management. Women have a different relationship with legitimacy and competence. They are more likely to seek to be competent before accepting a promotion.
You also call for a paradigm shift on incompetence…
Today there is a kind of orthodoxy of competence. You have to do this, for that job… But you can achieve performance in other ways. Little by little, you realize that there can be competence behind incompetence, provided you listen and take the time to think.
I spoke with professionals in the hotel and catering industry, a sector with a shortage of workers, about this. One idea was to rely on what candidates knew how to do, rather than training them to do it differently, by force. There may be other ways of serving the customer. The definition of competence is contextual.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
