"If one person in the team has flawed information -- or is less competent -- then the outcome can be negative and perhaps you should completely ignore them"
Not very often do you run into people who have reliable information on how competent they are, but it is very easy to assess quickly on some complex subjects. What would be surprising to me is how difficult most people find it to tell someone else that "yes, unfortunately you are an idiot sir."
I've found all sorts of ways to tell people this after years of internet combat.
I also would safely assume that a study looking for productivity or creativity gains from 2 people would have diminishing returns as more people are introduced. Groupthink is pretty powerful and could overpower reliable information when the group is confident of the wrong things (as is often the case in democratic societies). As is the free rider problem to create deadwood problems instead of efficient gains.
The crucial element of any group though would indeed be how effectively it communicates reliable signals of accurate information gathering or the selection of new information to make use of, I don't think it would matter as much how many people are in a group of people willing to discuss their disagreements and arrive at agreements based on confident reliable information.
The problem is that most people seem to possess very different information when they disagree with each other and to boot, process it differently. A group composed of widely disparate information flows will probably be wildly creative at times and mostly be rendered inert by infighting over tedious details, while a group composed of well-coordinated but incorrect or unreliable information may get a lot done, but it will be mostly a waste of time.
Generally then it is best to rely on yourself to get things done if you are known to be more competent than others, and to only rely on other people who you have (mutually) assessed as competent to do what they can do (specialisation). That's a problem among people who are incompetent and who overestimate their abilities. But then again, that's not usually my problem.
06 September 2010
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8 comments:
If it was, would you know?
Given that most people tend to think that I am underselling my abilities at a given objective... yes, yes I would.
LOL
Other people think I'm competent, therefor I must be.
My point: Even if it was, you would still think it wasn't. Because all those people, whose problem it is, think it isn't their problem.
If you did know, you would correct it. Stands to reason that if it was your problem, you wouldn't know.
In general I notice when I fuck up. And correct it. Other people do not, or notice that I do not generally fuck up very often and decree that this provides me a degree of competency.
The basic premise for why I might be perceived as more competent is that I perceive myself as less competent than other people perceive me.
I don't think that was the question you were after. But the point I had is that having a lower opinion of yourself than what others seem (through their actions and stated opinions) to seems like at least a half-measured defence against overestimated competence. It was not simply "other people think I am competent, therefore I am" because there was a crucial phrase in there "underselling my abilities".
The general aspect and social purpose of "competency" is more like "better at something than other people, enough so as to be entrusted with the task over those others". It is not necessarily "actually excels at something" but rather a relative and subjective trait anyway.
Being perceived by a large enough number of people as competent should be ego-inflating. Seeking to remain (at least) competent therefore requires that one seek out errors and defects or criticisms and correct them if they can rather than presume that popular opinion will provide for competent achievement levels on its own.
Since my principle interaction with many people is through written "combat", it is essential that I understand their arguments and approaches in the event that they are right. If your point was "other people think you are competent, but this means nothing", then fine, I think that's a correct point so far as it goes.
But that's ultimately pretty meaningless counterpoint to the point I was attempting to make (albeit somewhat subtly since you obviously missed it): that being relatively humble in advance of that opinion makes it possible in one's mind that you might be wrong and thus gives you greater incentive to be correct (or competent).
The problem is that you can never be known to be more competent, you can only be percieved to be more competent.
My operating assumption from this line of debate is that you have formed a rather low opinion of (my) competency based on the fact that you frequently disagree for undisclosed reasons and that it is therefore important to prove that I could be incompetent in order to dismiss those disagreements as invalid. Which is fine. But I have plenty enough doubt of my ability without you adding to it.
As I have indicated, I'm not sure that "being known" to be competent is possible or a "problem" worth trying to investigate. Or rather, because the "being known" is assessed subjectively by other people's perceptions, it does not necessarily matter very much whether it contains any objective or empirical value (ie you ARE competent, not simply because WE say so) so long as that perception remains active. I admit there are ways to keep it active where it would be true or false, but in most cases, this seems irrelevant to the question of whether someone is "known to be" competent as the distinction between subjective knowledge (perception) and objective knowledge(known set) generally becomes insignificant when we are dealing with a set of knowledge based largely on a set subjective opinions.
What a person could do however if they wished to look for ways to improve their competency is reference objective or measured achievements like efficiency rates at shared tasks between other people or "standardized" achievement like grades or testing and look for evidence to prove or disprove the thesis that they are (more) competent at a given task or ability than other people.
Or they could just ask the opinion of other people who they themselves presume to be more competent and live with their conclusion. Then observe differences in achievement and manner and seek to copy them for themselves if possible.
Yeah well, I wish you were incompetent. It is, according to my subjective knowledge, my own inability to express ideas not some incompetence on your part to understand them when expressed coherently.
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