U NCOMMON V IRTUES #1: M ERE C OMPETENCE

THE PRESIDENT MUST SECURE HIS COOPERATION, AND QUICKLY…

“In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly.
 
What to do!
 
Some one said to the President, "There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."
 
Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, & in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.
 
The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing- "Carry a message to Garcia!"
 
General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. ”
 
-- Elbert Hubbard, “ A Letter to Garcia ,” 1899
 
***
 
IN HEAVEN AND HELL…
 
There is a joke that goes something like this –
 
“In heaven, the cooks are French, the police are British, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Germans. In hell, the cooks are British, the police are French, the lovers are German and everything is organized by the Italians.”
 
Do you know why that joke is funny?
 
Because it’s true.
 
***
 
ON THE VARYING ATTRIBUTES OF DIFFERENT PLACES AND TIMES
 
Now, I’ve spent time in all of those countries, and in fact, I find them all marvelous. But is inarguably true that, in different times and places, some things are more rare than others.
 
Through an accident of scheduling, I found myself on four continents over a period of two weeks last year, going from Boston to Bogota to Dublin to Beijing from 27 October to 6 November.
 
Traveling at that pace is taxing and I recommend against it; really, it’s less sexy than it sounds.
 
But there is one strong advantage to it: it throws the differences between various societies into stark contrast.
 
Across just about all of Bogota society, there is just about an order of magnitude more attention to experience, decor, and aesthetics than the other places mentioned.
 
It’s beautiful… it’s really hard to describe if you haven’t seen it… at the Colombian university El CESA, the amount of care and attention and sheer beauty paid to decorations around Halloween, the amount of grooming and presentation that both men and women invest in…
 
… I don’t know how to describe it if you haven’t seen it. The people are beautiful, and they take experience so seriously. You can’t help but be inspired by the welcoming spaces they create and the detailed precision around beautification and immersion.
 
Contrast this to Beijing.
 
I lived in Beijing for years. Frankly, the Chinese just don’t do this. Luxury anywhere is of course largely the same as anywhere else, but outside of the uppermost reaches of society, the Chinese simply do not pay all that much attention to aesthetics.
 
The flipside is that the Chinese savings rate is, depending on what numbers you’re using, are somewhere from a little more than double the Colombian savings rate (Worldbank gross savings rate as % of GDP) to about 7x higher (IMF private savings rate as % of GNP).
 
Economists spend lots of time debating the merits of these numbers, arguing them and their implications; savings vs consumption, etc.
 
Whatever. We don’t need precision here. The simplest eye test shows Colombians caring much more about presentation, experience, and aesthetics and the Chinese saving a whole lot more money than the Colombians (more than pretty much everyone, actually).
 
***
 
NOW, YOU’D THINK IN A RATIONAL WORLD…
 
So I’m scratching my head.
 
You don’t need to be a genius to work these calculations out –
 
Colombia:
Less savings = less financial capital accumulating = lower asset prices.
 
China:
Less spending on aesthetics = lower cost to have top-quality aesthetics = ability to differentiate and gain advantages with relatively lower spending on aesthetics.
 
***
 
DOING WHAT’S UNCOMMON IN YOUR SOCIETY WOULD LEAD TO PROFIT, BUT…
 
… most people can’t bring themselves to do it.
 
People thus compete on the same parameters everyone else in their society competes, and thus they get middling or underperforming results.
 
***
 
RARER ATTRIBUTES SHOULD OUTPERFORM, SHOULD THEY NOT?
 
One of the first really beautiful webapps natively developed in China was Weixin (you can download it as “WeChat” in the West), and indeed, they took over the market rapidly and now have over one billion created accounts with 650 million active users.
 
This is unsurprising. The history of the world is the history of people investing in dying trends to follow the crowd, whereas the people looking forwards and developing rarer skills and abilities get ahead.
 
This is easy enough to see in investing and business – you don’t want to be in an aggressive commoditized space with no differentiation, and you don’t want to buy the asset class that’s overpriced because everyone else invests in it without checking the fundamentals.
 
***
 
UNCOMMON OUTPERFORMS
 
Both hyper-pragmatic cost suppression (currently very normal in Beijing) and an intense devotion and care about experience and aesthetics (currently very normal in Bogota) – both of these are virtues.
 
Likewise, willingness to take smart risks is a virtue, and conservatism and careful selection of reasonably guaranteed success are virtues.
 
Rarer virtues are more likely to outperform. In a place and era with a high appetite for risk, the good risks get chewed up quickly, and the opportunities to take smart risks get harder to find and take comfortably. Likewise, conservatism across the board eats itself as safe bets get their prices bid up higher and higher – until they’re guaranteed small losses instead of guaranteed small gains.
 
***
 
THE BACKDROP TO OUR EXPLORATION OF UNCOMMON VIRTUES
 
We’re now set to be talking about Uncommon Virtues  in today’s day and age.
 
And while people will read this book from across the world, we’ll be primarily talking from an American point of view.
 
On the off chance you’re reading in the far future, as of right now in 2016, the United States of America has held sole superpower status in the world for 25 years now, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
 
There are people now who are 20 years old who never knew a world in which the USA really faced any threat to its existence or way of life.
 
To be sure, the Iraqi Army seemed somewhat dangerous in the 1990’s, but it was never really  an existential threat to the existence of the USA. Likewise, terrorism is a problem.
 
But these aren’t problems for the USA the way that Nazi Germany was a problem for its neighbors in the 1930’s and 1940’s, where your very existence is in doubt. Likewise, not the way that the Soviet nuclear arsenal seemed to the USA during the Cold War.
 
That’s the backdrop; there doesn’t seem to be any real threat to the existence of the USA right now, and doesn’t seem like there has been in 25 years.
 
It’s peaceful. Things are good. That’s the world we live in now. We don’t have anything to worry about. (Right?)
 
***
 
CULTIVATE UNCOMMON VIRTUES; OUTPERFORM  

Despite the vast potential gains, this is not too complicated if you ground yourself in history and understand different cultures.

We’ll look at which virtues are uncommon in this day and age, ideally ones that have been common in other eras and are proven, that are now highly worthwhile to cultivate in yourself.

Some are rare because they’re hard to do; others are rare due to cultural bias and blindspots.
 
The theory is simple: cultivating virtues that are neglected, uncommon, or out of favor should lead to potentially very great outperformance.
 
***
 
UNCOMMON VIRTUE #1: MERE COMPETENCE
 
We start with a simple one: competence.
 
Mere competence.
 
Just competence.
 
Not excellence; not greatness; nothing transcendental.
 
Just… being competent.
 
***
 
WHY SO MUCH NON-COMPETENCE?
 
Non-competence… that’s not a nicer way of saying incompetence. We don’t refer to a total bumbler or bungler of things. Merely – a lack of competence. Non-competence.
 
Competence is rare. On the surface, that doesn’t make sense – shouldn’t everyone want to be competent?
 
So we dig a bit, try to figure out the roots of this non-competent tree.
 
In Richard Rumelt’s seminal book “ Good Strategy, Bad Strategy ,” Chapter 4 is titled simply: “Why So Much Bad Strategy?”
 
Rumelt –
 
“Bad strategy flourishes because it floats above analysis, logic, and choice, held aloft by the hot hope that one can avoid dealing with these tricky fundamentals and the difficulties of mastering them. … Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy .”
 
***
 
OH… BECAUSE IT’S HARD WORK
 
Why so much non-competence?
 
Because it’s hard work.
 
Oh.
 
How anticlimactic.
 
People don’t become competent because it takes work to become competent. Specifically, analysis, logic, and choice – and by “choice,” Rumelt means “sacrifice.”
 
***
 
MERE COMPETENCE AS THE BASIS FOR EVERYTHING GRAND AND GREAT
 
Sometimes I wonder how many men with the talent of Napoleon Bonaparte have lived – and never had their talents flourish because they lived during peacetime.
 
Napoleon was born in 1769. In 1793, he was promoted to Brigadier General – at the age of 24 years old.
 
In a struggle for one’s very existence, competence is the  defining virtue. While most of the French officers were losing, he was winning. It would be simplistic to say that was enough, and yet, it explains most of his rise.
 
When he was given command of France’s Army of Italy, things were in disarray. The soldiers lacked discipline, order, and even the most basic of supplies – ammunition and shoes.

The soldiers were not paid on time, and often looted and stole – sometimes from enemies, and sometimes friends – to survive.
 
While it sounds so basic and trivial, Napoleon found a way to get his soldiers in shoes, get their wages paid, secured enough ammunition and food, improved sanitation, dismissed unruly and incompetent officers, and otherwise just got on with the business of soldiering.
 
There was no particular magic to it, though the effects would be dramatic.
 
Likewise, while known for some of his brilliant maneuvers, Napoleon often just out-worked his adversaries. He planned more. He did more reconnaissance. He engaged in more diplomacy. He trained more. He marched more.
 
