You've felt it. That hot, prickly sensation behind your eyes when a simple project comes back looking like it was put through a blender. You sent the brief. You had the meeting. Yet, here you are, staring at a screen, muttering omg you people can't do anything under your breath while you fix a spreadsheet at 9:00 PM. It’s a mood. Honestly, it’s becoming the defining mood of the modern office.
But here is the thing: when "omg you people can't do anything" becomes your daily mantra, it’s usually not because you’re surrounded by idiots. That’s the hard pill to swallow. It’s actually a systemic failure of communication, trust, and something researchers call "learned helplessness."
The Psychology of Incompetence (Or What Looks Like It)
We often mistake a lack of clarity for a lack of intelligence. If you find yourself thinking omg you people can't do anything, you’re likely experiencing the "Curse of Knowledge." This is a cognitive bias where you find it incredibly difficult to imagine what it's like for someone else not to know what you know. You think the instructions are clear because they are clear in your head. To the person receiving them? They’re a riddle wrapped in an enigma.
Psychologist Martin Seligman famously explored learned helplessness back in the late 1960s. While his early work focused on animals, the application to the corporate world is undeniable. When employees feel that their input doesn't matter or that the "goalposts" are constantly moving, they stop trying to excel. They do the bare minimum to avoid getting yelled at. From the manager’s perspective, this looks like incompetence. It looks like "they can't do anything." In reality, the staff has just been conditioned to wait for the boss to "fix it anyway," so they stop exerting effort. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Why Remote Work Made the Frustration Worse
Digital communication is a disaster for nuance. You lose about 70% of human communication—tone, body language, facial micro-expressions—when you move to Slack or email. When someone misses a deadline or messes up a task in a remote setting, the "omg you people can't do anything" sentiment hits harder because you can't see the struggle. You only see the failed output.
There’s also the "fragmentation of attention." According to a 2023 study by UC Irvine, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to a deep state of focus after being interrupted. If your team is being bombarded with "quick pings" all day, their work quality will crater. They aren't incapable; they are distracted. You’re seeing the result of a thousand tiny cuts to their concentration.
The "Hero Complex" Trap
Managers who frequently think omg you people can't do anything often suffer from a Hero Complex. You want to be the one who saves the day. You might even subconsciously give vague instructions so that when the team "fails," you can swoop in, fix it, and prove your value. It’s a toxic cycle.
If you don't delegate the authority to make decisions, only the tasks, you are creating a bottleneck. You become the single point of failure. When the team stops thinking for themselves, you get angry, but you're the one who took away their brain. You've essentially trained them to be useless.
How to Actually Stop Saying It
So, how do we fix this? How do we move past the omg you people can't do anything phase of a project?
First, stop "telling" and start "demonstrating." If a task is botched repeatedly, record a Loom video of yourself doing it once. Just once. No more long-winded emails that no one reads. Visual evidence is harder to ignore.
Second, check your "Definition of Done." In many high-stress environments, people have different ideas of what a "finished" project looks like. If you haven't explicitly stated the criteria for success, you can't be mad when the result doesn't match the invisible picture in your mind.
Breaking the Cycle
- The 80% Rule: Accept that your team will likely only do things 80% as well as you would. That’s okay. That 20% gap is the price you pay for not having to do it yourself.
- The Feedback Loop: Instead of fixing the mistake yourself, send it back. "This isn't quite there yet; look at section three again." If you fix it, they never learn. If you send it back, they realize they have to get it right.
- Audit Your Onboarding: Most "incompetence" is actually a training gap. If multiple people are failing at the same task, the problem is the process, not the people.
Stop being the bottleneck. It’s tempting to keep the "omg you people can't do anything" mindset because it makes you feel superior, but it's also why you're burnt out and working late. True leadership isn't about being the smartest person in the room; it's about making sure the room can function without you.
Actionable Steps for Immediate Improvement
- Conduct a "Standard Operating Procedure" (SOP) Audit: Identify the three tasks that frustrate you the most. Write down exactly how to do them, step-by-step, as if you were explaining it to a ten-year-old. If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist.
- Implement "Confirmation Parrots": After giving an instruction, ask the person to repeat it back to you in their own words. If they can't, they didn't understand it, and you've saved yourself a week of frustration.
- Set Thresholds for Autonomy: Give your team a "budget" for mistakes—say, $500 or 5 hours of work—where they are allowed to make a call without asking you. This builds the muscle of decision-making.
- Schedule "Deep Work" Blocks: Give your team (and yourself) four hours a day where Slack is turned off. You’ll be shocked at how much "incompetence" disappears when people are actually allowed to think for more than ten minutes at a time.