Peter principle

This article is about the book. For the software concept, see software Peter principle. For the British television series, see The Peter Principle (TV series). For the musician, see Tuxedomoon.

The cover of The Peter Principle (1970 Pan Books edition)

The Peter Principle is a satirical book about incompetence, by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull and published by William Morrow and Company in 1969. Although written humorously, it makes a serious point about the shortcomings of how people are promoted within any kind of hierarchical organisation – be it a small or large business, military, government, or school. The central theme is that a person who is competent at his job will earn promotion to a more senior position which requires different skills. If the promoted person lacks the skills required for his new role, then he will be incompetent at his new level, and so he will not be promoted again. But if he is competent at his new role, then he will be promoted again, and he will continue to be promoted until he eventually reaches a level at which he is incompetent. Being incompetent, he does not qualify to be promoted again, and so he remains stuck at that final level for the rest of his career (termed "Final Placement" or "Peter's Plateau"). This outcome is inevitable, given enough time and assuming that there are enough positions in the hierarchy to promote competent employees to. 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."

The principle is named the Peter Principle because although Hull actually wrote the book himself, it is a summary of Peter's research, which he had conducted on his own before meeting Hull but had never got round to publishing. Hull calls the study of how hierarchies work "hierarchiology."

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

Summary

In chapters 1 and 2, Peter and Hull give various examples of the Peter principle in action. A competent mechanic may make an incompetent foreman; a competent school teacher may make a competent assistant principal, but then go on to be an incompetent principal, and therefore will not be considered for promotion to assistant superintendent; a military officer may be promoted all the way up through the ranks to general and still be competent at that rank, but then make an incompetent field marshal. In each case, the higher position required skills which were not required at the level immediately below. The mechanic only had to know how to fix cars, but as a foreman he needed to be able to manage the other mechanics and deal with customers. The teacher was competent at educating children, and as assistant principal he was good at dealing with parents and other teachers, but as principal he was poor at maintaining good relations with the school board and the superintendent. The general was capable at dealing with ordinary soldiers, but as a field marshal he did not know how to liaise with politicians and the field marshals of his country's allies. They conclude that "this could happen to every employee in every hierarchy."

In chapter 3, Peter and Hull discuss apparent exceptions to this principle and then debunk them. One of these illusory exceptions in when someone who is incompetent is still promoted anyway. This is known as "percussive sublimation" (i.e. being "kicked upstairs"). But it is only a pseudo-promotion: a move from one unproductive position to another; whereas a true promotion is a move from a position of competence (either to a position of competence or to a position of incompetence). This improves staff morale, as other employees believe that they too can be promoted again. Another pseudo-promotion is the "lateral arabesque", when a person is moved out of the way and given a longer job title.

Competence is measured by the employer, not by the customers or anyone else outside the hierarchy. "Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder." So people who appear to outsiders to be incompetent because they follow the rules of the organisation to an extent which actually impedes their effectiveness are still deemed competent by their immediate superior, because "internal consistency is valued more highly than efficient service". This is dubbed "Peter's Inversion," because the means have become more important than the ends. Those who value the means more than the ends are called "Peter's Inverts."

While incompetence is merely a barrier to further promotion, super-incompetence is grounds for dismissal. So is super-competence. The competence of employees at a given level can be represented by a bell curve: the majority are either competent or incompetent and so can remain employed, but a small number of outliers are either super-incompetent or super-competent, and in both cases "they tend to disrupt the hierarchy." They are therefore expelled in order to preserve the hierarchy; a process called "hierarchical exfoliation". One example of a super-competent employee is a teacher of children with special needs who was so effective at educating them that after a year they exceeded all expectations at reading and arithmetic, but the teacher was still fired because he had neglected to devote enough time to bead-stringing and finger-painting.

Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the methods of achieving promotion: "Push" and "Pull." Push means the employee's own efforts, such as working hard and taking self-improvement courses. This is usually not very effective, because of the Seniority Factor: the next level up is often fully occupied, blocking the path to promotion. (Murdering one's immediate superiors can be an effective way of overcoming this obstacle, but as this is such a rare phenomenon it does not really affect Peter and Hull's assessment of Push.) Pull is far more effective, and refers to accelerated promotion brought about by the efforts of an employee's mentors or patrons. It is better to have as many patrons as possible, because each additional patron produces a multiplying effect on their combined effectiveness, as patrons reinforce their positive opinion of the employee by discussing him with each other ("Hull's Theorem").

Chapter 6 explains why "good followers do not become good leaders." In chapter 7, Peter and Hull describe the effect of the Peter Principle in politics and government. Chapter 8, entitled "Hints and Foreshadowings", discusses the work of earlier writers on the subject of incompetence, such as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Alexander Pope.

Chapter 9 explains that once employees have reached their level of incompetence, they always lack insight into their situation. Most don't realise that they are incompetent, but those who do recognise their own incompetence still never realise that it is because they have been promoted, and so they futilely search for other explanations instead. In this chapter, Peter and Hull go on to explain why aptitude tests don't work and are actually counter-productive. Finally, they describe "Summit Competence": when someone reaches the highest level in their organisation and yet is still competent at that level. This is only because there were not enough ranks in the hierarchy, or because they did not have time to reach a level of incompetence. Such people often seek a level of incompetence in another hierarchy. For example, Socrates was an outstanding teacher but a terrible defence attorney. This is known as "Compulsive Incompetence."

Chapter 10 explains why trying to assist an incompetent employee by promoting another employee to act as his assistant doesn't work. "Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence."

Chapters 11 and 12 describe the various medical and psychological manifestations of stress which may result when someone reaches his level of incompetence, as well as other symptoms such as certain characteristic habits of speech or behaviour.

Chapter 13 considers whether it is possible for an employee who has reached his level of incompetence to be happy and healthy once he gets there. The answer is no, if he realises his true situation, and yes if he does not. Those who realise that they are incompetent usually think (mistakenly) that this is only because they are not working hard enough, and so they work themselves harder until they burn out or damage their health. So facing the sordid truth is not recommended. Those who have not realised that they are at their level of incompetence remain happy and healthy because they substitute irrelevant duties for the proper duties of their post, and excel at those instead. Peter and Hull describe six different Substitution techniques.

In chapter 14 various ways of avoiding promotion to the final level are described. Attempting to refuse an offered promotion is ill-advised, and is only practicable if the employee is not married and has no-one else to answer to. Generally it is better to avoid being considered for promotion in the first place, by pretending to be incompetent while one is actually still employed at a level of competence. This is "Creative Incompetence," and several examples of successful techniques are given. It works best if the chosen field of incompetence does not actually impair one's work.

The concluding chapter applies Peter's Principle to the entire human species at an evolutionary level, and asks whether humanity can survive in the long run, or will become extinct upon reaching its level of incompetence as technology advances.

Other works

Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo used an agent-based modelling approach to simulate the promotion of employees in a system where the Peter principle is assumed to be true. 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. For this work, they won the 2010 edition of the parody Ig Nobel Prize in management science.

José Ortega y Gasset suggested that: "All public employees should be demoted to their immediately lower level, as they have been promoted until turning incompetent". Ortega died in 1955, about 14 years before Peter published The Peter Principle.

See also

• Dilbert principle
• Dunning–Kruger effect
• Founder's syndrome
• Up or out
• Negative selection (politics)
• Parkinson's law
• Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat
• Systemantics

Bibliography

• Alan Benson, Danielle Li, Kelly Shue (February 12, 2018): Promotions and the Peter Principle, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3047193
• Lazear, Edward P (October 12, 2000). "The Peter Principle: Promotions and Declining Productivity" (PDF). Hoover Institution and Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
• Peter, Laurence J. and Hull, Raymond. The Peter Principle, William Morrow & Co Inc, 1969 (Pan Books edition 1970).