The Peter Principle (14 page)
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Authors: Laurence Peter
LAURENCE J. PETER
was born in Canada and received an EdD from Washington State University. An experienced teacher, counselor, school psychologist, prison instructor, consultant, and university professor, he wrote articles for many journals and magazines as well as several books. He died in 1990.
RAYMOND HULL
wrote many stage plays as well as articles for
Punch, Maclean’s,
and
Esquire.
He died in 1985.
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THE PETER PRINCIPLE.
Copyright © 2009 by Irene Peter. Foreword copyright © 2009 by Robert I. Sutton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or here in after invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Peter, Laurence J.
The Peter principle: why things always go wrong/Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull.—1st Collins Business ed.
p. cm
ISBN 978-0-06-169906-1
1. Management—Humor. I. Hull, Ryamond, 1919– II. Title.
PN6231.M2P4 2009
658.002'07—dc22
2008044122
ISBN 978-0-06-209206-9 (pbk.)
11 12 13 14 15
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
EPub Edition © MARCH 2014 ISBN: 9780062359490
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1.
Some names have been changed, in order to protect the guilty.
2.
The phenomena of “percussive sublimation” (commonly referred to as “being kicked upstairs”) and of “the lateral arabesque” are not, as the casual observer might think, exceptions to the Principle. They are only pseudo-promotions, and will be dealt with in Chapter 3.
1.
There are two kinds of minor decisions which I have sometimes seen made by promoted Peter’s Inverts:
a) to tighten up on enforcement of regulations
b) to make new regulations covering a marginal case which does not exactly fit existing regulations.
These actions only serve to strengthen the inversion.
2.
For full discussion of the operation of hierarchies under a class system, see Chapter 7.
1.
Alger, Horatio, Jr. (1832–99).
Struggling Upward, Slow and Sure,
and many other works.
2.
Peale, Norman V. (1898–1993).
The Power of Positive Thinking,
New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952, and many other works.
3.
Ibid.
1.
The efficiency of a hierarchy is inversely proportional to its Maturity Quotient, M.Q.
MQ = No. of employees at level of incompetence × 100
Total no. of employees in hierarchy
Obviously, when MQ reaches 100, no useful work will be accomplished at all.
1.
Smith, Sydney (1771–1845).
Sketches of Moral Philosophy
, 1850
1.
A survey of efficiency experts reveals that co-ordinator appointments, lateral arabesques and percussive sublimations are always acceptable to management.
2.
Our records contain a few outstanding cases of
Multi-modal Summit Competence
—individuals who could be at the summit of several hierarchies at one time. A. Einstein is an example of this phenomenon. He was a highly competent thinker who provided science with a special and general theory of relativity. It was also obvious that Einstein was highly competent in the area of men’s fashions. His hair style and casual clothing established a trend followed by young people to this day. Considering what he accomplished in the fashion world without effort, one wonders what he might have achieved if he had really tried.
1.
What the ordinary sociologist or physician calls “success,” the hierarchiologist, of course, recognizes as
final placement.
2.
Refer to Chapter 5 for an infallible means of distinguishing the Final Placement Syndrome from the Pseudo-Achievement Syndrome.
1.
This research method has been restricted. Some firms have installed locked trash cans in their offices to prevent piracy of ideas by competitors. A trash-disposal firm loads the trash cans’ contents into a truck each day where at once all is turned into a grayish, unpiratable sand.
1.
The Promotion Quotient: a numerical expression of the employee’s promotion prospects. When PQ declines to zero, he is completely ineligible for promotion. The PQ is fully explained in
The Peter Profile,
an unpublished monograph on the mathematical aspects of incompetence.
1.
At least I
think
I have observed them. The mark of
perfect
Creative Incompetence is that no one,
even the trained hierarchiologist,
can ever be
sure
it is not just plain incompetence.
2.
Thoreau, Henry D. (1817–62).
Walden, or Life in the Woods,
1854.
1.
The bungles, delays and disaster associated with space travel indicate that the people concerned with it
may,
indeed, be exercising creative incompetence. I emphasize “may” because the test of real creative incompetence is that an observer cannot certainly tell whether the incompetence is deliberate or not.
2.
I have applied this to education. (See
Prescriptive Teaching,
by Laurence J. Peter, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1965.)
