The Peter Principle Squared

Why is there so much incompetence?

The answer to this rhetorical question often eludes us. Sure, it’s easy to cast the blame on the government, politicians, administrators, teachers, preachers, or atheists. Even though they share some of the responsibility, none of them are fully to blame.

To answer the question of why incompetence and mistakes continually plague us, we recently dusted off our 1969 edition of [I]The Peter Principle[/I] to rediscover a concept that gained great popularity in the ’70s and ’80s, but has all but been forgotten today. Raymond Hull, the coauthor of the book, felt he would never understand the reason for incompetence until he met Dr. Laurence J. Peter, a scientist who had devoted many years to the study of incompetence.

Once you understand this principle, you will be able to conquer incompetence in yourself, and understand the incompetence in others. You will make more money, enjoy life more, amaze your friends, and confound your enemies. Maybe not, but at least you will understand why things always go wrong. After analyzing hundreds of cases of occupational incompetence, Dr. Peter formulated [I]The Peter Principle[/I], which states: [I]“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”[/I]

Hierarchies occur everywhere in life, and they are basically the pecking order in an organization. Any group with a sizeable number of people will be arranged in some order according to ranks of authority, power, or seniority. This involves everyone in business, industry, politics, government, the armed forces, education, and religion. The more important people are placed at the top, and the ones at the bottom are promoted to a higher level once they demonstrate competence at their level.

The problem is that eventually an individual will be promoted to her level of incompetence and, sooner or later, this can happen to every employee in every hierarchy. In fact, Peter’s Corollary states: [I]“In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties.”[/I]

This may seem rather harsh, and in reality you will rarely find a private-sector organization in which all employees have reached their level of incompetence. This is because in a Darwinian business climate, these organizations eventually become extinct through their customers’ natural selection to buy from better businesses. However, monopolies, government agencies, and educational institutions appear to be exempt from this process, and Peter’s Corollary seems to be in full force.

We have noticed a new species of employees moving down the evolutionary ladder as they move up the promotional ladder; so we would like to propose another corollary that could be called The Peter Principle Squared. This states: [I]“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence, and is then promoted to at least one level higher.”[/I]

An incompetent Peter Principle manager once proved competent as a worker, and can still provide technical assistance to help underlings become more competent. However, The Peter Principle Squared creates an interesting phenomenon where a worker is supervised by someone who not only is ineffective as a supervisor, but also cannot offer technical assistance to help the worker achieve a level of basic competence. In this situation, people may reach their level of incompetence at the entry-level position, and are then promoted one or two levels higher.

[I]The Peter Principle Squared[/I] is especially evident in an incestual organization that only hires from within and rarely hires competent individuals who worked for another organization. Eventually, such an organization will expose their incompetence to the public through poor decisions, massive waste of resources, and higher costs to the public disguised as rising fuel costs or other factors beyond their control.

Lowering the bar will only encourage more incompetence. Expecting accountability, and periodically evaluating the performance of an individual against quality standards will help quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. Individuals who recognize their level of incompetence and then move back down the ladder, will do a favor to not only others, but themselves. There will be less stress, more fulfillment from their work, and a sense of accomplishment as they do again what they did best.

[I](Rik is a business instructor at Northern Marianas College and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. They can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)[/I]