Simon,
I believe you can be competent, and still lack character. But I do not
think you can have character without competence.
I do not equate competency with character. I think a competent person has
a better chance of being ethical than an incompetent, hence my
unwillingness to cooperate, at any level, with people who have not
demonstrated a desire to become competent.
I think competency is critical to both competition and cooperation. What
do you get if two or more incompetent people try to compete? Anything
productive? Or put in a way that better demonstrates my point: What do
incompetent people compete for? They are competing for the opportunity to
live off of the work of others.
What do you get if two or more competent people compete? I think that
there are two results achieved from such competition: New knowledge, and
progress (technological, social, scientific, philosophic, etc.)
The only way to become productive is to learn. Man's instinctual abilities
are insufficient to maintain his own existence. Man must use his mind and
it's reasoning capacity to live. The food on my table is a product of the
knowledge I have and use in my work. It is also a product of the knowledge
of each person in the production and delivery chain, from the farmer, to
the shipper, to the grocer. As people compete for better ways to grow
food, distribute it, and sell it new knowledge is created which creates
advances in any number of disciplines.
New knowledge can be created through both competition and cooperation. The
combination of the two, in my mind, become tremendously powerful catalysts
for learning.
-- Benjamin Compton DWS -- "The GroupWise Integration Experts" (617) 267-0044 ext. 16 E-Mail: bcompton@emailsolutions.com http://www.emailsolutions.comLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>