Peter Principle
Encyclopedia
The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted
until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently
. 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."
The principle holds that in a hierarchy
, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually 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.
This principle can be modeled and has theoretical validity for simulations. However, there has been no large-scale statistical verification of the Peter Principle, and most evidence given for the axiom is intended to be humorous and is usually anecdotal.
s, and to administrative devices, such as the "Safety Evaluations" used for managing change. There is much temptation to use what has worked before, even when it may exceed its effective scope. Dr. Peter observed this about humans.
In an organizational structure, the Peter Principle's practical application allows assessment of the potential of an employee for a promotion based on performance in the current job; i.e., members of an hierarchical organization
eventually are promoted
to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to incompetence. That level is the employee's "level of incompetence" where the employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching their career's ceiling in an organization.
The employee's incompetence is not necessarily a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult. It may be that the new position requires different work skills which the employee may not possess. For example, an engineer with great technical skill might get promoted to project manager, only to discover he lacks the interpersonal skills required to lead a team.
Thus, "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."
In addition, Peter suggested the idea of “Super-Competence” in an inappropriately low position. *See ‘caste’ under Solutions* He proposed that this employee will have two paths dependent upon their leadership.
Competent People Managers will promote this employee for the betterment of the company.
Incompetent People Managers will most likely feel intimidated and/or threatened by this employee. This employee is a disruption to their perceived natural order and will almost certainly drive them to set this employee up for failure and/or dismiss them.
Organizations with poor leadership cannot handle this type of disruption to their hierarchical structure. A Super-Competent employee “…violates the first commandment of hierarchical life with incompetent leadership: [namely that] the hierarchy must be preserved…”
One way that organizations can avoid this effect is by having an "up or out" policy that requires termination of an employee who fails to attain a promotion after a certain amount of time.
Example: A people manager is able to handle the vast majority of his or her current job responsibilities, but does not reveal the skill set necessary for promotion. The people manager possesses the potential to cause harm within the company, by way of preventing those beneath them with higher potential from moving up, as well as lowering morale once such employees become aware of this fact. The United States Military, for instance, requires that certain ranks be held for no longer than a set amount of time, a lack of compliance with which could render grounds for dismissal.
Another method is to refrain from promoting a worker until they show the skills and work habits needed to succeed at the next higher job. Thus, a worker is not promoted to managing others if they do not already display management
abilities.
Peter states that a class, or caste
(social stratification
) system is more efficient at avoiding incompetence. Lower-level competent workers will not be promoted above their level of competence as the higher jobs are reserved for members of a higher class. "The prospect of starting near the top of the pyramid will attract to the hierarchy a group of brilliant [higher class] employees who would never have come there at all if they had been forced to start at the bottom". Thus he concludes that the hierarchies "are more efficient than those of a classless or egalitarian society" .
In a similar vein, some real-life organizations recognize that technical people may be very valuable for their skills but poor managers, and so provide parallel career
paths allowing a good technical person to acquire pay and status reserved for management in most organizations.
Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda and Cesare Garofalo used an agent-based modelling approach to simulate the promotion of employees and tested alternative strategies. Although counter-intuitive, they found that the best way to improve efficiency in an enterprise is to promote people randomly, or to shortlist the best and the worst performer in a given group, from which the person to be promoted is then selected randomly. This work won the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize
in management science.
Another technique for overcoming the effects of the Peter Principle can be found in the use of contractors (for example in the IT industry). IT contractors are selected for their relevant experience, supported by recent references, and are usually taken on for short periods (up to 6 months at a time, with renewals if competent). If incompetence is detected, they can be easily laid off (e.g. by simply not renewing their contract).
The contractor is not a part of the hierarchy, is not usually eligible for promotion, and is well remunerated and thus content with the contracted position, as well as being under pressure to perform to ensure continued employment.
organized systems in the human society.
was a consummate and superb politician
due especially to his charisma
and oratorical skills
but reached his "level of incompetence" as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht
because of the rigidity of his decision making (not allowing retreats when necessary according to the tactical situation). Similar observations on incompetence can be found in the Dilbert
cartoon series (such as The Dilbert Principle
), the movie Office Space
, and the television shows The Office
and 30 Rock
. In particular, the Dilbert Principle seems to be an extension of the Peter Principle. According to the Peter Principle, the subject has been competent at some job in his past. The Dilbert Principle attempts to explain how a person who has never been competent at anything at any point in time can still be promoted into management.
In 1981 Avalon Hill
made a board game on the topic titled The Peter Principle Game.
In April 2009, it was announced that the book would be re-issued in honor of its 40th anniversary.
in his comedy Minna von Barnhelm
(3, 7): “Mehr als Wachtmeister zu werden? Daran denke ich nicht. Ich bin ein guter Wachtmeister und dürfte leicht ein schlechter Rittmeister und sicherlich noch ein schlechtrer General werden. Die Erfahrung hat man.”
Translated from German to English: “To become more than a sergeant? I don't consider it. I am a good sergeant; I might easily make a bad captain, and certainly a worse general. People have had this experience.”
