I
was reading this1 article on
HBR.org and got curious about what is Peter Principle
Here
are some of my learning’s from reading about The Peter Principle2
It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions.
Peter's
Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an
employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties" and adds that
"work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their
level of incompetence". Managing upward is the concept of a
subordinate finding ways to subtly "manage" superiors in order to
limit the damage that they end up doing.
David Burkus writes in his
article The-peter-principle-and-other-reasons-to-think-twice-before-accepting-a-new-promotion3
In
most companies, team members are rewarded for their high performance with a
promotion, but if they under-perform in the new role, they are rarely demoted.
Instead, companies try more training, smaller teams, or hiring assistant
managers to help—all of these in order to avoid facing the painful admission
that the promotion wasn’t really the best decision. Peter first proposed this
theory in the 1960s mostly as satire, but more recently researchers have begun
to test it scientifically. In a
statistical model of organizations that tested the traditional promotion
strategy (Peter Principle) against randomly handed out promotions, researchers
found not only that the Peter Principle dilemma occurred. It was practically
inevitable.
Jeffrey Meyers in his blog5 (How to Prevent Your Talent From Falling Victim to The Peter Principle) thinks,
There are two situations in which The Peter Principle most often emerges:
1. Being promoted to a manager from a position such as top-producing sales person or brilliant engineer
2. Transitioning from individual contributor to a team leader or manager
Collection4: Charlie
Daniel Editorial Cartoon Collection, Other No. (MS.3526)
Publisher: The
University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville
Identifier:
daniel_Causes_0172
Rights
Statement:
The copyright interests in this collection remain with the creator. For more
information contact the Special Collections Library.
Jeffrey Meyers in his blog5 (How to Prevent Your Talent From Falling Victim to The Peter Principle) thinks,
There are two situations in which The Peter Principle most often emerges:
1. Being promoted to a manager from a position such as top-producing sales person or brilliant engineer
2. Transitioning from individual contributor to a team leader or manager
Peter
Principle fits aptly to above situations due to following:
·
Top performers lack the necessary skills (or potential to develop
them) to be promoted.
·
Individual contributors lack the mindset to change from a “me” to
“us.”
There are
methods that organizations can use to mitigate the risk associated with the
Peter Principle:- Refrain from promoting workers based on their current performance without proof of their abilities to succeed in the desired role. Ensure that the person has the desire and inclination to be a leader
- Don’t assume that everyone knows how to lead. Provide in-service training for the desired roles for those being considered for promotion.
- Provide a parallel career path for good technical staff, possibly with the offer of additional pay, perks or recognition without requiring promotion to management.
- Implement an Up or out approach as authorized by the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act for the United States Armed Forces and by manning control policies within the British Army, in which personnel who are not promoted above certain ranks within the fixed number of years are deemed to lack the necessary competence and are likely to be dismissed. Some larger businesses, notably major international management consultancies/accountancy firms including McKinsey, BCG, and Bain use a similar method, or the 'vitality curve' or 'rank and yank' used by GE where employees who are ranked in the bottom 5-10% on performance are likely to be fired.
The
Peter Principle isn't a life sentence, it's a warning to pursue positions
you're good at and engaged in...not just ones that move you "up."
The
Peter Principle is more than just a satirical comment on large bureaucracies or
a strange organizational phenomenon. It’s
a symptom of a culture that over-values titles and under-values being connected
to the work you’re best at. That culture drives us away from the roles in
which we’d thrive all for the promise of a better-looking business card. We’re
subtly influenced to believe that more responsibility, bigger offices, and
better sounding titles are always better.
The
truth is, working on projects you have the potential to thrive at is better
than any title.
Reference and
Credits
