Mediocrity as TBR approach to work

Harriet Miers nomination continues to draw much commentary, in the blogosphere and tree-wasting media. Having no connection to law, lawyers or government, I don’t consider myself sufficiently informed to form valuble opinion. However, this somewhat tangential take on the issue interested me.

It is one thing to say, as W. Kristol does, that Ms. Miers is not qualified for the job for the reasons of her unfamiliarity with the subject of Constitutional Law, and the other – to assume her working in Corporate Law indicates lack of talent. First, I don’t see how a career in private business is proof of someone’s mediocrity; it’s definitely not self-evident. Second, as expressed in the linked opinions Ms. Young cites in her post, if we go on that unsubstantiated assumption and decide it’s a given, why consider mediocrity necessarily a bad thing? After all, brilliant people are noticeable only on a much more numerous background of mediocre minds, so may be it’s time to give voice to a non-intellectual, a “common sense” person.

I started to pay attention to this discussion because arguments pro and contra mediocrity have wider implications than the topic at hand.

As someone who grew up in a socialist state, I was raised on the idea of superiority of the collective intellect (read: masses of average brains) vs. an individual, however brilliant. Politicians, from the union functionary to the heads of state, proudly declared their average abilities: usually undergraduate education, no professional achievements of any meaningful kind, certainly no post-graduate degrees (or purely decorative ones). Intellectuals were used for utilitarian purposes but frowned upon. In proper illustration to Ayn Rand’s Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think, we’ve seen how efficient and prosperous this system turned out to be. Sadly, this mindset isn’t exactly dead in the country formerly known as Soviet Union, if only by the example of its leader, whose highest rank in the KGB (which is equivalent of professional activity in his case) was Lieutenant Colonel,a mid-level bureaucrat, in the hierarchy of spies.

I see a connection here with Technically Beyond Reproach theory, by Seth Godin, whose excellent blog I found thanks to equally excellent Alice in Texas.

As he says, abundance means that you spend a lot of time imagining how you will overdeliver. TBR means you start from the beginning making sure that the work you do will either meet spec or you’ll have a really good excuse.

It is annoying enough to have our highest officials in government whose talents don’t include brilliant intellect. Common agreement is that this handicap is compensated by layers of brilliant experts surrounding the administrator. Don’t we have to start worrying when experts’ mediocrity is proclaimed to be desirable?