The Peter Principle

I had a great leadership lesson over coffee with my dad this morning. We were discussing organizational ineffectiveness and he referenced The Peter Principle. I wasn’t familiar with this phrase so I asked him what it was. 

The Peter Principle was originally formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book called The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong. The principle states that in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence.

It holds that in most organizations employees are promoted as long as they work competently. But sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain.

In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his/her duties and so most of the work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The employee's incompetence is not necessarily a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult. Rather, the new job requires different work skills, which the employee usually does not possess. For example, sales people may be very valuable for their skills, but poor managers. Michael from The Office is a perfect example of this: great salesman, terrible manager.

The authors suggest that organizations should avoid promoting a worker until he or she shows the skills and work habits needed to succeed in the next higher job – an employee shouldn’t be promoted to managing others if he or she does not already display management abilities. Competent employees, such as technicians, who are dedicated to their current jobs should not automatically be promoted, but might, instead, receive a pay or status increase.

Comments

[dena]

Good Example!!!