Posted on 07/12/2019 12:48:24 PM PDT by Textide
The Peter Principle is an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence. In other words, a front-office secretary who is quite good at her job may thus be promoted to executive assistant to the CEO for which she is not trained or prepared for—meaning that she would be more productive for the company (and likely herself) if she had not been promoted.
The Peter Principle is thus based on the logical idea that competent employees will continue to be promoted, but at some point will be promoted into positions for which they are incompetent, and they will then remain in those positions because of the fact that they do not demonstrate any further competence that would get them recognized for additional promotion. According to the Peter Principle, every position in a given hierarchy will eventually be filled by employees who are incompetent to fulfill the job duties of their respective positions.
‘Splains government employees..................
It would seem to be especially pertinent to government employees.
When a government agency screws up, they ask for, (and usually get,) more money and power.
It’s the Peter Principle on steroids.
It’s extremely common in engineering. Some talented engineer might be a whiz at solving technical problems in complex systems — gotta reward that! Gotta promote that guy! Make him a Department Head!
So he gets promoted to manage a group of 25 people and shuffle papers all day, worrying about budget allocations, future staffing needs, and performance evaluations. It’s likely to be a bad fit. Meanwhile, the technical group just lost it’s top problem solver. Double ouch.
I always laughed at the idea of a “Peter Principle”.
I don’t deny it exists so much as that it is inevitable to human skill and ability. As you advance, the challenges and necessary skills needed to master the work skyrocket or fail to apply. So as difficulty level rises with each promotion, people have to increase their skills. Not everybody can do that.
Trying to find the cream to rise to the top is not easy. You are trying to find people who have the potential to develop the skills to function competently at new challenges. Those people are few and far between. It is not easy to find them from the original pool of candidates that all have great skills for their current level before promoting.
I think it is just human nature, the bell curve of human skills and abilities, and the difficulty at predicting future returns from past performance.
I don’t have any problem with promoting people who then fail at their new job. I just wish we had a way in our culture to let them return to their old jobs they mastered and try a replacement candidate without labelling them a failure. There shouldn’t be any ego or insult to finding you can’t do the job a higher level, and there should be a way to gracefully return to your previous lower job where you excelled, without a stigma attached to it.
Add political correctness and affirmative action to The Peter Principle and you have the perfect storm that is too often a “senior government official”...
I give you the SLO chief of police who “forgot” her service weapon in a restaurant bathroom stall as Exhibit A...
What is the name of the principle that all the dull-witted, scaredy-cats band together in organizations against innovation and excellence? There is a deep-state in corporations too.
Democrat politicians refute the Peter Principle.
They are proof that you can be promoted many levels above your competency, not just one.
I was a living example of the Peter Principle in action during my career. I thrice failed as a manager but excelled as a cubicle number cruncher. Despite having desired educational creditentials, I can look back in retirement and see that I did not have the psychological makeup to be able to effectively direct the activities of others to achieve goals. I freely admit I was too emotionally soft to hold people accountable. I achieved my highest level of mediocrity but thrived in levels of less responsibility.
"The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence". In other words, an employee is promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another."
There are lots of folks in the "DC establishment" that are excellent examples of the Peter Principle at work. Nancy Pelosi, Gerald Nadler and Diane Feinstein are three that come to mind. Note all of these are elderly and none of them, IMHO, are at the top of their game.
Another example is AOC who should still be tending bar.
It does and I know it does because I’m a product of it. I was recently promoted from a job that I loved and was very good at. I was considered an Subject Matter Expert and having done that job for several years and absolutely killing it, I “earned” myself a promotion I neither applied for or even wanted. Now, I’m in a role I’m not trained for and I’m struggling to find my footing.
I can’t go back to my old role because it’s been filled by another guy who is struggling and calls me all the time for advice. He’s going to to tank no matter how much I try to help him because he just isn’t into the job. He hates it. So, here I am. Sitting in a chair I don’t want and will never leave messing around on Freerepublic in the middle of the day which is something I never did in the past.
"If it ain't broke, fix it til it is."
Exactly. People who are very competent technically and productive do NOT necessarily make good managers.
Yes I wonder about the police chief of San Luis Obispo.
I wonder what discipline or sanctions would be applied to any of her officers who were so careless with their weapon.
And I wonder if she is going to face the same sanctions or discipline herself.
Somehow I doubt she will face those sanctions.
That’s a great quote!
This is why I’ve studiously avoided management.
Management=more money. You’re in a tough spot there though. Good luck!
Obama is the epitome of this principle. The man had zero skills or talents other than looking and sounding good while reading from a teleprompter. Even his NCAA basketball brackets, the one thing other than the destruction of America which seemed to get him enthused, mostly sucked.
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