The Peter Principle (6 page)

CHAPTER 5
Push & Promotion

“Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push and you push alone.”

N
EXT LET US
see how far an employee’s promotion rate can be affected by the force of Push.

There has been much misunderstanding about the function of Push, largely because of the persistence of Alger
¹
in exaggerating the efficiency of Push as a means to promotion. One must indeed deplore the unscientific, misguided zeal of Alger’s work, and its retarding effect on the science of hierarchiology.

Peale,
²
too, seems to overestimate the effect of Push.

A Fallacy Exploded

My surveys show that, in established organizations, the downward pressure of the Seniority Factor nullifies the upward force of Push. This observation, by the way, shows that Pull is stronger than Push. Pull often overcomes the Seniority Factor. Push seldom does so.

Push alone cannot extricate you from Peter’s Pretty Pass. Push alone will not enable you to successfully execute Peter’s Circumambulation. Using the Circumambulation without the aid of Pull simply makes superiors say, “He can’t apply himself to anything for very long.” “No stick-to-itiveness!” etc.

Neither can Push have any effect on ultimate placement level. That is because all employees, aggressive or shy, are subject to the Peter Principle, and must sooner or later come to rest at their level of incompetence.

Signs and Symptoms of Push

Push is sometimes manifested by an abnormal interest in study, vocational training and self-improvement courses. (In marginal cases, and particularly in small hierarchies, such training may increase competence to a point where promotion is slightly accelerated. The effect is imperceptible in large hierarchies, where the Seniority Factor is stronger.)

Perils of Push

Study and self-improvement may even have a negative effect if increased areas of competence result in the employee’s requiring a larger number of promotional steps to reach his level of incompetence.

Suppose, for example, that B. Sellers, a competent local sales representative for Excelsior Mattress Co., managed, by hard study, to master a foreign language. It is quite possible that he would then have to fill one or more posts in the company’s overseas sales organization before being brought home and promoted to his final position of incompetence as sales manager. Study created a detour in Sellers’ hierarchal flight plan.

The Final Verdict

In my judgment, the positive and negative effects of study and training tend to cancel each other. The same applies to other manifestations of Push such as starting work early and staying late. The admiration inspired in some colleagues by these semi-Machiavellian ploys will ultimately be balanced by the detestation it elicits from others.

An Exception That Proves the Rule

You do occasionally find an exceptionally pushful employee who manages, by fair means or foul, to oust a Super-incumbent, and so clear a place for himself on a higher rank, sooner than natural processes would have done it.

W. Shakespeare cites an interesting example in
Othello.
In Act I, Scene 1, the ambitious Iago bemoans the fact that promotion is determined by pull, not by strict rules of seniority:

. . .’tis the curse of service,

Preferment goes by letter and affection,

And not by old gradation, where each second

Stood heir to the first.

The promotion that Iago wants is given instead to Michael Cassio. So Iago contrives a double plan, to murder Cassio and to discredit him in the eyes of the commanding officer, Othello.

The plan comes near to success, but Iago’s wife, Emilia, is an incorrigible blabbermouth:

Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,

All, all cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.

She gives the game away, and Iago never receives the coveted promotion.

We should learn by Iago’s fate that
secrecy is the soul of Push.

Pushfulness of this degree, however, is quite rare; it cannot seriously alter my assessment of the Push Factor.

A Dangerous Delusion

There are two reasons why the power of Push is so often overestimated. First is the obsessive feeling that a person who pushes harder than average deserves to advance farther and faster than average.

This feeling, of course, has no scientific basis: it is simply a moralistic delusion that I call
The Alger Complex.
³

The Medical Aspect

Second, to unskilled observers, the power of Push sometimes seems greater than it really is because
many pushful persons exhibit the Pseudo-Achievement Syndrome.

They suffer from such complaints as nervous breakdowns, peptic ulcers and insomnia. An ulcer, the badge of administrative success, may only be the product of pushfulness.

Colleagues who do not understand the situation may classify such a patient as an example of the Final Placement Syndrome (see Chapter 11) and may think that he has achieved final placement.

In fact, these people often have several ranks and several years of promotion potential ahead of them.

An Important Distinction

The difference between cases of Pseudo-Achievement Syndrome and Final Placement Syndrome is known as
Peter’s Nuance.
For your own guidance in classifying such cases, you should always ask yourself, “Is the person accomplishing any useful work?” If the answer is:

       
a) “YES”—he has not reached his level of incompetence and therefore exhibits only the Pseudo-Achievement Syndrome.

       
b) “NO” he
has
reached his level of incompetence, and therefore exhibits the Final Placement Syndrome.

       
c) “DON’T KNOW”—
you
have reached
your
level of incompetence. Examine yourself for symptoms at once!

Last Words on Push

Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.

CHAPTER 6
Followers & Leaders

“Consider what precedes and what follows.”

P. S
YRUS

Bang! Bang!

One urgent task I have had to face is the exploding of various fallacies that still linger on from the pre-scientific era of hierarchiology.

