In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Dr Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle
2 thoughts on “The Peter Principle”
Comments are closed.
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Dr Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle
Comments are closed.
The late lamented Creative Computing magazine, way back in the early 1980s, printed an article that changed my thinking about this. It was called, if memory serves, ‘The Inverse Peter Principle’, and it stated roughly:
Competent employees stay where they are, because the organization needs them.
Incompetent employees are promoted to a level where their incompetence is no longer obvious.
This would explain Congress (and other political assemblies) just as well as the original Peter Principle. As C. S. Lewis said in The Silver Chair:
‘After that, the Head’s friends saw that the Head was no use as a Head, so they got her made an Inspector to interfere with other Heads. And when they found out she wasn’t much good even at that, they got her into Parliament where she lived happily ever after.’
Exhibit A for the Peter Principle’s validity: Congress. (And I’m definitely including Congresscritter staffs; I’m no longer subject to Article 88, hahahaha.)