Shounen audiences want cool male leads, shoujo audiences wants cool or cute male romantic interests; everybody wants strong main characters, or at least interesting ones...

No one, noboy wants the male lead to be a simpering, callow, shallow, no self esteem little dipshit... Nor do they want the main character to swallow his bullcrap like she's never been a person before.

It's like the author took the worst harem protagonist ever and cast him as a secondary lead for us to view from the perspective of one of the girls... Which would totally work if played for comedy, but here it's done completely unironically... Completely straight.

I just don't get it.

From what I've seen, the author wants to focus on character growth. The goal of starting out the secondary lead as weak is to follow his progress as he gets stronger. That goes for all the characters. He seems to be moving in that direction at least. The author even points out that he's weak when he introduces one of his bullies from his school years and they make fun of him.