The Perils of Promoting the "Least Incompetent": Why Organizations Reward "Narrative Shapers" Over True "Problem-Solvers"

In the corporate world, leadership promotions often hinge on a subtle but critical distinction: are we elevating the most competent individuals, or simply the least incompetent?

This might sound like semantics, but the difference is profound and it explains why so many organizations end up with leaders who excel at spin rather than substance.

The Foundation of Flawed Promotions: Poor Documentation and Perception Bias

Most companies don't document work and results with the rigor they deserve. Projects, decisions, and outcomes are often captured in fragmented emails, vague meeting notes, or worse, rely entirely on oral histories.

Even the act of taking "meeting minutes" is increasingly uncommon.

Metrics, in many companies, are just results in machine efficiency or production counts. When they go up, it's not necessarily clear why or who is responsible. The same is true of when they go down.

In this environment, promotions aren't based on objective metrics like, "What did this person build?" or "What problems did they solve?"

Instead, they default to subjective perceptions: "Who seems to mess up the least?"

If things get better, there will be a cacophony of voices taking credit for the good work. If they get worse, it'll be a storm of "narrative shaping.”

Who was really responsible? Who knows?

Here's the catch: human memory is notoriously biased toward negativity. We remember errors and mishaps far more vividly than quiet successes. And when those errors are admitted openly? They stick like glue.

This creates a perverse incentive structure where transparency becomes a liability.

Enter the Narrative Shaper: Masters of the Gray Area

In a perception-driven culture, the "narrative shaper" thrives. These are the smooth operators who never own a failure outright. Instead, they masterfully reframe setbacks into the "uncontrollable gray area,” the external factors, ambiguous circumstances, or shared blame that dilutes personal accountability.

A missed deadline? An opportunity to explain your undying dedication and long hours and then pass the failure on to someone else. A team that's not performing? Explain how these newer generations just don't want to work.

Narrative Shapers dominate because they appear flawless on the surface. They don't solve problems; they explain them away.

And in a system that rewards the "least incompetent," this skill set is gold. Over time, as more narrative shapers rise through the ranks, the organization's collective view of reality warps.

Problems aren't addressed, they’re narrated into non-existence. Innovation stalls, risks go unmitigated, and the company drifts further from truth.

The Honest Player: aka "Loose Cannon"

Contrast this with the honest leader, the one who admits the problems under their control.

Acknowledgment is the first step to resolution.

Now, I think it's fair to say that we don't always know why something happened, especially when we explain it the first time. How do we admit that? How do we admit that the first 3 times we tried to fix it, we fixed the wrong thing?

The player who admits it openly, calls it what it is, and is willing to fail will, invariably, solve issues faster than the one who doesn't.

This player will, likely, be respected by his/her team, solve more issues than competing leaders, and be able to develop and communicate a valuable understanding of real issues.

That sounds like a competent player, right?

Maybe not. Admitting to having a solvable problem (or not understanding it) is often misinterpreted as an admission of weakness. And it highlights a flaw that narrative shapers skillfully obscure.

Honest admissions from one player can threaten a narrative being spun by the team.

As a result, the honest player can be seen as a "loose cannon,”someone who "causes issues" by shining a light on them, disrupting the carefully curated narrative of stability. They struggle to "get into alignment" because alignment, in this context, means conforming to the fiction rather than facing facts.

This dynamic is a coffin nail for organizations. When evaluations focus on, "what went wrong on their watch,” rather than, "what they built," truth-tellers and problem solvers are systematically sidelined.

Narrative shapers, by their very nature, can't fix what's under their control because they cannot acknowledge solvable problems exist.

The cycle perpetuates with each promotion: more explainers, fewer solvers. More pressure to keep problems under wraps.

Breaking the Cycle: Shift to "Most Competent" Evaluations

To build resilient, high-performing teams, we must flip the script. Promote based on demonstrable competence—tangible outcomes, innovations delivered, and problems resolved.

This requires distinguishing between the "levels of work" and implementing rigorous audit and record-keeping systems to objectively measure improvement and effectiveness. Let's break it down by role:

• Operators: Primary responsibilities: Follow Processes and report issues. Audits let us know if they're actually following processes and if they know the information they are required to know.

• Supervisors: Primary responsibilities: Ensuring Process Adherence and Daily Execution Supervisors are primarily responsible for making sure processes are followed and for executing the daily plan. To evaluate them effectively, you need audits that verify if team members are adhering to established processes. If processes are being followed faithfully, team morale is good, and results are strong (e.g., on-time delivery, quality metrics), that's a clear sign of competence. Without these checks and records, perceptions rule, and narrative shapers slip through by downplaying deviations.

• Managers: Process Improvement and Oversight At the managerial level, the focus shifts to ownership of processes. Are they actively improving the systems they oversee? Are they holding supervisors accountable for upholding standards? Audits here should track whether supervisors under their purview are maintaining process integrity, if not, the manager is failing in their core duty. Audits to see if workers are adhering to process are a great way to identify this. Additionally, record-keeping must identify recurring problems, proposed fixes (e.g., process tweaks, training), and measure if those interventions lead to receding/changing issues over time (e.g., reduced error rates, fewer escalations). If the same problems persist despite changes, it signals a lack of true improvement, pointing to managerial shortcomings.

Overall, breaking the cycle demands:

• Robust Documentation and Audit Trails: Implement systems that track contributions in expected roles. Audits that reflect whether processes are being followed demonstrate whether managers and supervisors are enforcing standards. Tracking whether problems are being solved shows whether managers are updating processes to eliminate process flaws.

• Bias-Aware Reviews: Train evaluators to reward admissions of error as signs of growth, not incompetence. Celebrate leaders who identify and actually fix issues, not those who hide them. Use audit data to assess progress at each level, ensuring promotions reward builders over explainers.

• Cultural Transparency: Foster environments where honesty is a strength. Leaders who admit and address controllable problems should be seen as assets, not liabilities. Regular audits reinforce this by providing evidence-based insights, making it harder for narrative shapers to dominate.

  
  

In the end, organizations that prioritize "least incompetent" leaders are slowly blinding themselves. And they will find it's remarkably difficult to fix this once they have entire leadership chains of them.

They accumulate explainers who intentionally obscure reality and this makes true progress impossible.

However, the organizations that can stomach their own problems and who value leaders that admit problems, they cultivate builders, fixers, and leaders who can drive real change.