3 ms·
The Peter Principle has always struck me as an unnecessarily pessimistic way of looking at the world. Why should we find it surprising that when workers are pro
by jsdalton 7y ago
The Peter Principle has always struck me as an unnecessarily pessimistic way of looking at the world. Why should we find it surprising that when workers are promoted into a role with a greater -- and often vastly different -- responsibilities than what they have experience with, they are not immediately competent? This is especially true when the skills required are non trivial.
Maybe rather than assuming that people come out of the womb "competent" or "incompetent" at a certain level, we could consider providing more training and support both before and after they are promoted into significantly higher roles.
- ysavir 7y ago> Why should we find it surprising that when workers are promoted into a role with a greater -- and often vastly different -- responsibilities than what they have experience with, they are not immediately competent? I think we all agree with you in this regard. However, that's not what The Peter Principle is about. It agrees that most people can handle their promotions, even if it takes time. It is an observation on occasions where people _stop_ getting promotions. The point being made is that people stop getting promoted once they are put in a position they are not capable of performing well. If they _are_ capable of performing well, they will likely be promoted again, and later again, until promoted to a role not fit for their skillset. So it is not so much a commentary on competence as it is on circumstance, but circumstance that many systems are designed to allow or even encourage.
- bigred100 7y agoI haven’t read the Peter principle book, but the popular idea I see around is simply the contrapositive of something most people think is a good thing: if you’re good at what you’re doing, you’ll usually get promoted to the next “level up”.