Promotion (rank)
A promotion is the advancement of an employee's rank or position in an organizational hierarchy system. Promotion may be an employee's reward for good performance i.e. positive appraisal...
until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently
Competence (human resources)
Competence is the ability of an individual to perform a job properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees. As defined, the term "competence" first appeared in...
. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter
Laurence J. Peter
Dr. Laurence Johnston Peter was an educator and "hierarchiologist", best known to the general public for the formulation of the Peter Principle....
and Raymond Hull
Raymond Hull
Raymond Hull was a Canadian playwright, television screenwriter, and lecturer. He also wrote many non-fiction books, numerous magazine articles, short stories, and poetry. He is best known as the co-author of the book The Peter Principle with Laurence J. Peter...
in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of hierarchiology."
The principle holds that in a hierarchy
Hierarchical organization
A hierarchical organization is an organizational structure where every entity in the organization, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity. This arrangement is a form of a hierarchy. In an organization, the hierarchy usually consists of a singular/group of power at the top with...
, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent
Competence (human resources)
Competence is the ability of an individual to perform a job properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees. As defined, the term "competence" first appeared in...
(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.
This principle can be modeled and has theoretical validity for simulations. However, there has been no large-scale statistical verification of the Peter Principle, and most evidence given for the axiom is intended to be humorous and is usually anecdotal.
Overview
The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails. This is "The Generalized Peter Principle". It was observed by Dr. William R. Corcoran in his work on corrective action programs at nuclear power plants. He observed it applied to hardware, e.g., vacuum cleaners as aspiratorAspirator
An aspirator, also called an eductor-jet pump or filter pump, is a device that produces vacuum by means of the Venturi effect. In an aspirator, fluid flows through a tube which then narrows. When the tube narrows, the fluid's speed increases, and because of the Venturi effect, its pressure...
s, and to administrative devices, such as the "Safety Evaluations" used for managing change. There is much temptation to use what has worked before, even when it may exceed its effective scope. Dr. Peter observed this about humans.
In an organizational structure, the Peter Principle's practical application allows assessment of the potential of an employee for a promotion based on performance in the current job; i.e., members of an hierarchical organization
Hierarchical organization
A hierarchical organization is an organizational structure where every entity in the organization, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity. This arrangement is a form of a hierarchy. In an organization, the hierarchy usually consists of a singular/group of power at the top with...
eventually are promoted
Promotion (rank)
A promotion is the advancement of an employee's rank or position in an organizational hierarchy system. Promotion may be an employee's reward for good performance i.e. positive appraisal...
to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to incompetence. That level is the employee's "level of incompetence" where the employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching their career's ceiling in an organization.
The employee's incompetence is not necessarily a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult. It may be that the new position requires different work skills which the employee may not possess. For example, an engineer with great technical skill might get promoted to project manager, only to discover he lacks the interpersonal skills required to lead a team.
Thus, "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."
In addition, Peter suggested the idea of “Super-Competence” in an inappropriately low position. *See ‘caste’ under Solutions* He proposed that this employee will have two paths dependent upon their leadership.
Competent People Managers will promote this employee for the betterment of the company.
Incompetent People Managers will most likely feel intimidated and/or threatened by this employee. This employee is a disruption to their perceived natural order and will almost certainly drive them to set this employee up for failure and/or dismiss them.
Organizations with poor leadership cannot handle this type of disruption to their hierarchical structure. A Super-Competent employee “…violates the first commandment of hierarchical life with incompetent leadership: [namely that] the hierarchy must be preserved…”
Solutions
There are methods organizations can use to mitigate the risk associated with the Peter Principle. However, the implementation of such methods must be applied at all levels in order for them to be effective.One way that organizations can avoid this effect is by having an "up or out" policy that requires termination of an employee who fails to attain a promotion after a certain amount of time.
Example: A people manager is able to handle the vast majority of his or her current job responsibilities, but does not reveal the skill set necessary for promotion. The people manager possesses the potential to cause harm within the company, by way of preventing those beneath them with higher potential from moving up, as well as lowering morale once such employees become aware of this fact. The United States Military, for instance, requires that certain ranks be held for no longer than a set amount of time, a lack of compliance with which could render grounds for dismissal.
Another method is to refrain from promoting a worker until they show the skills and work habits needed to succeed at the next higher job. Thus, a worker is not promoted to managing others if they do not already display management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
abilities.
- The first corollary is that employees who are dedicated to their current jobs should not be promoted for their efforts (as in The Dilbert PrincipleThe Dilbert PrincipleThe Dilbert principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management , in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing...
), and instead should be rewarded with, say, a pay raise, while remaining in their current position. - The second corollary is that employees might be promoted only after being sufficiently trained to the new position. This places the burden of discovering individuals with poor managerial capabilities before (as opposed to after) they are promoted.
Peter states that a class, or caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
(social stratification
Social stratification
In sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."...
) system is more efficient at avoiding incompetence. Lower-level competent workers will not be promoted above their level of competence as the higher jobs are reserved for members of a higher class. "The prospect of starting near the top of the pyramid will attract to the hierarchy a group of brilliant [higher class] employees who would never have come there at all if they had been forced to start at the bottom". Thus he concludes that the hierarchies "are more efficient than those of a classless or egalitarian society" .
