Most Incompetence Is Insubordination

My friend Tom wrote something that's been stuck in my head for days: "Once something is learnable, your 'quirk' loses its innocence. Because then 'I can't' becomes 'I won't.'" (read his post here)

He's right. And I think the implications are darker than he realizes.

For most of my career, I believed the best employees were the ones who could figure things out. Research skills. Knowing how to Google. The ability to find the answer when nobody handed it to you.

That was the differentiator. You could teach domain knowledge. You couldn't teach resourcefulness.

I was wrong about what that skill actually was.

The skill was never research. The skill was willingness.

The people who "figured things out" weren't smarter. They weren't better at search operators. They just refused to stay stuck.

They had an intolerance for not knowing.

AI has exposed this completely.

In 2026, any knowledge worker can get an expert-level answer to almost any question in under 60 seconds. Legal research. Tax strategy. Code debugging. Market analysis. Competitive intelligence.

The barrier to knowledge has collapsed.

Which means every claim of "I don't know how" is now a choice, not a limitation.

Most workplace incompetence is actually insubordination.

The person who can't figure out the CRM isn't lacking training. They're refusing to learn it.

The person who consistently produces sloppy work isn't incapable of quality. They're unwilling to produce it.

The person who misses deadlines because of "unexpected complexity" isn't a victim of circumstance. They're not prioritizing your work.

"I can't" has become "I won't."

I think about Naval Ravikant's observation that Tom quoted: "If you have too many of these moral shortcomings, you will not respect yourself."

There's a reason learned helplessness feels so corrosive. Some part of you knows the truth.

You're not incapable. You're unwilling. And you know it.

This cuts both ways.

If you're a manager, start treating consistent underperformance as a motivation problem, not a training problem. Stop sending people to workshops. Start having honest conversations about priorities.

If you're an employee, notice when you're hiding behind "I can't." Notice when you're choosing not to figure it out. Notice when you're using complexity as cover for refusal.

The flip side is liberation.

If incompetence is really unwillingness, then competence is just willingness plus time.

You can learn anything. There are no gatekeepers anymore. The experts are in your pocket. The tutorials are free. The answers exist.

The only question left is "will you do it"?

Tom's piece was about fixing your weaknesses before life exploits them. But I think the bigger point is simpler.

In an age of infinite accessible knowledge, your limitations have become choices.

Choose accordingly.