From what I've seen, there is a large random element to promotions. A few corporations put in place good processes that ensure that promotions occur according t

From what I've seen, there is a large random element to promotions. A few corporations put in place good processes that ensure that promotions occur according to some specific criteria, but such corporations are rare. Most promotions arise from the gut level feelings of managers, and we all know how much those gut level feelings are open to irrational biases. There are the obvious, well documented biases involving race and language and religion and gender, as well as many other forms of biases that come down to subtle differences in communication style. For those who prefer famous examples, I'll offer one that Peter F Drucker often discussed: the difference in communication styles between John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Both men were very smart and talented, in their own ways, but Kennedy preferred to receive information in written form, whereas Johnson preferred to receive information orally. Kennedy was a reader, Johnson was a talker. However, Johnson also felt insecure regarding the dazzling education that the Kennedy's had, and Johnson wanted to imitate their style. So when Johnson became President, he kept around many of the Kennedy people, who continued to write long reports, of the type that Kennedy would have appreciated. Johnson didn't read them, he wasn't a reader. And then he'd ask someone like McNamara to orally offer a short summary of a long report, and McNamara would leave out a lot of details that he assumed Johnson had already seen in the written report. In Drucker's opinion, this was how a leader as smart as Johnson could stumble into a mistake as big as Vietnam. Did Johnson deserve the promotion he got? Most would say he had the intelligence and managerial skill to handle the top job. He had done a fantastic job in the Senate. But he was undermined by irrational and emotional factors, in particular the subtle kind of class envy that would cause him to want to imitate the highly literate style of the Kennedy's. I've seen something like this at most of the places I've worked, leaders who could have been good if a few circumstances were different, but its only in retrospect that it becomes clear which circumstances should have been different. The Peter Principle describes a system of promotion that basically rational until it goes too far. But I've never seen anything that rational, not at any of the places I've worked.