In a similar vein, some real-life organizations recognize that technical people may be very valuable for their skills but poor managers, and so provide parallel career
Career
Career is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a person's "course or progress through life ". It is usually considered to pertain to remunerative work ....
paths allowing a good technical person to acquire pay and status reserved for management in most organizations.
Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda and Cesare Garofalo used an agent-based modelling approach to simulate the promotion of employees and tested alternative strategies. Although counter-intuitive, they found that the best way to improve efficiency in an enterprise is to promote people randomly, or to shortlist the best and the worst performer in a given group, from which the person to be promoted is then selected randomly. This work won the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize
Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to "first make people laugh, and then make them think"...
in management science.
Another technique for overcoming the effects of the Peter Principle can be found in the use of contractors (for example in the IT industry). IT contractors are selected for their relevant experience, supported by recent references, and are usually taken on for short periods (up to 6 months at a time, with renewals if competent). If incompetence is detected, they can be easily laid off (e.g. by simply not renewing their contract).
The contractor is not a part of the hierarchy, is not usually eligible for promotion, and is well remunerated and thus content with the contracted position, as well as being under pressure to perform to ensure continued employment.
Hierarchiology
Along with the Peter Principle, Dr. Peter also coined "hierarchiology" as the social science concerned with the basic principles of hierarchicallyHierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
organized systems in the human society.
Impact on popular culture
Although humorous, Peter's book contains many real-world examples and thought-provoking explanations of human behavior. For example, he pointed out that Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was a consummate and superb politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
due especially to his charisma
Charisma
The term charisma has two senses: 1) compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others, 2) a divinely conferred power or talent. For some theological usages the term is rendered charism, with a meaning the same as sense 2...
and oratorical skills
Oratory
Oratory is a type of public speaking.Oratory may also refer to:* Oratory , a power metal band* Oratory , a place of worship* a religious order such as** Oratory of Saint Philip Neri ** Oratory of Jesus...
but reached his "level of incompetence" as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
because of the rigidity of his decision making (not allowing retreats when necessary according to the tactical situation). Similar observations on incompetence can be found in the Dilbert
Dilbert
Dilbert is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. First published on April 16, 1989, Dilbert is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character...
cartoon series (such as The Dilbert Principle
The Dilbert Principle
The Dilbert principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management , in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing...
), the movie Office Space
Office Space
Office Space is a 1999 American comedy film satirizing work life in a typical 1990s software company. Written and directed by Mike Judge, it focuses on a handful of individuals fed up with their jobs portrayed by Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, and Diedrich...
, and the television shows The Office
The Office
The Office is a popular mockumentary/situation comedy TV show that was first made in the UK and has now been re-made in many other countries, with overall viewership in the hundreds of millions worldwide. The original version of The Office was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. It...
and 30 Rock
30 Rock
30 Rock is an American television comedy series created by Tina Fey that airs on NBC. The series is loosely based on Fey's experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live...
. In particular, the Dilbert Principle seems to be an extension of the Peter Principle. According to the Peter Principle, the subject has been competent at some job in his past. The Dilbert Principle attempts to explain how a person who has never been competent at anything at any point in time can still be promoted into management.
In 1981 Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...
made a board game on the topic titled The Peter Principle Game.
In April 2009, it was announced that the book would be re-issued in honor of its 40th anniversary.
Earlier version
The same experience was described as early as 1767 by Gotthold Ephraim LessingGotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...
in his comedy Minna von Barnhelm
Minna von Barnhelm
Minna von Barnhelm or the Soldiers' Happiness is a lustspiel or comedy by the German author Gotthold Ephraim Lessing...
(3, 7): “Mehr als Wachtmeister zu werden? Daran denke ich nicht. Ich bin ein guter Wachtmeister und dürfte leicht ein schlechter Rittmeister und sicherlich noch ein schlechtrer General werden. Die Erfahrung hat man.”
Translated from German to English: “To become more than a sergeant? I don't consider it. I am a good sergeant; I might easily make a bad captain, and certainly a worse general. People have had this experience.”
See also
- Dunning–Kruger effect
- Negative selection (politics)Negative selection (politics)Negative selection is a political process that occurs especially in rigid hierarchies, most notably dictatorships, but also to lesser degrees in such settings as corporations or electoral politics....
- List of eponymous laws
- Parkinson's lawParkinson's lawParkinson's law is the adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955:...
- Software Peter principleSoftware Peter principleThe software Peter principle is used in software engineering to describe a dying project which has little by little become too complex to be understood even by its own developers....
- SystemanticsSystemanticsSystemantics is a text by John Gall in which he proposes several "laws" of systems' failures. Systemantics is a play on words on semantics, systematics and systems display antics....
External links
- The Peter Principle : Work Poems A series of 52 poems completed before or shortly after going to work. All embody the spirit of The Peter Principle, and appropriate contempt for it.
- Peter Parkinson's Principles Satirical principles for promotion beyond the level of incompetence.
- The Nartreb Principle
- A Glossary of Incompetence Time Magazine, Friday, Mar. 28, 1969.
- Peter Principle in Poker