Peter’s Principle And Incompetence

Peter’s principle states that promoting a worker can sometimes be a serious problem for the company if it is an incompetent person. According to this theory, many promotions are actually a setback. The worker finds himself accepting professional challenges within an office, but does not always have sufficient resources to face them successfully. On the contrary, he is often subjected to a high dose of stress.

Although he is already over sixty, the  Peter principle is perfectly current. It was in the late 1960s when doctors Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, pedagogues at the University of Washington, wrote a humorous book called The Peter Principle .

They probably didn’t expect such success either. It was a very controversial book, hard and critical of the errors typical of any company, educational center or other field of work. At the center of attention was the inability to choose well the professionals to promote.

Aside from the irony associated with the idea of ​​this humorous book, the message that Peter and Hull wanted to convey was much more serious. For the first time, they shed light on the dangers of entrusting inadequate people with strategic roles in a company, whether public or private.

When this happens, the organization usually weakens, fails, causes unhappiness and low productivity,  inevitably infecting other scenarios. The influence of bad business decisions can be devastating.

What is meant by the Peter principle?

Peter’s principle can be summarized in this basic idea: in the hierarchical structure of any organization, workers will be promoted to a position for which they are not prepared. The rest of their careers will remain on that scale. This implies another no less pertinent aspect: not even great managers are able to respond successfully to their responsibilities.

As you will understand, this theory has many detractors as well as supporters. For example, some studies indicate that the Peter Principle does not exist in all societies or in all professional scenarios. Likewise, it is however a starting point for taking measures to reduce these situations.

Maintain positions of responsibility

There are highly effective employees in their work. It is therefore very likely that, at a given moment, it will be decided to promote them. The company will look to make even better use of their capabilities. But evidently, a greater assignment implies greater responsibilities. Often it doesn’t matter how efficient or competent you are in a given subject or job, promotion is a simple reward and not a strategically smart measure.

In many cases, promotion expands the amount of skills needed : communication, leadership, conflict resolution, decision making, personnel management, creative vision, risk forecasting …

Not everyone is suitable for promotion;  not all people, no matter how competent they are in an area, can assume a position of greater responsibility.

In this sense, according to the Peter principle, promotion often leads to the presence of highly stressed leaders who are aware of their incompetence. Others, however, take the position with complete tranquility. They do not care at all about the impact of their decisions which, inevitably, will be wrong.

What can be done to avoid the Peter principle?

The Peter Principle was established based on the characteristics of the Western labor market several decades ago. The corporate world, as you know, is based on fierce competition between companies and employees. This often means that you don’t choose who is more competent, but who seems more aggressive, tough or even charismatic.

According to the authors of this theory, the most surprising aspect is that these characters are rarely fired. They are those bad apples that remain and that infect the rest of the group, generating a negative work environment with low productivity. It is therefore necessary for every manager, officer or employee to take these aspects into consideration.

Elements that favor the Peter principle

Before delving into the strategies for avoiding the Peter principle, let’s try to understand by which elements it can be triggered:

• There are employees who are promoted for seniority reasons. Others receive this award for their loyalty to the company. They are workers who have always shown themselves available, devoted and helpful.

• In many countries the promotion is the result of the recommendation. We are talking about relatives, friends or people related to the boss.

• It is also a practice to offer promotions to charismatic people. Extroverted profiles who, thanks to their undeniable charisma, offer an indisputable sense of leadership. However, in the long run, these promotions are significantly damaging.

Measures to avoid the Peter principle

Some executives and entrepreneurs know how to avoid the Peter principle. They do this through three strategies:

• They promote better. They avoid automatic promotions and, at the same time, create more accurate evaluation systems.

• They favor internal training. It is necessary to continuously train the person who will be promoted, so that when the time comes he can take the reins without too many hitches. You need to enter new skills, develop new skills appropriate for each position (such as management and leadership).

• Reverse promotion. In this case, each company must provide adequate supervision measures, so that inefficient or unproductive workers can be degraded and removed from more strategic tasks.

Conclusions

The Peter principle is a rather frequent phenomenon. The inability to get to know their workers in depth for a company means not only reducing efficiency and productivity, but also risking failure.

Above all, it implies a sort of “legalization” of incompetence, to the detriment of those who are truly gifted with talent and skill. The result is reflected in negative work environments that will ultimately only produce stress and unhappiness.