Nexilist Notebook

Did you ever wonder why it was that there was so much over confidence out there? Look at the Iraq war, the financial collapse, etc. And the incompetence of organizations as lampooned in Dilbert is not that far from the truth. We all have stories of the problems of dealing with bureaucrats.

Some time back I read that the most realistic people were the pessimists. The optimists were happier but were less realistic than their confidence in their abilities and situation would suggest. 

Then I read about some research that suggested that people will forgive a leader who is wrong some of the time if only that leader is really confident. Apparently people prefer confidence to competence.

It turns out that groups with confident leaders do better than groups whose leaders are not as confident. So even with incompetence in leadership, those groups prosper.

The Peter’s Principle states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Now it has been found that the more you pay someone, the less competently they perform. This would explain Ken Lay who was “unaware of what his subordinates were doing” even with the huge salary that he was drawing.

So, it would seem that though our over-confident leaders may be overpaid and incompetent,  we will still follow them.