2 thoughts on “Dumb Things”

  1. Dr. Helen linked to this article today. The article is titled, “The Intersection of Intelligence and Arrogance” and it contains an interesting paragraph. I get the impression the author was looking at a picture of Obama when writing it. It describes Obama perfectly.

    Low competence, high arrogance. They’re dangerous. They don’t realize the limits of their ability and don’t have the good sense to ask for a second opinion. They may have been taught they were special early on, even though it should have been obvious that every kid on the team got an award. Hubris often equals being out of touch with reality. And this is often a result of unconditional praise and reinforcement. Kids who don’t have great powers of observation and reason too often believe the message that they’re special, just for existing. Nice for building self esteem, not for building leaders who can deal with challenges of business and anticipate the consequences of bad decisions. They can make a big splash early in their careers but they’ll usually flame out. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen and their unfounded self confidence can propel them far beyond their true abilities. Then, they can take the organization down unless they’re very lucky.

    The reason Obama keeps saying dumb things is that he is not very intelligent about the real world.

  2. I got this from the late David Hackworth’s “About Face” about the people an Army General wants on staff and wants to avoid.

    The matrix was lazy/industrious for the columns, stupid/intelligent for the rows. The lazy-stupid can always be given some menial job, lazy-intelligent are suited for leadership as they figure out how to delegate the work. The industrious-intelligent are always good for your staff to do all of the intellectual “heavy lifting”, but the stupid-industrious you wanted to avoid, big time, because they would mess stuff up and you can’t stop them.

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