A lot of people are wondering why the worst of us are always ruling the best of us and why the worst people keep getting promoted in business and in government, while the competent ones are left behind.

In case you don’t know that is never a mistake or oversight.

It is part of the plan.

Are you shocked by that?

Please don’t be.

That is the system working exactly as it is intended.

The competent are trouble makers because they challenge decisions.

With hard work, the competent expose gaps and poor leadership and those in power are not really happy with that.

That is the reason why a lot of companies don’t promote the most capable.

ather they prefer to promote the least threatening ones because they are usually dumb.

So, the people who move up faster in companies and government are not always the ones that get the result or get job done.

The ones that do are the dummies because they are the ones that keep the leadership comfortable.

Those are the ones who perform for approval, work for appreciation rather than for satisfaction, bend to be liked and play small to fit in.

So, when you come into a company or government office, look around and wonder why many of the top people seem totally unqualified?

The answer is not random.

The top people did not fail upward by accident.

It is structural.

They were rewarded for not exposing gaps, asking to many questions or rocking the boat.

They were rewarded for making things feel calm even when nothing is actually working.

In fact, they were rewarded for being the ones that keep the leadership comfortable.

That is the reason why government and a lot of companies are failing.

A lot of good hands are being frustrated out by those who choose mediocrity over competence.

When you are genuinely doing your job, you expose gaps, weak processes, bad decisions, poor leadership and that makes people above you uncomfortable.

So instead of developing strong leaders many organizations quietly sideline capable hands.

Instead of rewarding them for their hard work, what gets rewarded is loyalty, predictability and the ability to manage optics.

Once that pattern starts, every layer protects the one above it and before you know it productivity would begin to go down the drain.

Promotion stops being about skill and starts being about comfort and safety.

And over time, the people doing the real work would get burn out from being the donkey in the work place and leave.

That is how mediocrity becomes culture.

That is when leadership feels hollow.

So when you hear that promotion is not about performance or that high performances a lot of the time don’t get promoted.

It is not fiction, rather it is a reality.

A lot of the time politics matter more than performance.

Like I said above that is the reason why companies are going under in numbers.

The same thing is also happening in government and in politics.

You might have heard that the best don’t rule.

That is a reality.

Government don’t hire people who have the capacity to think for themselves.

They prefer to give people what to think.

Once you begin to show that you have the capacity to think for yourself, those in power would begin to feel uncomfortable with you.

That is the reason why you must look stupid and talk stupid if you want to be in government.

So, when you see ordinarily high brain guys in government talking and behaving like children in adult bodies, that is the culture.

You cannot be smart and be in government.

Before Donald Trump ran against Hilary Clinton in 2016, I met a renowned American economist and we got talking.

When you talk about problem solving mindset, he was an embodiment of it.

Whatever economic problem i came up with, he had clear practical answers for it.

When the discussion got to the two candidates vying for the president of the United States that year, he screamed, “is this what we have got? No matter who wins, America gonna lose. None of them has what it takes upstairs to rule the largest economy in the world!”

“Why don’t you run for the office of the president of the United States?” I had asked him

“No, no, I’m not cut out for politics. I can’t play that game.” He replied

Yes. That’s why good guys don’t go into politics.

They don’t want to be messed up by the system that has being structured to bring out the worst in us.

•Peter Anosike has a Ph.D in Consulting and Profit Management. He is an international bestselling author and founder, Ultimate Entrepreneurs Academy, an organisation that trains college students, under graduates and even workers on how to become successful entrepreneurs. Google Anosike Peter for some of his bestselling books.