Competence Archives - Page 6 of 9

Kennedy and Nixon on Camera

On September 26, 1960, Americans watched the first televised presidential debate. Richard Nixon had recently left the hospital after a knee infection and was 20 pounds underweight. Both candidates declined the network’s makeup artist. Nixon used a drugstore powder, and under the studio lights he sweated visibly. John F. Kennedy looked tanned and ready. He won over the 70 million television viewers by a broad margin.

The story is often told with one more detail: radio listeners thought Nixon had won. That claim rests largely on one survey by Sindlinger & Company. Of more than 2,100 people asked, only 282 had listened on radio, and only 178 named a winner. In 1987 two scholars, David Vancil and Sue Pendell, judged that group too small and unrepresentative for firm conclusions.

In an experiment published in 2003, 81 percent of participants who watched the debate thought Kennedy won. Of those who only listened, 60 percent did.

Better Off Than Four Years Ago

On October 28, 1980, Ronald Reagan debated President Jimmy Carter. In his closing statement he gave voters a list of questions. “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?”

He also asked whether America was as respected and as strong as it had been. About 80.6 million people watched the debate. Candidates of both parties have asked the “better off” question in later campaigns.

To the C Students

On May 21, 2001, President George W. Bush spoke at the Yale commencement, 33 years after his own Yale degree. “To those of you who received honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, well done,” he said. “And to the C students,” he went on, and the audience applauded, “I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.”

College students have a shorter version: “C’s get degrees.” A 2024 opinion piece in the student newspaper of The College of New Jersey explained it. “With minimal effort and average grades, one can still finish four years of college with a paper diploma.” The headline called it “a dangerous mentality.”

Black Monday

In the National Football League, Black Monday is the first Monday after the regular season ends. It is the day many head coaches are fired. An Associated Press headline of December 29, 1998, read: “NFL coaches face ‘Black Monday’ with five fired.”

Long service does not protect a coach. In 2024 the New England Patriots parted with Bill Belichick after 24 seasons.

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

“Improvise, adapt, overcome” is an unofficial motto of the US Marines. The earliest record that the word researcher Barry Popik found is the 1986 film Heartbreak Ridge. Clint Eastwood plays a Marine gunnery sergeant. He tells his men: “You’re Marines now. You adapt. You overcome. You improvise.”

Some writers say Marines used the words long before the film. Popik found no printed evidence for that. By April 1988 Jack Clark was quoting it: “It’s like Clint Eastwood said, ‘You’ve got to improvise, adapt and overcome.'”

A Sports Team, Not a Family

The culture page of Netflix says the company models itself “on a professional sports team, not a family.” It explains: “Families are about unconditional love.” Sports teams instead focus on “picking the right person for every position,” even when that means “swapping out someone they love for a better player.”

Leaders apply what Netflix calls the keeper test. They ask: “if X wanted to leave, would I fight to keep them?” If the answer is no, the company believes “it’s fairer to everyone to part ways quickly.” The page says the team is driven by performance, “not seniority, tenure or unconditional loyalty.”

The Vocabulary of Credit

Toot your own horn. To toot your own horn is to talk about your own achievements.

Give credit where credit is due. The speaker names the person who did the work.

Take credit for. A person who takes credit for something claims the work, sometimes work that someone else did.

Steal someone’s thunder. This means to take the attention that another person had earned.

A feather in your cap. This is an achievement that adds to your record.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The person who speaks up gets the attention.

Visibility. In office speech, visibility means being seen by the people who decide on promotions.

Humblebrag. This is a boast that is disguised as modesty.

Get the Girl

In 1960 Katherine Johnson and the engineer Ted Skopinski wrote a NASA report on equations for orbital spaceflight. According to NASA, it was “the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.”

Before his orbital flight, the astronaut John Glenn asked the engineers to “get the girl.” He wanted Johnson to check the computer’s numbers by hand. In 2015, at 97, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. Taraji P. Henson played her in the film Hidden Figures.

Rank and Yank

In the 1980s Jack Welch introduced a ranking system at General Electric. The top 20 percent of employees were the most productive, and the middle 70 percent did adequate work. The bottom 10 percent were to be fired. The practice became known as “rank and yank.” Welch called it “differentiation” and defended it. “If you want teamwork, you identify it as a value.”

Microsoft used a version called stack ranking. Each employee received a single rating from 1 to 5. The rating “triggered increases in merit pay, bonuses and the awarding of restricted stock units.” In November 2013 Microsoft’s head of human resources, Lisa Brummel, ended the system in an email to employees. “No more curve,” she wrote.

You’re Fired

The Apprentice premiered on NBC on January 8, 2004, with Donald Trump as host. The contestants worked in two teams on business tasks. For each task, each team chose one member as project manager.

The winning team was excused from the boardroom. The losing team was “questioned about the reasons for their loss and which members were responsible.” The project manager then chose teammates to face a final boardroom round. Episodes usually ended with one contestant hearing the words “You’re fired!”