Character Vs. Competence: What Does Your Company Value?

Headquartered in London, Vodafone is the world’s largest telecom service provider which offers a wide range of telecom services such as Prepaid & Postpaid, 3G & Mobile Internet, across many countries across the globe.

- Ranjan Mishra

A few months back, my news feed buzzed with the instance of ball tampering by the Australian team. On the face of it, the offence itself was minor; yet the outcry especially at the home country was significant and led to bans for the parties involved. As Harsha Boghle’s comment put it, it wasn’t about the ball tampering at all, it was about heroes letting their country down. Latest in a long string of examples where character and competence come in conflict, it demonstrated yet again, character is often on the losing side.

The above is by no means to suggest that competence is not necessary, but to merely posit which side in corporate life does trade-off happen. In most cases, the competence is valued over character. History is littered with examples that any compromise on the former is more dangerous than the latter. While Arthur Andersen, Enrons, and Satyams are easy to recollect in corporate world, this failure permeates across. The 2012 Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace is well covered in annals of sports history. Indeed many of our companies are made vulnerable every day by small yet significant instances of someone compromising on character. This someone can be a competent professional too.

The way the entire Ball tampering scandal unfolded made me reflect why would a team that is considered having one of the best in bowling attack choose to do something like this? What makes a person so driven to win the race that one tends to compromise on the ‘how’. While not exhaustive, it can be boiled down to following scenarios: