Peter principle by Laurence J. Peter and R Suttton!
Ebook and a very interesting concept! Now of course the book is written by someone called Peter though like Murphy’s law it could be the father or the son!
Even here like Murphy’s laws you have a back story since the original Peter Principle was like a series of articles based on the thoughts of Dr Peter who emphasized it on Lewis Sutton who is the father of R Sutton! This was because the Peter Principal came as an epiphany to L Sutton one fine day!That is the forward!
Now do not get overwhelmed! It is interesting and funny in a dark humour kind of way!
So in case you are planning to read the book then this is a preview only and if you do not want to read it then this is a summary of the relevant points!
The basic principle is that everyone in an organization reaches to his or her own level of incompetence and peaks!
Imagine a cricketer who is a great batsman, he or she would be promoted higher up the order and finally may even be made the captain! But it is seen that as he or she gets promoted higher and higher, he or she will finally reach a position where he or she will actually underperform!
Even in an office, you can have a person who is doing a great job at entry level! Then as and when he or she is promoted, he or she will reach a peak and then he or she will get a job in which he or she may not do a good job!
It is like the credit card scam! Your credit limit is at first a very low but easily achievable limit! You are then given an option to slowly and steadily increase your spending limit! Till you reach a point when you can no longer pay the limit! That is when they pounce on you!
Even in government jobs it is seen that a person who has been appointed because of a certain skill is given more and more responsibilities but then finally it will reach a point when the work suffers and how!
A person is good in a job then he is promoted to a better position till he or she reaches a plateau! or actually starts performing worse at the elevated position!
These are examples of Peter Principle which actually notes that every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence! It actually concludes that every job in a hierarchical organization will be filled by a person who is incompetent!
The Peter principle hence states that a person who is competent at their job will earn a promotion to a position that requires different skills. If the promoted person lacks the skills required for the new role, they will be incompetent at the new level, and will not be promoted again.
If the person is competent in the new role, they will be promoted again and will continue to be promoted until reaching a level at which they are incompetent. Being incompetent, the individual will not qualify for promotion again, and so will remain stuck at this final placement or Peter’s plateau!
This outcome is inevitable, given enough time and enough positions in the hierarchy to which competent employees may be promoted. The Peter principle is therefore expressed as: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
This leads to Peter’s corollary: “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.”
Which means that everyone does a primary job well as he or she is supposed to do! Later on they are given added responsibility and with each step they do the work well till they are promoted and given more and more responsibility till the time they reach a point when the work is incompetent! That is the stopping point! The Horror is that this applies to the managers of big firms and the officials in a government place! So the chief and the heads are actually reached point in which they are actually incompetent!
A solution has been suggested by the author that the person in such a position must be offered the position just one level below the current position and he or she will be competent in that!
Larger the hierarchy the easier the lateral arabesque or pseudo promotion! The incompetent employee is given a longer title and moved to a office in a remote part of the building with the Same salary or maybe a little hike! !
Case of levitation! Director with a huge salary but no one to manage! Suspended without a base to support! He is given a big job with office and perks but shunted to a place where he cannot disturb anyone!
Peter tells the story of Michael Patrick O Brien who was kept for 11 months on a ferry boat plying between Hong Kong and Macao because of a travel issue!
This leads to another interesting phenomenon especially in the Government sector! There are some forms which serve no purpose other than waste time energy and money! But incompetent officers insist on it because of customary routine! Like the case of Michael above!
The above are examples of Professional Automatism! Means are more important than the end! The paperwork is more important than the purpose!
But most of the time even if they don’t do any work, professional automatism still gets them promoted! In fact if you question or do not get with the flow, then you are not given any promotion! Here competence is harmful!
It was shown with a great example of a temporary teacher!
Probationer-teacher C. Cleary’s first teaching assignment was to a special class of retarded children. Although he had been warned that these children would not accomplish very much, he proceeded to teach them all he could. By the end of the year, many of Cleary’s retarded children scored better on standardized achievement tests of reading and arithmetic than did children in regular classes!
When Cleary received his dismissal notice he was told that he had grossly neglected the bead stringing, sandbox and other busy-work which were the things that retarded children should do. He had failed to make adequate use of the modelling clay, pegboards and finger paints!
If the whole company is incompetent then your competency is your curse!
Which made the author comment that Super competence is more objectionable than incompetence!
Of course the whole book is just an extension of the first chapter and ironically that was the most competent chapter and the author should have stopped there! He did not do it but still the book manages to hold your attention for a while with some notes and comments which I have enumerated…
The author states that there are three classes of workers the incompetent, moderately competent and competent!
The supers in both sides are liable to be dismissed!
Finishing your project within the budget is always bad! If you have any hope of getting a raise the next time make sure that your budget is spent! This is of course a known phenomenon! Do not be too competent is the key!
Examples of different types of incompetence like physical social emotional and mental! All with examples mainly of managers where even the appointing of assistants did not solve the problems!
Over some time though the author gets into his own brain and starts teaching doctors that many problems such as anxiety acidity and depression and many many more are due to a condition invented by him! On top of that the author is frustrated that the medical community does not recognise it!
Then in one chapter the author goes into naming syndrome and phobia and Philia mode! Naming things like compulsive alternation and the teeter totter syndrome! There is a whole list of things which he goes over drive in naming and giving definitions but like I mentioned before the essence is the same! The first chapter is the peak!
Many of the things he says he gives examples of some manager who did that and got nowhere and that makes for interesting stories! Now the stories are nice but repetitive!
Also how superiors treated subordinates and colleagues by body shaming subconsciously! Like how Napoleon towards his later years gave promotion only those with long nose!
All in all a good book to leaf through and if you are interested you can read it or you can just read my summary and the first chapter and you will get more than 80 percent of the essence of the book!
Now that is competence!
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