Incompetence

Ok, don't get me wrong, incompetence is generally a bad thing. Sometimes, though, the lack of competence (which of course basically means incompetence) can be a great thing.

Take this quote from Seth Green during an interview with Guy Kawasaki:

People who are competent are afraid to fail, afraid to experiment. They like being competent and defend it.

You see this a lot in software engineering. People's careers are based on their competence in a specific subject, so everyone is terrified of looking incompetent. I think you see this in management as well. There is some odd assumption out there that managers should know more than their employees, that they have the ability to help mediate problems and come up with answers better than their employees.

In both situations this "competence" can be incredibly detrimental. Now I'm not saying that incompetence should be celebrated, but rather that people who are indeed competent, but are confident enough to be wrong, admit what they do not know, take risks and fail, are really the ones that should be celebrated. Again a little dose of humility goes a long way in this situation.