I am working this week to reconcile competence and improvement with understanding and equity.

• To be understanding is to be nice; as it should be.
• To be competent is to be truthful; construed by some as insensitive.
• The incompetent still need to be significant, contribute, and (in today’s world) earn a living.
• Objectively, an individual is a resource.
• Incompetence is not a reflection of an individual. Incompetence is a misplaced human resource.
• A reallocation of human resources is required for improvement.
• Financial compensation is a resource.
• A reallocation of financial resources is required for equity.
• Improvement requires competence.
• The long-term survival of Humanity requires improvement.
• Equity requires understanding.
• The day-to-day survival of the individual requires equity.
• To reallocate resources requires power.
• Power is afraid.
• Power is afraid that a reallocation of financial resources would diminish their compensation thus their power.
• Power is afraid that an equitable reallocation of human resources would require a reallocation of financial resources.
• So, power has created a system in which the privileged are gently guided on unique journeys to amazing accomplishments as enablers and defenders of the status quo.
• So, power has created a system in which the underprivileged, (the majority), are gently misguided, ill-advised, misled, divided, misused, stirred, manipulated, set against each other, distanced, displaced, oppressed.

So I believe I have determined that though competence and improvement appear to be at odds with understanding and equity, they are so only when we accept or believe the superficial rhetorical definitions spewed by power. Power wants us to believe that equity hinders improvement because power is afraid. It is power that holds us back, maintaining status quo, working very hard to keep us not only from equity but in turn competence, improvement, and understanding. If power weren’t afraid (and all-powerful) we could reallocate and make strides toward both long-term and day-to-day survival.

Here is an example of how power works to maintain. Today higher education is still largely for the privileged and the potentially-privileged (a potential that is still largely determined by power). The concepts, gently guided – unique journey – amazing accomplishments (from a bullet point above), came in an email directly from a large state university’s Student Success office reminding faculty and staff that “student success and retention are at an all-time high,” and encouraging us to continue this trend. When the students appear to do well, we look good and everyone is comfortable and happy so why wouldn’t we continue to gently guide each other into the jaws of this self-fulfilling prophecy. And this is our idea, (i.e. power’s definition), of understanding and equity – enabling the privileged and aspirants-to-privileged to become enablers and defenders.

Having worked for more than 20 employers over 5 decades, I also see this dynamic asserting itself more and more in the workplace. I believe the correlation between competence and compensation in the workplace has become less and less in recent decades. I don’t believe it has ever been what the ‘American Dream’ would have me believe. I am currently in a circumstance in which there is little to no correlation between competence and compensation, and I believe the larger an organization the more so this is true. From where I sit, the process by which compensation is decided is more strongly correlated with the extent to which one is an enabler and defender of the status quo than it is with competence. And just as with the students, we are all amazing and outstanding and phenomenal and great and happy and comfortable. Though obviously this comfortable lack of progress should not positively influence one’s compensation, and though one might be inclined to argue that competence should more positively correlate with compensation (as I appear to do up to now in this paragraph), if incompetence is merely a misplaced resource, then instead I would have to argue that one’s degree of competence or incompetence in a specific job should also not positively or negatively influence one’s compensation but should instead trigger a reallocation of human resources. And some might say, “yes, reallocate – the incompetent should be fired and sent on their merry way to find a new job.” But that is not understanding or equitable partially because this method of reallocating financial resources is moving in the wrong direction and (perhaps) largely due to the multitude of interpretations for incompetent. Again, incompetence is not a reflection of an individual; incompetence is a reflection of a system in which a human resource is misplaced.

Yet there remains a stigma associated with incompetence – there should not be. The shame is on power, and on secondary power; all those who work so very hard to maintain status quo. The irreconcilable difference here is not between equity and improvement or between understanding and competence; the irreconcilable difference here is between the pretense of entitlement and the day-to-day and long-term survival of the individual and the species.

Shame on me, shame on you, shame on us.