BFTP: The Peter Principle
Friday, May 8, 2020 at 08:34AM
The Peter Principle: people will tend to be promoted until they reach their "position of incompetence." Laurence J. Peter.
During my career, I thought about the Peter Principle* a lot every spring. It's the time of year many in education start looking for greener career pastures. I know I did.
When most people think about the Peter Principle it is as an explanation for why people are not good at their jobs. I've never been a total believer in Peter Principle, having worked mostly with people who knew themselves, appreciated their personal skill sets, and strove to do the best job possible rather than simply climb to a career level where they found themselves unable to perform well. I'd put most classroom teachers and librarians in this category - they like what they do, feel competent doing it, and know they are making a difference in the world.
What I was bedeviled by were those wonderful people with whom I worked who were career climbers and who had not yet reached their level of incompetence. These were younger, early or mid-career people who did great work at their current position and were looking for more responsibility, more challenge, and possibly more prestige, if not better pay.
As a supervisor and faithful district employee, I knew I should have been doing everything in my power to keep these folks where they were because they benefited the district. By creating a positive, flexible work environment, not micro-managing, and empowering whenever possible, I was proactive in this regard.
But I also recognized that in smaller organizations, career paths are rather stunted. If a person wanted more responsibility and greater remuneration, he/she usually had to move elsewhere. (I myself changed districts several times for "higher" positions.) I'd long come to accept that my district was sort of a farm team for bigger schools and even the private sector in producing good tech people.
So when people in my department talked to me about other positions they've applied for, my question to them was always: "Will this new job offer you the opportunity to stretch, to grow, to be challenged?" and reminded them that one had to make a hell of a lot more money to see much difference in the individual paycheck. If the job was bigger than the one they had, I did what I could to help them get it.
Doesn't everyone deserve the chance to rise to the level of their incompetence?
* The 1969 book The Peter Principle is available as an e-book.
See also:
Peter's Laws (The Creed of the Sociopathic Obsessive Compulsive)
Reader Comments (2)
I appreciated this book and its follow-up, The Peter Prescription, because they helped me understand behaviors we all see with some people in selected situations. One example from one of the books concerned a school board that discussed at length the cost of re-roofing the storage garage at the high school fields, yet passed quickly a bid for something that cost a few million dollars. The author's point was that the garage roof cost was a number and job they all understood. Financially, it was at their level of competence. The bid job amount was incomprehensible in their daily experience and their vote to follow someone else's advice indicated that. Seeing what various people concerned themselves with in various areas helped me better prepare presentations that would make sense to them (I suppose Madeline Hunter would have said I was teaching at the 'correct level of difficulty.')
Hi Greg,
Good to know someone else remembers this book (and principle). I quote it and often state I was lucky to have risen to my level of incompetence early in my career. This and Covey's 7 Habits influenced me a lot.
Doug