Why incompetent people succeed?

Everyone knows at least few of these people. They seem very incompetent on what they do, but still they seem to progress on their career all the time. They might do things totally opposite to your own thinking and it often seems that they don't get lot of things done. So how on earth they then succeed and get promotions and new jobs?

Competence is subjective. The ones who are competent on technical stuff often see that there are incompetent managers flying around in the organizations. That might be absolutely true, they might be quite incompetent on their technical skills. On the other hand they might have some other skill that is such a good one that is tackles the incompetence in tech stuff.

Another aspect of incompetence is priority. I have been always in RnD organizations, so I still the think the world from RnD focus. I sometimes see people, who don't understand products and processes to create products, as incompetent to do almost any job in organizations. Then when I'm surrounded with people from sales background, they don't see RnD to be that important, if important at all. They think that sales is the thing that keeps companies alive, not great products.

Point of view to the organizational success determines persons priority and priority often has a direct effect on quality of doing. Those who don't think marketing material is a key to companies success, often are quite poor to help on doing those. And therefore they might look to be incompetent when you are working with them.

Surely there are differences in skills with all people. Some are not as quick learners than others and some just can't see the big picture or can't understand the details. The main thing there is, that when thinking someone as incompetent, I've started to think about the strengths of the person. There must have been some skills that have brought her there. Then observing the person more closely, there almost always have been some things that she is such a good at that it overrules the other incompetences.

It's always better to try to learn from others than just envying what they have achieved. It is hard. Everyone has the little beast inside trying to say bad things about others to yourself. Just stay strong and fight back.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

What's the good intention other has in mind?

Sometime ago my old boss tough me this learning about arguing. When someone starts to argue with you on something, always think: "What's the good intention other have in mind when they disagree with you." I think this might have been learning from NLP or something, but the main thing is that for me it has worked well.

When I get feedback or someone disagrees with me, most often its nothing personal. Most often the other party has something worrying in their mind, but they can't really speak it out loud. Instead of only disagreeing, I've learned to start to finding out what's the thing worrying or why someone wants to do something differently.

It's not easy, but its worth of trying. Always think from the positive side: "what's the good intention other has in mind, when disagreeing."

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Positive disturbance

I've admired now for some weeks one of my new colleagues, who have turned the very basic disturbing phone call question around. He asks in phone calls, that "Is it a good moment for you?" I amongst many others tend to ask the question other way around, " is it a bad moment for you?" The intention with both questions is the same, finding out if other person wants to talk with you or not. Doing it in the first way may just make the moment to be more suitable.

I've known couple of other persons who have this capability to disturb without really disturbing. It's a good asset for person who needs to cooperate a lot with others. It's not only about how you place your words, but it's also about how you present your subject you were disturbing for in the first place. If you still, after disturbing, present your subject as if you would be sorry for disturbing, then the one disturbed can feel annoyed about disturbance. If you continue as if you were entitled for this disturbance because the importance of the subject, then it's less annoying.

Being positive and believing your subject has a positive effect on communication. People tend to be much more receptive and cooperative if you believe what you say is important and worth of the moment other gives to it. The saying: "Don't shoot the messenger" isn't always right. Poor messenger might not get the message through or make the message to be less important that it really is.

Everyone knows how to speak, good communication skills on the other hand is a luxury of a few. That's the reason I try to observe others and learn from their habits, in good and bad. It takes ages to learn to communicate with different audiences and with different technologies.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Considering options for the future

I guess you all already know that it's going to be hard time for all nokians in Finland. There most probably will soon be announced major layoffs and I'm under thread as almost everyone else. 

I've been thinking my options for some time now and one of the options would be running my own thing or co-running with some other guys. That's a long term dream and wish, but it's always so easy to find reasons why it's not suitable. Think of the following for example.

I would like to run my own business..

• but I haven't made any code for some time and hiring external coders makes starting new business bit harder
• but I have 2 small kids and girlfriend at home and I'm the only income for the family now
• but we have big mortgage I need to be paying off

Even though these are real, these are still excuses. Couple a days ago I decided to again think on the way Dan Pink's book told me, "change the word but to the word and", meaning that realize the obstacles you have and think again what you could do to overcome those .

So I decided to start one by one checking if those obstacles could be overtaken. That would give me more options on what to do in coming year or so. So I started to learn to code again. I'll use at least one hour each day to code and see if I'm still capable. I'm not expecting to be a world class coder until summer, but at least it will be easier to think what creating SW from my ideas would actually mean. I have to admit that I've really liked it so far. I did start easy, just to motivate myself.

I've learned that worrying won't bring any solutions. Being positive, doing, failing and learning will. So I'm going to be positively looking whatever challenges there will be ahead in coming year or so. 

Quite a self motivating speech. If you got this far, you might have been the only one. I just had to write this for myself.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen