Recent events have made many Hongkongers question the competence of their government officials and leading health professionals. How should blame be ascribed? Are 'fall guys' (self-designated or otherwise) really in Hong Kong's best interests? To a certain extent, yes - particularly in the case of personally unpopular officials. They have failed in one important part of their job: to represent satisfactorily the mood of the population which they serve. This can be justifiable, some believe. The ultra-right in the US is fond of evoking US president Lincoln's and British prime minister Winston Churchill's unpopularity, when supporting President George W. Bush's increasingly unpopular stand on Iraq. But such paternalism takes tremendous political power. One advantage of a fall guy (or gal) is that all sorts of unpleasantness can be projected on to the unfortunate and dumped along with him or her, giving a population the sense of being able to start afresh. The past problems, not to put too Freudian a spin on it, are purged. But what about an unelected medical professional who has earned a position through academic and professional achievement? Cronyism exists in every field. But some doors cannot be opened without certain academic accomplishments. So, when these professionals fail to perform adequately, should they be fired or retrained? This is a worldwide dilemma. It is the conflict between the status of formal, knowledge-based education on the one hand and what psychological research has taught us about the nature of competence on the other. They just do not match. Most assume that when people are bad at their jobs, it is because of some sort of deficit in technical or logic-based knowledge. Even among 'enlightened' circles, a highly trained medical professional, for example, following a poorly handled series of events, would be sent on some sort of training course loaded with facts that do not actually touch on the problematic behaviour. An example of this was documented by T. Becher in Competence in the Learning Society. An anaesthetist reported on a surgeon who consistently failed to study the effects of his actions - and so never took appropriate corrective action when he made mistakes. One reason the surgeon avoided addressing his errors was because it would inevitably involve many members of staff - a prospect that neither the surgeon nor the hospital was willing to stomach. Ultimately, it was easier to get rid of the anaesthetist. Similarly, the status quo continues to be sacrosanct at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After a series of studies into competency, Donald Schon spent 15 years trying to change elements of the educational process there, without success. Selection of students is still based on academic rather than competency terms, a course's quality is judged by exam results and professors who rock the boat do not get ahead. What can we learn from all this? First, that our education systems are now primarily used to elevate certain people at the expense of others, not to benefit mankind. Paper qualifications protect occupations, limit access and ultimately legitimise gargantuan disparities in quality of life and prospects. Naturally the 'haves' will do virtually anything to protect this system. So they are unlikely to want to have their actual competency examined, particularly by people like 'taxi-drivers and McDonald's workers' (to quote former security secretary Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee on Article 23 legislation), who have not benefited from the sociological leg-up of a university education. And, to be fair, we all collude to some extent in this system because a testable 'ability' gives us a seemingly objective criterion of merit by which to apportion position and status. So, if academic excellence is not enough to guarantee high levels of competence, what is? A review of 700 studies, in the latest British Psychological Society's issue of The Psychologist, indicates that a good manager (or teacher) is not necessarily great at sitting exams. But they are good at getting to know those below them and at creating situations in which people can develop initiative, creativity and the ability to understand and influence their organisations. Crucially, they show by their own behaviour an example of how to push ahead into the messiness of the unknown, think and talk about what happens at every step and, putting pride aside, take action or adjust course as required. Practically speaking, the facts and people a leader knows do not go far in the absence of, as Schon puts it, 'the ability to deal with the swamp'. Jean Nicol is a Hong Kong-based psychologist and writer everydaypsychologist@yahoo.com