Unsurprisingly, fixing these very basic of problems led to a better fighting force, which led to victories, which led to momentum and morale, which led to more victories.
 
It didn’t start with brilliant maneuvers – it started with getting shoes, getting the soldiers he inherited to stop committing crimes, and paying them on time.
 
Competence. Mere Competence.
 
***
 
LUXURIOUS VIRTUES
 
One of the more memorable of Warren Buffet’s wry expressions: “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
 
Competence can feel so… trivial… during boom times, during luxurious peacetimes.
 
Often, competence comes at great expense in sweating and training; of constant rigorous examination of weak points; of mastering the subject area one wants to be competent at, and rigorously training and drilling the right behaviors into oneself, one’s colleagues, and one’s subordinates.
 
People who devote themselves to being competent are often less fun or less enjoyable to be around than people engaged in more luxurious virtues.
 
One of the more amusing theories of large-scale success I’ve seen is that most organizations who achieve dominance in their field are eventually unable to identify why they are successful, and attribute it to reasons having nothing to do with their success.
 
As such, they get very excited about a bunch of luxurious virtues and sloganeering, and begin to think themselves infallible. Eventually, someone who is competent in the core of the domain comes and drinks their milkshake.
 
Early in his career, most of Napoleon’s adversaries did not promote by merit – by competence – and instead relied on superfluous factors like lineage, birth, class, prestige, charisma, etc.
 
He ran roughshod over them.
 
Napoleon, for whatever reason, could not stop his expansionary pushes. He kept opening war-fronts, and eventually, through attrition and evolution, competent battle-hardened adversaries came to oppose him. The English, Germans, Spanish, and Russians eventually produced excellent officers and statesmen that, while perhaps not as brilliant as Napoleon, were competent enough to defeat him with when combined with overwhelming advantages in numbers and economics.
 
Early-stage Napoleon relied heavily on competence – brilliance too, sure, but mostly competence. And he fought against people in positions of leadership for reasons other than competence. The results were predictable.
 
But it didn’t take genius to defeat him: he began to rely more on genius and brilliance at just the time his advantages were deteriorating. His enemies became competent, and the Emperor was defeated and banished.
 
I don’t think it’s a reach to say that competence, mere competence, explains the majority of both Napoleon’s rise – and fall.
 
***
 
A FORMULA FOR COMPETENCE
 
In nearly all of my writings, I aim for some level of actionability. Entertainment and information are nice, I suppose, but my aim is always for you to live better as a result of the writing and reading.
 
But how do we instill competence? A tough challenge.
 
I hazard to say that there’s four steps to it –
 
1. Acknowledge the truth of things.
2. Commit to competence, including all the hard work and downsides.
3. Study one’s domain rigorously.
4. Do all  the work required to become competent.
 
***
 
1. ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRUTH OF THINGS
 
“Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt, and it will force you to improve.” – Harry Beckwith,  Selling the Invisible
 
Originally recommended by Derek Sivers to me as “the best book on marketing he’s ever read,”  Selling the Invisible  is a masterpiece.
 
In it, Harry Beckwith repeatedly makes the point that, before you do any fancy marketing, you need to make your service good.
 
And he recommends you start by assuming it’s bad.
 
Heck, let’s repeat that quote again. It’s amazing –
 
“Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt, and it will force you to improve.”
 
Likewise, in luxurious peacetimes, people can get by on bluster, appearances, political skill… and maybe – maybe – it makes sense to position yourself as lofty and flawless and all that. (Then again, maybe not.)
 
Regardless, competence flees from the person who asserts they’re competent, who feels “just fine” without doing the work.
 
Reality is vast, vaster than imaginable. Every domain has a potential for nearly unlimited invention and innovation. The theme you see, over and over again, among successful people in any discipline, is both a fanatical commitment to mastering their domain, and a mild paranoia that maybe they suck.
 
Beckwith has an elegant solution – assume you suck. Acknowledge there’s a lot to be done.
 
Move on to Step 2.
 
***
 
2. COMMIT TO COMPETENCE, INCLUDING ALL THE HARD WORK AND DOWNSIDES.
 
How do you show up, 100% of the time, on time?
 
I learned from the father of a girl I dated. He was the fifth child born, but the first son, in a country that was devastated by World War II.
 
He explained how to always show up on time –
 
You calculate the maximum possible time it could take to go through every single step in getting somewhere.
 
