The competence crisis is a Story Everyone Recognises but No One Says Out Loud
It starts the same way it always does.
A meeting invite lands in your calendar. No real agenda. Just a vague title that suggests importance without saying anything useful. You join anyway, because not joining would raise more questions than attending something pointless.
The screen fills up. Cameras off. A few polite greetings. Someone makes a comment about how busy things are, another mentions deadlines.
Then the person in charge starts speaking, and within a few minutes, you realise something. They don’t understand what they’re talking about. Not fully, not properly and certainly not in a way that gives you any confidence that the next decision will make things better.
They’re repeating language they’ve heard before. Using phrases that sound right. Referencing a strategy without actually saying anything that resembles one.
You glance at the other faces on the call. The slight pauses. The muted reactions. The careful silence.
Everyone else sees it too.
No one says it.
The meeting continues.
Questions are asked that go unanswered, and decisions are hinted at but never made. Actions are vaguely assigned, usually to the people who already know what needs to happen anyway.
After forty-five minutes, the call ends.
Nothing has moved forward.
But something has definitely moved.
The work has shifted downward, the responsibility has shifted sideways, and the weight of that meeting now sits with the people who actually understand what needs to be done.
This isn’t a one-off.
This is the pattern.
For a long time, we’ve told ourselves a story about leadership.
We’ve told ourselves that the people in charge are there because they earned it. That they’ve proven something, that they’ve demonstrated capability, judgment, and depth.
It’s a comforting story.
It allows the system to make sense, but if you’ve spent enough time inside any organisation, you start to notice the cracks in that story.
You see people rise who were never the strongest performers. You watch decisions being made by individuals who don’t fully understand the consequences, and you sit in rooms where the person leading the conversation is the least equipped to guide it.
And eventually, a different explanation starts to feel more accurate.
People don’t rise because they are the most competent.
They rise because they are the most acceptable.
Acceptable to the way things already work. Acceptable to the people already in control, and acceptable to a system that values predictability over disruption.
Competence is not the deciding factor.
Alignment is.
Once you see that, everything changes, and you start to recognise the patterns in people.
The Translator
There’s the one who always speaks, but never says anything new. They listen carefully, not to understand, but to rephrase. Absorbing ideas from the room and feed them back with just enough polish to sound like a contribution.
People call them strong communicators, but all they’re really doing is passing information along.
The Politician
Then there’s the one who always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Understanding how things look, how things are perceived, and how success is framed.
Rarely committing too early, whilst rarely taking a position that can be challenged. They move carefully, aligning themselves with whoever holds power in that moment.
They are seen as strategic.
In reality, they are managing perception, not outcomes.
The Ghost
And then there’s the one you barely notice until something goes wrong.
When pressure builds, they retreat. If decisions are required, they stall, and when accountability is needed, they push it upward or disappear. They avoid criticism because they avoid exposure, and people mistake that for steadiness.
In reality, they are absent when it matters.
None of this is new.
But it is becoming harder to ignore, because the environment is changing.
For years, it was possible to survive in leadership by sounding knowledgeable. By speaking confidently enough that no one questioned the depth behind it. By relying on the fact that most people didn’t have immediate access to better answers.
That’s no longer true.
The moment someone speaks now, others can check, challenge, and verify. Insight isn’t scarce anymore, and no one controls information. Which means the gap between someone who understands and someone who performs understanding is becoming ever increasingly visible.
And visibility changes everything.
At the same time, the way we work has shifted.
When people are not physically present, it becomes easier to create the appearance of productivity. Meetings fill calendars. Messages fill inboxes. Updates give the illusion of movement, but illusion is not progress.
And when illusion becomes normal, competence becomes optional.
The real impact doesn’t show up in reports or metrics; it shows up in people.
It shows up in the person who used to speak up, but now stays quiet because it makes no difference. Also showing up in the person who knows the answer but has learned that giving it creates more friction than value. It shows up in the slow shift from effort to compliance.
Do what’s asked. Deliver what’s required. Don’t push too hard or question too much, certainly don’t sound negative.
Because questioning the system rarely changes it, it just changes how the system sees you. Over time, the people who care the most either adapt or leave, and when they leave, they take something with them that you can’t replace.
Not just skill, but standards.
At some point, you stop asking whether the system is broken, because broken systems don’t hold themselves together this well. What you start to realise is that the system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It promotes stability, protects itself, and filters out anything that causes too much disruption, even if that disruption would lead to improvement.
It doesn’t fail to recognise competence; it chooses not to prioritise it. Because competence is unpredictable.
It asks questions, and challenges assumptions. It exposes weaknesses, and systems built on control don’t reward that.
They manage it, or they remove it.
So you sit in another meeting.
Another conversation led by someone who sounds confident but says very little. With a set of decisions that feel disconnected from reality. Along with a moment where you catch yourself thinking something you wouldn’t say out loud.
How is this person in charge?
And the answer, whether you like it or not, is simple.
Because the system allows it and rewards it. Because enough people see it and choose not to challenge it.
Not always out of fear. Sometimes out of practicality. Sometimes, because they’ve learned that pushing back comes at a cost that isn’t worth paying.
And that’s where the real question sits.
Not with leadership.
With you.
Because once you see it clearly, you don’t get to pretend you don’t. You don’t get to sit in the room, recognise the gap, and believe you’re separate from it.
You’re part of the system too.
The silence sustains it. The compliance stabilises it. The acceptance normalises it.
And none of that changes unless someone decides it will.
So the next time you find yourself in that meeting, listening to someone lead without understanding, watching decisions form without direction, feeling that familiar frustration build quietly in the background, pause for a second.
Don’t judge them, decide what you’re going to do about it, because the competence crisis is right out in the open.
It’s visible.
Every day.
In rooms like that.
The only question is who’s willing to say it out loud, even if it could mean killing your career.
This is also the system I break down in The Bullshit Economy: Leadership, Power, and the cost of pretending.