Pull to Eject

Incompetence is so prevalent in the work force that some of the most successful entertainment has been derived from it.

The Office mockumentary produced 9 seasons of Dunder Mifflin material based on the incompetent leadership of Michael Scott.

The Dilbert cartoon - on the scene since 1989 - has been so accurate in its satirical office humor that it’s been published in 2000 newspapers, in 65 countries and in 25 languages.

That’s right - incompetency is so abundant that it crosses language and geographic barriers.

If you’ve spent any time working with other humans, you’ve seen it first hand: the world is overwhelmed by people who are incredibly incompetent at exactly the thing they were hired for.

I used a different acronym for incompetence in my IT consulting days: PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair).

The answer may well be the Peter Principle - that eventually, “every employee tends to rise to his [or her] level of incompetence.”

If you find yourself yourself frustrated with your boss (and their reluctance to give you a promotion) or with your subordinates (and their inability to carry out your instructions) it’s worth considering the possibility that you’ve already reached your “level of incompetence”, in Peter’s words, and you just don’t know it.

You can correct flaws, build skills or find a new position.

Many times the best new position is one you need to create on your own.

Did you know?

The majority of startups in the U.S. are launched by people over 45?

The world needs your competence.

Now go launch something 🚀 

Modern Tools

Project management software tools are such a commodity that you should change them out periodically.

Before SaaS, we made intranet project management tools. Next we bought Basecamp, then Apple cloud, then Sharepoint. Later it was Evernote, Confluence, Slack, and today it’s Notion. You can start for free.

• Notion - Infinitely configurable, Notion is the no code way to organize all your digital assets. You can work the way you want. Notion can be customized for notes, projects, documents, wikis, and more.

  • It’s a great communication platform for partners and clients

  • There’s an entire cottage industry of Notion templates that might be perfect foundation for your business.

  • Selling Notion pages as stand alone products might even be your first digital product … just sayin

Old School Wisdom

Peter Drucker has had a huge influence over management for decades. He wrote 39 books that have been translated into more than 30 languages.

One favorite is Innovation and Entrepreneurship (#ad) which leverages all of his business experience into bite sized snippets for starting your own.

‘Simplify your product for near-morons’ seems like the perfect tenet ;-)

Free Knowledge

If you’re reading this newsletter via browser, you should thank Marc Andreessen. He’s been right about technology for so long its easy to forget that he built the first visual browser (Mosaic) and co-founded Netscape. After changing how we consume the internet, he founded Andreessen Horowitz and invested in many unicorns including, Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Shared with me by Launch Key subscriber Patrick McLean, Andreessen’s latest Techno-Optimist Manifesto is a must-read technology state of the union. It’s also a reminder to follow Andreessen Horowitz if you want to see where the puck is going.

Visual Crapshoot

Do you know people who should read the Launch Key? You know what to do