Sometimes during early 2000, while scaling up our operations, I found
a unique phenomenon affecting our organisation. People who were proven
performers were moved up & given additional responsibilities with
larger teams. I found that most of those so promoted, started showing
signs of failing in their performances, either at a personal level or as
managers.
Despite my best efforts at mentoring & guiding my top team, this phenomenon was becoming something of a a ritual. The results were extremely surprising & foxing with no credible answer. Around 2007 I came across an article on Peter Principle & I found the observation very intriguing & interesting. I read a lot on it & while there had been no research done to prove the truth behind the principle, the observation made by Dr. Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull and published in their book "The Peter Principle" in 1968, was actually at work within my company.
Peter Principle is an observation that in an organizational hierarchy, every employee will rise or get promoted to his or her level of incompetence. It is based on the notion that employees will get promoted as long as they are competent, but at some point will fail to get promoted beyond a certain job because it has become too challenging for them. Employees rise to their level of incompetence and stay there. Over time, every position in the hierarchy will be filled by someone who is not competent enough to carry out his or her new duties.
Dr Peter clarified that it was not necessarily incompetence at the new position of the employee. Every new role requires new competencies & skills, which an otherwise competent employee may not possess, hence the failure. He succulently sums up his observation as “the cream rises until it sours”.
While Peter Principle remains a concept in management theory & there has been no research done to support this observation, I have personally seen it at work within my own & many client organisations with repeated frequency. Managers promoted sequentially over a period of time, do tend to rise to their “level of incompetence” till promotions are no longer possible.
This principle is fraught with a catch-22 situation. Performers in any organisation expect growth, both in terms of role & responsibilities, else stagnation followed by churn sets in. With each subsequent promotion an employee heads closer to his level of incompetence. Promotion that leads to a slide in performance has a collateral damage – loss of a previous good performer.
Not everyone agrees with this principle though. Leigh Steere, co-owner, Managing People Better LLC says "I personally do not believe in the Peter Principle. The field of neurolinguistic programming says that any behaviour/skill can be learned. In other words, if a person does not already know how to do something, he/she can be taught”.
On the other hand, Ric Morgan, professional speaker and author of “The Keys: The Textbook to a Successful Life” is a firm believer. "This problem is so diverse and prevalent I have even seen examples of the founder of the company being a leading example of the Peter Principle. I know that sounds crazy, but this is exactly what happens despite the fact that they had two things going for them: an idea that was just too good to fail, and the ability to hire very competent people to make it all work.
"I have even, as crazy as this sounds, found this in people who are running or trying to start one-man shops. In this day and age of entrepreneurship, everyone believes they can start a business and make it succeed because they 'have the best idea that will make them overnight millionaires.' Wrong! It's hard to look into someone's eyes and tell them they are too incompetent to do what they have set out to do, even if they have been doing something similar in another place, where they had actually reached the level of incompetence espoused by Dr. Laurence. As a business consultant, the minute I find the people who are living examples of the Peter Principle is the minute I find the problems in the company”.
There are those who take the mid-path. Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, author of 'Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction' says "I have been a corporate trainer for 30 years. I don't believe you can really measure the truth of the Peter Principle without analyzing the training the person has had for the position they have moved into, especially if it's a promotion.
"With each promotion the person has to give up some of the things they have done before and take on new tasks, responsibilities and perspectives (including work values). What they did before will not ensure their success in the present. However, if the person doesn't get good mentoring, training and a manager who can support the shift, they are not given the tools to succeed. They could be competent if given the chance."
My personal experience is that training & mentoring cannot be sustained over years & subsequent promotions. With experience & age, mindsets & resistance to learning sets in & I have seen some of the senior-most & finest professionals being rendered “un-trainable”. So strong has been their belief in their own strengths & past knowledge that they fail to see the looming disaster leading to the sudden end of an illustrious career. I have interacted with so many such corporate stalwarts, once brilliant but now laid-off, just because they attained their level of incompetence in their last role.
Can the Peter Principal be overcome? I believe it can be. Though there have been many articles written on this I haven’t really found any authentic answer anywhere. Looking back at my own experience I feel that the first thing to do before moving on to a new role, is to “act like the person you want to become”. What is needed is a personal transformation from who you are to what you have become or wish to become. For a start one must be willing to give up the person one is, no matter how successful, because some of the skill sets needed in a new role will be different from the ones in which the person is finding success currently. Find out the challenges, drawbacks & skill sets for a new role & start acting the way you want to be or required to be & soon enough it is possible to become the person you need to be.
The biggest challenge to this is the lethargy that most people face to get out of one’s comfort zone. It isn’t easy to stop being the person you are at a successful point of time & become another person you wish to be at another level. It can be done through self-realisation & actively seeking mentoring, which must begin with a clear motive—a serious desire to change, learn & imbibe. Unfortunately not many people remain students for life & start resisting change & that is when the slide begins when a role change takes place.
As a way of managing this curious principle within GRASSIK, I advise people looking to be promoted in the future to mentally tear up their current job role. I give them the key deliverables for success in the new role & ask them to mentally switch to the new role & live out the same under my guidance for a few months before they actually move to the enhanced role. I usually give them the option to choose the time of their promotion, at which time they are more attuned mentally to achieve a better successful transition. But problems always remain, for managers are never perfect. If they were, management principles would not exist.
About the Author:
Rajeev is the Founder Director of Grassik search Pvt Ltd, one of the country’s finest & oldest search firms, which he established in 1993. He has over 22 years of experience in executive search, executing CXO level searches across industries. Amongst the pioneers of the executive search industry, he is a respected career coach, guide & a mentor who has helped people transition careers successfully across industries & roles. An expert change & innovation driver, he has been instrumental in making GRASSIK the most relevant & successful search firm in the country today, successfully managing the fast changing client expectations & candidate aspirations.
