Beware the gravitational pull of mediocrity

Discussion in 'Interesting/Unrelated' started by The Freezer, Aug 13, 2017.

  1. The Freezer

    The Freezer Just this guy, you know Staff Member

    From The Guardian's "Beware the gravitational pull of mediocrity":

    In the early years of the last century, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset proposed a solution to society’s ills that still strikes me as ingenious, in a deranged way. He argued that all public sector workers from the top down (though, come to think of it, why not everyone else, too?) should be demoted to the level beneath their current job. His reasoning foreshadowed the Peter Principle: in hierarchies, people “rise to their level of incompetence”. Do your job well, and you’re rewarded with promotion, until you reach a job you’re less good at, where you remain.

    In a recent book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, the tech investor Ben Horowitz adds a twist: “The Law of Crappy People”. As soon as someone on a given rung at a company gets as good as the worst person the next rung up, he or she may expect a promotion. Yet, if it’s granted, the firm’s talent levels will gradually slide downhill. No one person need be peculiarly crappy for this to occur; bureaucracies just tend to be crappier than the sum of their parts.

    Yet it’s wrong to think of these pitfalls as restricted to organisations. There’s a case to be made that the gravitational pull of the mediocre affects all life – as John Stuart Mill put it, that “the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind”. True, it’s most obvious in the workplace (hence the observation that “a meeting moves at the pace of the slowest mind in the room”), but the broader point is that in any domain – work, love, friendship, health – crappy solutions crowd out good ones time after time, so long as they’re not so bad as to destroy the system. People and organisations hit plateaux not because they couldn’t do better, but because a plateau is a tolerable, even comfortable place. Even evolution – life itself! – is all about mediocrity. “Survival of the fittest” isn’t a progression towards greatness; it just means the survival of the sufficiently non-terrible.

    And mediocrity is cunning: it can disguise itself as achievement. The cliche of a “mediocre” worker is a Dilbert-esque manager with little to do. But as Greg McKeown notes, in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less, the busyness of the go-getter can lead to mediocrity, too. Throw yourself at every opportunity and you’ll end up doing unimportant stuff – and badly. You can’t fight this with motivational tricks or cheesy mission statements: you need a discipline, a rule you apply daily, to counter the pull of the sub-par. For a company, that might mean stricter, more objective promotion policies. For the over-busy person, there’s McKeown’s “90% Rule” – when considering an option, ask: does it score at least 9/10 on some relevant criterion? If not, say no. (Ideally, that criterion is: “Is this fulfilling?”, but the rule still works if it’s “Does this pay the bills?”)

    Mediocrity is no mere character flaw, but a deep tendency of the universe, to be ceaselessly fought, with no hope of final victory. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
     
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  2. Glenn

    Glenn Administrator Staff Member

    "survival of the sufficiently non-terrible"

    That sums it all up :)
     
  3. Trouba

    Trouba Administrator Staff Member

    Great, I've been wanting to take a vacation for a long time :D

    I wonder if "mediocrity" is the inherent tendency/desire toward a balanced and/or coherent system, rather than a "great" one. Because, relatively speaking, something is only great when compared to something bad or less great, as it's pretty certain no thing is "great" in itself or by its very nature. Being, therefore, a relative term, it doesn't matter that much where we put the needle on the great-meter, but what does matter is the balance or coherency of the system. I think if we juxtapose the American Dream (or whatever economic dream) with evolution then the fulfillment of the dream would surely be equivalent to the successful predator. Given the high number of socio- and psychopathic personalities in business I would say that's a correct assessment :D
     
    The Freezer likes this.
  4. The Freezer

    The Freezer Just this guy, you know Staff Member

    And yet we have Windows 10 -- which is neither great nor balanced or coherent. Where do we set our greatness-needle now?!? :what:
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2017
  5. Trouba

    Trouba Administrator Staff Member

    Apple chose the balance of devices, whereas Microsoft chose the schizo-OS. I don't think it will stand up to the Feather of Truth test :D

    [​IMG]
     

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