Core Competencies

From a reader comment at InsideHigherED:

“In the business world, it’s common to outsource certain roles and functions in order for your business to focus on its “core competencies.” You want to focus on what’s important, which makes sense. But what does it say that universities outsource labor for what should be one of their major functions: teaching undergraduates?”

One of my first thoughts on reading this was an early Dilbert comic strip in which it is announced that management is going to start outsourcing the the operations it doesn’t do well. The punchline was along the lines, “Wait…they aren’t very good at knowing what they aren’t good at.”

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. It’s clear to me that a lot of people don’t seem to be aware that they really aren’t very good at the things they are doing. I think I might have always assumed they just didn’t care. Now it just seems more likely that they just don’t know that they simply aren’t good at what they do. Often though, they express great confidence in the rightness of what they are doing.

It seems like self-assessment should be core competency. We need to be able to accurately assess what we are competent at, what we are not, and what we are willing to invest our time and effort into to learn. We can’t do everything ourselves, and once we are no longer toddlers we can’t expect to have everything outsourced for us.

How do we teach self-assessment when it seems most people won’t even engage in self-reflection?

There have been a number of conversations around at work lately about recognizing our own biases. It’s a tough nut to crack. First, one has to grant the possibility that bias exists in our thinking and/or behavior. This is generally not a comfortable exercise, I think, for most people. The next step is to simply pay attention to yourself and critically assess what you do, questioning the reasons for your choices. Perhaps the most important thing is to question the choices for which you feel have no reasons.

So, I’ve lost nearly a hundred pounds and clinic has kicked me out of the weight-loss program into maintenance. I’m not exactly thrilled with this. I feel that that I have a more to lose on my belly. However, I’m told that it is just “loose skin.”

I have serious doubts.

I can tell the difference in layers, what’s skin, what’s muscle, and what’s in between that’s not either of those things. There is still fat to lose.

So, there are two explanations as I see it. One, is a combination of liability and counting a success. A weight-loss clinic loses credibility if it’s clientele get sick (especially if they die) and moving someone from an unhealthy BMI to a healthy BMI is an easy measure of success. On a straight BMI chart, I am just inside the healthy range. Further, looking at various BMI charts adjusted for age and gender, I am either safely in the middle or at the 25th percentile.  In this context, I can see their point.

On the other hand, having heard this loose skin explanation on two consecutive days from two different types of providers, I looked at them and thought, “Really?” It seemed like rationalization to me. One, the likely payoff for their practice was minimal.  Another five or ten pounds wasn’t going to make me any more of a success. Two, admitting that there was still a layer of fat to lose would require them to honestly admit the same truth for themselves.

I admit to the possibility that I am being unfair in my assessment. I may be somewhat obsessive about weight-loss, but given how much I have eaten this week, I don’t think that’s really the problem. I am sticking to healthy balance of calories in and out. I also may be wrong in thinking I can achieve the look I want, but I don’t think I am wrong in wanting to try.

Bringing this back full circle, how can I know what my core competencies are until I create adequate patterns of success and failure? What constitutes enough experience?


Be nice. It won't hurt either of us.


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