Post-Competence

Pundits call ours the post-truth era.

I think it's the post-competence era.

In fewer than 10 days, we've seen:

• Mariah Carey botch lip-synching before 11.6 million viewers on live TV
  
  
• Walt Disney recall 15,000 Minnie Mouse infant sweatshirts due to a choking hazard
  
  
• Express (published by The Washington Post) illustrate its cover story on the Women's March on Washington with the male symbol
  
  
• Yahoo Finance Tweet "Trump Wants a Much Bigger Navy" using the "N word"

Dan Lyons' 2016 memoir, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, provides a strong clue for why we're engulfed in post-competence.

Taking his cue from Steve Jobs, Lyons calls it "the bozo explosion."

Bozos explode in companies when "B players hire C players, so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players."

Of course, there's another, more powerful force in effect: companies' drive to profit at their customers' expense.

That drive manifests itself every day in companies' ready willingness to subject customers to post-competent employees—and to the fiascos they create.