People want competence, seemingly over everything else
When I talk about authority, I’m really talking about competence. When looking for a guide, a hero trusts somebody who knows what they’re doing. The guide doesn’t have to be perfect, but the guide needs to have serious experience helping other heroes win the day.
Donald Miller • Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
Ordinarily, Americans prefer day-to-day competence rather than partisanship in the people they elect. Yet whenever they are reminded that the other side is pushing their country toward catastrophe, they are apt to forget about day-to-day competence.
Neil Howe • The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End
As geographical constraints diminish, the world is becoming more dangerous for those who aren’t great at their job.
Dror Poleg • Slack and the Imaginary Economy.
The most competent people I know are pretty good at basically anything they put their minds to, because they just design a process and run it. I think this is largely mental and emotional—the hardest part isn’t figuring out the steps, it’s enduring the psychological discomfort of doing them and then adapting.
Beyond committed individuals, there’s an important role for political parties that are willing to engage with imagination to set up commissions, deliberations and explorations of the landscape ahead of them. Since parties remain our only institutions designed to create synthetic programmes that can win majority support, it’s vital that they attend
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