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Super-Competency
… and how we achieve it.
It is a well-established fact that nearly fifty percent of people are below average. The conclusion is drawn from basic mathematics. It can be checked and double-checked. It is true. So how do we manage to live in this cosmos of mediocrity?
The apparently dismal claim is actually a great example of the value we derive from the rhetorical device we call tautology. My spouse and I have a sign in our front yard with a series of statements regarding what we believe. Among those statements is “Love is love.” That is the primary offender since, as we have been told, “It’s just a tautology,” and yet, it provides value. The well-designed tautology, forces us to reconsider a word by forcing us to respond to it as both a subject and an object. That same word from two different perspectives may open the creative mind to new understanding.
That fact that nearly fifty percent of people are truly below average forces us to question what the concept of average means. In so doing, we realize that it is over-broad. Are fifty percent of my friends below average? Were half of the members of my engineering teams below average? Should half of employees be dismissed for undue mediocrity? With this we realize that the statement can’t possibly be true even though, mathematically, it is. In truth, we are all, every one of us, below average in…
