Panning for Gold

My oldest brother used to love (as a Medical Student) asking, “What do you call a Medical Student who gets 50% for their final exam?”. The answer is Doctor. It is only in the classroom setting where the false laboratory conditions allow us to weigh and measure everybody. You can even ask university level questions for 2 marks to separate the first and second place 12-year olds who are getting everything “at their level” right. In the real world, meritocracy is limited by the fact that no one cares how clever you are. It is not about you. They want their problem solved. If there is an over supply of problem solvers, you do not have to pay them very much. As more people can read, write, think, create, and exchange ideas, it gets harder to pretend the barrier to wealth is merit. The barriers are not skills and knowledge. The barriers are the containers. Rather than survival of the fittest, it is survival of the most flexible. What is the container in which you make money? Why can’t others make money in that way? What if that container no longer existed?

Finding Balance

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Balanced Scorecards are ways of managing performance. They are particularly challenging in areas that are hard to quantify and articulate. A lot of my work for money involved taking technical concepts, trying to wrap my head around them, then trying to make them easier for others to wrap their head around. Understanding is incredibly hard to quantify. Trust even more so. It takes years to build, and can be broken in an instant. Particularly if you are looking for reasons or data points to not trust someone. Everyone is holey. Everyone is flawed. A bigger flaw is looking for holes in other people. To look for reasons to distrust. The problem with KPIs is the list gets long fast. So if a task (maintain trust) is “worth 2%” of a year’s assessment, the quantifying or checklist becomes a spurious form of false confidence. Easier is to have a list of things you won’t do. Even better is to have an incredibly short list (three key things), and to trust people. Trusting doesn’t mean being a sucker. You can build buffers, checks and balances. But it does mean accepting that not everything can be controlled or quantified. It does mean building systems that aren’t designed to cut people off like gangrenous limbs.

Degrading Categories

I hate feeling incompetent. Almost as much as I hate the feeling of having gotten it wrong by someone. In a way that I can’t correct. Intellectually I get the idea of the importance of not caring what other people think. But I do care. And people, all people, have limits to their skills and knowledge. Money lets you hide it somewhat. You can pay people to do the things you can’t do. You can even convince yourself that that is because your time is worth more than theirs. That the thing you specialise in is more important than the thing they do. Particularly if it pays more. So, paying them to do the thing you can’t do is protecting your time. You can even convince yourself that you could do the thing they do, if you chose to. Underlying a lot of problematic prejudice is a fundamental belief in superiority. Dividing people into binary categories of “good enough” and “not good enough”. Second class citizens. Surrounding yourself with people you feel are good enough. Not doing the work to see the others. Underlying that is probably the internal voice telling you you aren’t good enough. The voice that is secretly aware of all the things you can’t do.