Originally Posted by
CurtainTwitcher
Excellent perspective AP. Your post reminds me very much of a recent short essay by the belligerent Nassim Taleb:
Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons
Unfortunately we live in the century of the "good idea", we have been trained that appearance, presentation and a convincing narrative equals future success. Reality eventually catches up with these types. The only difference is that JB's former rival appears to have recognised the errors of his convincing narrative (Asian experiment) and has backtracked out in a face saving manner. JB, unfortunately didn't have the grip on the domestic market profit, nor a much broader profit seeking shareholder base to enable the unpicking of clearly disastrous set of strategies.
The real world eventually catches up with empty suits & show pony's. However, as Taleb would say, they don't have any real
skin in the game.
Thanks CurtainTwitcher... as the person I know would refer to these types ... "time servers".
Your article excerpt is very interesting.
The bit about Butchers makes me laugh because the first thing it made me think of was the man featured in the statue mounted on a horse at the Palace of Westminster... one Oliver Cromwell.
Uncouth, rough farmer type but probably one of the most significant and effective leaders in the history of the United Kingdom and the one who's actions had the longest term effect (putting aside the obvious outdated religious and social views he held in some respects).
He was allegedly offered the Crown at one point and his response when he turned it down and they asked "What shall we do with it" was "Worthless trinket, give it to a whore for the price of her bed" (apologies for the clearly sexist and outdated reference but it shows he knew what was what and didn't need the fine clothes and silky speech).
I think it's a combination of what you say and to an extent, the Dunning-Kruger Effect where incompetents rise to high levels because they appear confident. They appear confident because the very fact of being incompetent means they are incapable of recognizing what competent is and thus have an inflated view of the abilities, hence the apparent confidence. These sort of people in my experience also spend a lot of time 'looking the part'.