Delusions Of Competency

One of the greatest privileges I had in 12 years at Xero was getting to work with and observe up-close, some of the smartest and most able people in the world.

I don’t use these terms lightly, as we might sometimes do when we throw around kindhearted or sentimental compliments about people and teams we care about. Instead, I mean them in the very literal sense that I’m pretty sure I hung out with some of the smartest and most able people on the planet.

And doing so taught me several things, but one of the greatest impacts it had on me was that it forced me to recalibrate the scale upon which I’d been measuring ability.

Simply put, if I had been previously operating on an assumed ability scale which ran from 0-10, and where I might have scored myself a seven or maybe an eight on a good day, then being exposed to super smart people revealed to me that the ability scale actually goes to 20 — it was as if I’d unlocked a door to a secret world nobody had told me about.

Hold that thought…

I’m a lifelong video gamer who’s been playing video games for over forty years, and I consider myself one of the best gamers I know. I'd easily place myself at the top of the table among my immediate family and social circle. One of my favourite video game genres is the racing sim, into which I’ve probably sunk months of my life. Earlier this year, I dutifully purchased Gran Turismo 7, the latest update to the legendary, 25-year Gran Turismo canon on the PlayStation.

Now, as a hardened racing sim player, I’d say that I’m very good at Gran Turismo and probably the best in my social group. So this year, fancying my chances, for the first time I tried out the e-Sports aspect of Gran Turismo, where instead of competing against the in-game AI-based competition, you compete online against other human players around the world in leagues organised around your ability and performance in online races. The driver ability rankings scale from A+ for the very best drivers in the world, down through A, B, and C, with a D ranking for the lowest-performing drivers.

After 40 years of racing sims and endless hours of effort I’ve put into this online racing mode, the highest ranking I’ve managed to attain is B. Occasionally, I'll even drop to a C. I can’t tell you what a devastating wake-up call it was to discover that I’m pretty mediocre at racing sims.

Both these situations tell the same story. First, we all tend to measure ability against a limited sample size and dataset; most often, that will be a simple reflection or aggregate of our past life and working experience, prior managers and peers. And when you reach a level of relative competence inside this cohort of expertise, for example, an 8 out of 10, then it’s likely that we might subconsciously start to cruise and stop learning or growing in a way we wouldn’t if we realised the scale went to 20.

Second, if you suffer from Impostor Syndrome — most people do, but as we know, the first rule of Impostor Syndrome Club is you do not talk about Impostor Syndrome Club (Fight Club, such a great movie) — then the good news is all those people you thought were better than you are most likely also below 10 on the 20 scale — so, in reality, they’re much closer to you in ability than they are the people with the highest ability. This news might be something of a hope-bringing leveller for you.

Third, no matter how good you think you are, it’s highly likely that you still have a lot to learn and a ton more ability to acquire and hone, so it’s time to recalibrate your own scale and start pushing yourself again, reading more, and finding new smart people to hang out with and learn from.

Because, if I could leave you with one thing about personal development and ability, it’s that it really does go to 20.