Three Necessary Traits

I think Obama's winning because of three key traits: competence, fairness and stability. In my sociological observations of classrooms, management teams, businesses and academia, these three traits in combination have always won the highest accolades and inspired the most added value and dedication.

The reason you have to group all three together is in these three statements:

1. If you have competence and fairness but not stability, you have some sort of laissez-faire wonkery going on. You cannot have long-term vision. This works for some kinds of teams, bit not for all.

2. If you have competence and stability but not fairness, you have an authoritarian situation. It describes not only hard-working bureaucracies in positive situations, but also gulags and prisons.

3. If you have fairness and stability but no competence, that's when you have a mediocre bunch of well-meaning bumblers. It is fun to watch, and even to work in. But it won't get you results.

Thinking about this has helped me to see why educational and political reforms sometimes turn out the way they do. It all depends on the teams that are built and deployed. Somebody, or some bodies, must be deployed to handle these three aspects such that all three are sufficient to the task at hand.