Why smart people defend bad ideas

Essay number 40 at the Scott Berkun site has some very interesting perspectives on exactly why “smart people defend bad ideas.” This is a phenomenon I’ve had to deal with over the years in various situations. It’s an entertaining article, too:

So if nothing else this essay serves as a kind of personal therapy session. However, I fully suspect you’ll get more than just entertainment value (“Look, Scott is stupider than we thought!”)…

Seriously, though, there are many insights in the article. While it may not provide a roadmap to avoid such problems in the future, it certainly offers a few insightful comments and a good read.

In the software industry, the common example of thinking at the wrong level is a team of rock star programmers who can make anything, but don’t really know what to make: so they tend to build whatever things come to mind, never stopping to find someone who might not be adept at writing code, but can see where the value of their programming skills would be best applied.

I’ve learned that quite often incompetence cannot be corrected. Try as I might, improving some people’s abilities in a given area is just not in the cards. As it turns out incompetence carries with it a terrible character flaw: the inability to perceive one’s own inability. We see this here and there in those rare individuals that insist they excel in their field and yet accomplish nothing.