Where we are

One year in

A subscriber suggested that it would be traditional to have an anniversary post. I missed it by a month or so, but better late than never!

I have to apologize for the slowed pace of posting. I had written a stock of articles when we started, and set what I thought was a reasonable pace. What I’m finding now is that new articles take two weeks for me to write well, and to check with the subjects to be sure I’m not writing anything too defamatory, or outright wrong. Which usually lets me post the article on the third week. I’ve got a couple of subscriber-only posts waiting in the wings for time to add to and polish them. I can do new posts every two weeks, but the ones I’ve done in a week or two are just not as good as the ones I’m giving a week to percolate. Once I start thinking about someone and their signature (to me) skill, I’m more likely to think of examples over a little more time and make the articles richer.

I hope no one is in a hurry.

The roadmap is this: I plan to illustrate the remaining facets of Competence I’ve derived; along the way I’ll have more subscriber-only posts about recognizing Competence, and another set on how to cultivate the facets of Competence in oneself or others. Once I’ve exhausted what I’ve learned on the topic, I plan to have a few posts that boil the topic down to the list itself and go into a bit more depth about what ties them all together. The difference between competence and Competence. At that point I have some ideas about how to make this useful on an ongoing basis, or to wrap it up gracefully as a complete work.

I have more facets of Competence to discuss, and an array of excellent folks who can illustrate them. Matching the people to the skill is getting dicier. I’m lining up my remaining exemplars, in timeline order, with the remaining skills. Sometimes I set to writing and change my mind. I’ll switch to a different skill mid-stream. Though the point is to describe the skill, I also want to do justice to the people I’m writing about. Many of them have a lot of these skills in some measure, so I could write about almost anything. But in practice it’s more fun to write about something they’ve truly mastered, a gift they bring to the world, rather than just something they can do if it’s needful. That’s what makes this fun for me.

Throughout this series, I hope you’ve been catching an undercurrent of fun. It is fun to bring a lot of skills to bear on an activity you care about. I’ve spent as much of my life as I can recall watching people to figure out what makes them good at things. That’s how I’ve spotted these Competent people. It’s how I found commonalities between extremely different people doing wildly different things with their lives. That delicate balance of “needful” with “enjoyable” is something they achieve more often than not. It’s something I’ve only lately come to realize matters. Since telling you about these amazing people and this awesome Competence thing is just something I want to do, it’s also important to me to enjoy doing it. The result will ultimately be better if I do.

In terms of broader goals, I guess I’m reporting out a few decades of observation, in as orderly and yet fun to read a way as I can manage. I don’t expect a whole lot. I’m not an expert in an academic discipline, and I’m writing a Substack, on a subject that isn’t particularly time-bound or pressing. I do think it’s an under-studied niche or I wouldn’t make the effort, but I don’t think it can save the world.

What I do think is that people who 1. agree with my premise (that there is a discrete set of symbiotic attributes that comprise a composite form of “big-C” Competence, that is incredibly effective and useful) and 2. think I’ve gotten it close to right, might find the writing useful. They might choose to cultivate those attributes that are weak or absent, in order to become Competent themselves, and at worst likely become a little better for the world. Or they might find themselves in positions to recruit (and recognize) Competent or near-Competent people, or cultivate people into that state. And if they do, they might be able to remove obstacles to those people accomplishing monumental things.

The world has these people already, it appears that sometimes they form themselves and just try to stop them! These people are good at making themselves useful. Whether that’s taking themselves out of pointless jobs, or “managing up” and doing what’s needed in spite of executive failure above them, or in any other way identifying the need for a ball, designing one, manufacturing it, picking it up, and running…Competence exists.

But if this series makes it seem more real, identifiable, possible for the rest of us to cultivate, that’s good. These articles might be grains of sand that irritate us clams into making pearls.

So thank you for reading, sharing (I’ve been humbled by the number of shares and new subscribers). If I could wish for anything more, it would only be challenges, new stories in the comments, tweaks to my characterization based on your own observations. It’s a little early for what I might have missed (unless it’s something I missed on a specific attribute) but it’s always the right time to chime in with your own thoughts along the way.

I hope you’ll enjoy what’s coming in the next year!