A long time ago, when presentations required foam board to mount the design work to, a studio I worked in ordered oversized A1 sheets. Consequently someone had to chop them up (with all the dreadful wastage as a side effect) and usually a good presentation needed at least 30-odd boards.
Ordinarily, most in the studio knew they’d have to tackle this chore at some point, except on this occasion, with everyone trying to get the rubdowns onto the mock-ups, it fell to the CD to ask a rather intransigent colleague. Who went about it with some considerable carelessness. The boards looked like they’d been cut with a dull flint and a stick for a ruler.
On seeing the result, the CD observed, caustically, that the cutter really didn’t want to do that. And clearly the approach worked, they never got asked again. What dredged this memory up was coming across the term
‘weaponized incompetence’
Which is basically a behaviour pattern in which someone pretends to be bad at simple tasks to get out of shared responsibilities. I’d not come across it before, but it struck me that’s exactly what the intention was.
As ever, it set me to thinking whether I’d seen this pattern before, but not realised that was what the intention was. And as I pondered, I could only think of one example - where a client, apparently out of their depth, called for endless design revisions to a project, but I now realise could easily have been as a result of being ‘ordered’ to lead a project they had no vested interest in, nor control over. And really, really, really did not want to be involved in.
Is there an approach to dealing with this, if you come across it? Would you call it out? I think that, even at my career-stage, I’d find it difficult with a client. In fact, unless you quit, noisily or otherwise, there’s much you can do?
But with a colleague? I think you’d always better take a stand before you fall into the trap of becoming the opposite - the responsibility magnet - and find yourself becoming the bin of all tasks everyone else would rather not have to bother with.