Despite my best efforts at mentoring & guiding my top team, this phenomenon was becoming something of a a ritual. The results were extremely surprising & foxing with no credible answer. Around 2007 I came across an article on Peter Principle & I found the observation very intriguing & interesting. I read a lot on it & while there had been no research done to prove the truth behind the principle, the observation made by Dr. Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull and published in their book "The Peter Principle" in 1968, was actually at work within my company.
Peter Principle is an observation that in an organizational hierarchy, every employee will rise or get promoted to his or her level of incompetence. It is based on the notion that employees will get promoted as long as they are competent, but at some point will fail to get promoted beyond a certain job because it has become too challenging for them. Employees rise to their level of incompetence and stay there. Over time, every position in the hierarchy will be filled by someone who is not competent enough to carry out his or her new duties.
Dr Peter clarified that it was not necessarily incompetence at the new position of the employee. Every new role requires new competencies & skills, which an otherwise competent employee may not possess, hence the failure. He succulently sums up his observation as “the cream rises until it sours”.
While Peter Principle remains a concept in management theory & there has been no research done to support this observation, I have personally seen it at work within my own & many client organisations with repeated frequency. Managers promoted sequentially over a period of time, do tend to rise to their “level of incompetence” till promotions are no longer possible.
This principle is fraught with a catch-22 situation. Performers in any organisation expect growth, both in terms of role & responsibilities, else stagnation followed by churn sets in. With each subsequent promotion an employee heads closer to his level of incompetence. Promotion that leads to a slide in performance has a collateral damage – loss of a previous good performer.
Not everyone agrees with this principle though. Leigh Steere, co-owner, Managing People Better LLC says "I personally do not believe in the Peter Principle. The field of neurolinguistic programming says that any behaviour/skill can be learned. In other words, if a person does not already know how to do something, he/she can be taught”.
On the other hand, Ric Morgan, professional speaker and author of “The Keys: The Textbook to a Successful Life” is a firm believer. "This problem is so diverse and prevalent I have even seen examples of the founder of the company being a leading example of the Peter Principle. I know that sounds crazy, but this is exactly what happens despite the fact that they had two things going for them: an idea that was just too good to fail, and the ability to hire very competent people to make it all work.
"I have even, as crazy as this sounds, found this in people who are running or trying to start one-man shops. In this day and age of entrepreneurship, everyone believes they can start a business and make it succeed because they 'have the best idea that will make them overnight millionaires.' Wrong! It's hard to look into someone's eyes and tell them they are too incompetent to do what they have set out to do, even if they have been doing something similar in another place, where they had actually reached the level of incompetence espoused by Dr. Laurence. As a business consultant, the minute I find the people who are living examples of the Peter Principle is the minute I find the problems in the company”.
There are those who take the mid-path. Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, author of 'Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction' says "I have been a corporate trainer for 30 years. I don't believe you can really measure the truth of the Peter Principle without analyzing the training the person has had for the position they have moved into, especially if it's a promotion.
"With each promotion the person has to give up some of the things they have done before and take on new tasks, responsibilities and perspectives (including work values). What they did before will not ensure their success in the present. However, if the person doesn't get good mentoring, training and a manager who can support the shift, they are not given the tools to succeed. They could be competent if given the chance."
My personal experience is that training & mentoring cannot be sustained over years & subsequent promotions. With experience & age, mindsets & resistance to learning sets in & I have seen some of the senior-most & finest professionals being rendered “un-trainable”. So strong has been their belief in their own strengths & past knowledge that they fail to see the looming disaster leading to the sudden end of an illustrious career. I have interacted with so many such corporate stalwarts, once brilliant but now laid-off, just because they attained their level of incompetence in their last role.
Can the Peter Principal be overcome? I believe it can be. Though there have been many articles written on this I haven’t really found any authentic answer anywhere. Looking back at my own experience I feel that the first thing to do before moving on to a new role, is to “act like the person you want to become”. What is needed is a personal transformation from who you are to what you have become or wish to become. For a start one must be willing to give up the person one is, no matter how successful, because some of the skill sets needed in a new role will be different from the ones in which the person is finding success currently. Find out the challenges, drawbacks & skill sets for a new role & start acting the way you want to be or required to be & soon enough it is possible to become the person you need to be.
The biggest challenge to this is the lethargy that most people face to get out of one’s comfort zone. It isn’t easy to stop being the person you are at a successful point of time & become another person you wish to be at another level. It can be done through self-realisation & actively seeking mentoring, which must begin with a clear motive—a serious desire to change, learn & imbibe. Unfortunately not many people remain students for life & start resisting change & that is when the slide begins when a role change takes place.
As a way of managing this curious principle within GRASSIK, I advise people looking to be promoted in the future to mentally tear up their current job role. I give them the key deliverables for success in the new role & ask them to mentally switch to the new role & live out the same under my guidance for a few months before they actually move to the enhanced role. I usually give them the option to choose the time of their promotion, at which time they are more attuned mentally to achieve a better successful transition. But problems always remain, for managers are never perfect. If they were, management principles would not exist.
About the Author:
Rajeev is the Founder Director of Grassik search Pvt Ltd, one of the country’s finest & oldest search firms, which he established in 1993. He has over 22 years of experience in executive search, executing CXO level searches across industries. Amongst the pioneers of the executive search industry, he is a respected career coach, guide & a mentor who has helped people transition careers successfully across industries & roles. An expert change & innovation driver, he has been instrumental in making GRASSIK the most relevant & successful search firm in the country today, successfully managing the fast changing client expectations & candidate aspirations.
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