The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle analyses how people reach a level of incompetence in their career and tells you how to achieve a state of wellbeing by avoiding such a situation.

Many people are competent at their job, and eventually, get promoted. After that, competence in that new position qualifies them for yet another promotion. This happens to the point they are no longer competent nor eligible for the next promotion. That means they are also at risk of hitting the point of incompetence! This concept is named The Peter Principle. So, given enough time, and assuming there are enough ranks in the hierarchy, each employee rises to (and gets stuck at) their level of incompetence.

Laurence Peter’s Story

When we are at the start of our careers, we are always told, ‘the more you know, the further you go.’

Laurence Peter thought the same thing. With his freshly printed teaching certificate, he was heading into the real world for the first time. However, during his first year of teaching, he was upset to find the number of teachers, school principals, supervisors, and superintendents who appeared to be unaware of their professional responsibilities and were totally incompetent in executing their duties.

For example, the principal at his school has an absurd and unhealthy obsession with the height of the window shades. He asserted that all of the window shades should be at exactly the same level. The principal would spend the bulk of his afternoon walking around to all of the classrooms to survey the window shades. He would make sure that no teacher had raised them too high or dropped them too low.

You’d really hope that the school principal had far more important things to do than to monitor the window shades in the classrooms. Unfortunately, it seems like the children’s education—the principal’s core responsibility—was the furthest thing from his mind.

How The Peter Principle Can Help You

1. Peter’s Prophylactics

A prophylactic—in the hierarchy logical sense—is a preventative measure applied before the final placement syndrome appears. This means avoiding promotion to the level of incompetence. One approach to this is creative incompetence.

Maintain the appearance of striving for promotion up the hierarchy, but also deliberately practice irrelevant incompetence to prevent promotion. You may have full competence in your normal tasks but slip in a few incompetent aspects that don’t affect your actual work. For example: don’t shave, miss a button on your shirt, or do your tie in a funny way.

Even though your job may not involve client meetings, your appearance causes a reverse halo effect. Practising this strategy for irrelevant tasks can take a few points off your score and reduce your likelihood of promotion

2. Peter’s Palliatives

For anyone who has already hit their level of incompetence, there are a few measures you can take to live out your life in relative happiness and comfort. If you’ve already hit your level of incompetence, one thing you can do is face the sordid truth.
If you realise this, you may also think that you’re only way out of it is to work harder to overcome your deficiencies
But it isn’t the recommended solution! The alternative is substitution. Instead of carrying out the proper duties of your position, you substitute some other set of duties, which you can carry out to perfection.

Some Examples:

a. The school principal couldn’t deal with the community organisations, but he managed to nail getting every window shade in the school to line up perfectly at the same level.

b. Instead of making the tough decision, you focus on information gathering. You tell people to stop rushing into situations and consider all of the consequences. You’ll become the master of information gathering.

c. Jump across to another division or take on a secondment role. Given the differences from your previous job, people will forgive you for not performing well straightaway. When people start to think that you should be on top of things, that’s when you make the next jump to a completely different division or take on a new role and start the cycle all over again.

3. Peter’s Placebos

Sometimes, an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. If you’ve reached your level of incompetence, turn your attention to giving long spiels about the importance of your job. Say things to sound and look smart rather than doing the things that would actually make you smart.

For example, a high school maths teacher who started out in primary school maths got promoted to high school maths. However, they found that their maths skills weren’t up to scratch. Rather than teaching maths, they taught the students the history, the development, the use cases, and the potential future of the field of mathematics. The students found it interesting. They all failed their tests, but they figured it was because it’s hard, not because they had a bad teacher.  Perception outweighs reality—an ounce of image is enough of a placebo to replace the pound of performance.

4. Peter’s Prescriptions

Ultimately, the one solution is the following: stop looking to climb the hierarchy or you’ll end up in a place you don’t want to be. You want to be a teacher who changes kids’ lives, but you end up managing the budgets of the science department. You want to be a lawyer who protects people, but you end up dealing with lobbyists who all have their own interests and trying to write a new law that pleases everybody.

Instead of climbing the hierarchy, focus on your skills and the things you want to do and the contribution you want to make. Don’t get caught up in playing someone else’s game. Play your own game, and you’ll never reach a level of incompetence. When you don’t waste your energy on things you’re not good at, you’ll have boundless energy and the ability to make a positive impact on the world.