So if you’re taking the subway to a meeting and need to change subway lines, it goes like this:
 
First, front door to main subway. Takes 5 to 7 minutes.
Second, waiting for the first train. Takes 1 to 10 minutes.
Third, the time it takes the first train to arrive at the station. 5 to 8 minutes.
Fourth, waiting for the second train. Takes 1 to 10 minutes.
Fifth, the time it takes the second train to arrive. 10 to 13 minutes.
Sixth, the time it takes to walk to the meeting. Takes 5 to 7 minutes.
 
If you’re both lucky and everything runs smoothly, it will take 27 minutes to reach your destination.
 
On average, it will only take 41 minutes to get through this journey.
 
But if you want to always  be on time, you need to budget… the whole 55 minutes it could possibly take.
 
If you do, you’ll be early most of the time. (Bring a book, newspaper, or some work to do.)
 
What do most people do, though?
 
They give themselves 30 minutes – and are late pretty much always.
 
Or they give themselves 40 minutes – and are late consistently.
 
Or they give themselves 50 minutes – and are still late sometimes!
 
It’s fine to be late to things if competence in your field doesn’t require punctuality. Sometimes, it really doesn’t – there’s a number of pure scientists or pure inventors who succeed or fail based on how good their best work is, and their best work is great, and so you put up with them being late.
 
But it blows my mind that someone will be going out for an appointment that’s life-changing for them if the meeting goes well, and they don’t do the “plan backwards and always be on time” thing.
 
(Later, I learned from a very talented veteran of the U.S. Army’s Engineering Corps that the U.S. Army uses this same method to ensure punctuality of arrival times in warzones.)
 
Competence is expensive.
 
Most people never think about how long their commutes take, and don’t plan for worst-case scenario. As such, sometimes they’re late. If this happens before a life-changing meeting, maybe you just blew it and miss a huge opportunity.
 
Competence is like this.

There’s no magic to it. It means going through the hard mental work of calculating things like showing up on time, having slack in case something goes wrong, and then making preparations so that you have something productive to do when you’re inevitably early.
 
And this is just – showing up on time. That’s not even table stakes in most fields. This is the lowest of bars of competence, and yet most people are unwilling to commit to doing the work of clearing that bar.
 
***
 
3. STUDY YOUR DOMAIN RIGOROUSLY.
 
In his autobiography, “ Made in America ,” Sam Walton relates how he stopped and looked at just about every single store he ever came across.

He studied their mix of goods and services, how their staff acted, their pricing, their product placement, and so on.
 
Every domain has different components needed for mastery.
 
It’s not hard to figure out what they are. Study everything rigorously and implement everything you find.
 
This is the theme you see over and over again at really outsized successes: at Walmart, Sam Walton studied everything. At Toyota, they studied every aspect of making automobiles and tried to refine every single one of them to perfection. Under the leadership of Wozniak, Jobs, and Ive among others, Apple of course became fanatical about getting the tiniest details perfect.
 
It’s not complicated.
 
You study everything in your domain.
 
If something does fail or go wrong, you don’t sweep it under the rug – you study it relentlessly, and put new policies in place, and then train them up.
 
Again, no magic – just building competence.
 
***
 
4. DO ALL THE WORK REQUIRED.
 
And finally, you do the work.
 
Often, it sucks and is hard to do the work.
 
The alternative is mediocrity.
 
I won’t bang on about doing the work here – because I dare say it comes down more to a mental shift first and foremost.
 
Most people think they’re just marvelously terrific, and who cares if they’re on time? They’re special and lovely.
 
The mindset shift to the opposite is powerful. No luxury. No preening. No bombast. Just competence. Mere competence.
 
 Again,
 
“Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt, and it will force you to improve.”
 
1. Acknowledge the truth of things.
2. Commit to competence, including all the hard work and downsides.
3. Study your domain rigorously.
4. Do the work.
 
It’s not complicated – it’s pretty simple.
 
The mindset shift drives it. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, you probably suck and could probably be 10x better than you are right now.
 
This demoralizes some people – “oh boo hoo, I want easy success” – whereas for others, it’s a flash of awakening to the prospect of great power and great results.
 
“Wait, most people aren’t trying and most things suck? If I acknowledge that and commit to being competent at what I do, study my domain, and put the work in, I can build an extremely powerful foundation that makes success happen reliably?”
 
Well – yup, that’s it, you got it.
 
***
 
INSPIRATION: A LETTER TO GARCIA
 
We opened with the start of the wonderful 1899 piece “A Letter to Garcia” –
 
http://www.birdsnest.com/garcia.htm
 
My friend Ted Gonder shared it with me, and it is absolutely wonderful.

Read the whole thing for a shot in the arm of competence.