What could be more misleading, for example, than “Nothing succeeds like success”?

As you already understand, hierarchiology clearly shows that
nothing fails like success,
when an employee rises to his level of incompetence.

Later, when I discuss Creative Incompetence, I shall show that
nothing succeeds like failure.

But in this chapter I shall particularly discuss the old saw, “You have to be a good follower to be a good leader.”

This is typical of the hierarchiological fallacies bandied about in administrative circles. For instance, when asked to comment on how her son achieved his military prowess, George Washington’s mother answered, “I taught him to obey.” America was thus presented with one more
non sequitur.
How can the ability to lead depend on the ability to follow? You might as well say that the ability to float depends on the ability to sink.

From Underdog to Upperdog

Take the simplest possible case: a hierarchy with two ranks. The employee who proves himself good at obeying orders will get promotion to the rank where his job is to give orders.

The same principle holds true in more complex hierarchies: competent followers show high promotion potential in the lower ranks, but eventually reveal their incompetence as leaders.

A recent survey of business failures showed that 53 percent were due to plain managerial incompetence! These were the former followers, trying to be leaders.

M
ILITARY
F
ILE
, C
ASE
N
O
. 17 Captain N. Chatters competently filled an administrative post at an army base. He worked well with all ranks and obeyed orders cheerfully and exactly. In short, he was a good follower. He was promoted to the rank of major, and now had to work largely on his own initiative.

But Chatters could not endure the measure of solitude that necessarily accompanies a position of authority. He would hang around his subordinates, gossiping and joking with them, interfering with the performance of their work. He was quite unable to give someone an order and
let him get on with it:
he had to butt in with unwanted advice. Under this harassment, Chatters’ subordinates became inefficient and unhappy.

Chatters also spent much time loitering around the office of his colonel. When he could find no legitimate reason for talking to the C.O., he would gossip with the C.O.’s secretary. She could not very well tell him to clear out and leave her alone. Her work slipped into arrears.

To get rid of Chatters the colonel would set him running errands all over the base.

In this instance, a good follower promoted to a position of leadership:

       
a) Fails to exercise leadership

       
b) Reduces efficiency among his subordinates

       
c) Wastes the time of his superiors

S
ELF
-M
ADE
M
EN
F
ILE
, C
ASE
N
O
. 2 In most hierarchies, as a matter of fact, employees with the greatest leadership potential cannot become leaders. Let me cite an example.

W. Wheeler was a bicycle delivery boy in the Mercury Messenger Service. Wheeler systematized his delivery work to an unprecedented degree. For example, he explored and mapped every passable lane, alley and short-cut in his territory; he timed with a stop watch the periods of all the traffic lights, so that he could plan his route to avoid delays.

As a result, he always delivered his daily quota of packages with two hours or more to spare, and spent the time sitting in cafés reading books on business management. When he began reorganizing the routes of the other messenger boys, he was fired.

For the moment, he seemed to be a failure, an example of the super-incompetent hierarchal exfoliate, a living testimony to the “poor-follower-poor-leader” theory.

But soon he formed a concern of his own, Pegasus Flying Deliveries, and within three years drove Mercury out of business.

So we see that exceptional leadership competence cannot make its way within an established hierarchy. It usually breaks out of the hierarchy and starts afresh somewhere else.

F
AMOUS
N
AMES
F
ILE
, C
ASE
N
O
. 902 T. A. Edison, fired for incompetence as a newsboy, founded, and successfully led, his own organization.

A Rare Exception

Occasionally, in special circumstances, leadership potential may be recognized. For example, in an army at war, all the officers of a certain unit were killed in a night attack. L. Dare, a corporal, assumed command, repulsed the enemy and led his comrades to safety. He was promoted in the field.

Dare would not have gained such a promotion in peacetime: he showed too much initiative. He was promoted only because the normal system of ranks and seniority had been disrupted and the hierarchy destroyed or temporarily suspended.

But How about the Principle?

At this point you may be feeling baffled, wondering whether I am not undermining the Peter Principle, which of course states that a competent employee is always eligible for promotion. There is no contradiction!

As we saw in Chapter 3, an employee’s competence is assessed, not by disinterested observers like you and me, but by the employer or—more likely nowadays—by other employees on higher ranks of the same hierarchy. In their eyes, leadership potential is insubordination, and insubordination is incompetence.

Good followers do not become good leaders.
To be sure, the good follower may win many promotions, but that does not make him a leader. Most hierarchies are nowadays so cumbered with rules and traditions, and so bound in by public laws, that even high employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees
lead
only in the sense that the
carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.

It is easy to see how, in such a milieu, the advent of a genuine leader will be feared and resented. This is called
Hypercaninophobia
(top-dog fear) or more correctly by advanced hierarchiologists the
Hypercaninophobia Complex
(fear that the underdog may become the top dog).

CHAPTER 7
Hierarchiology & Politics

“The history of mankind is an immense sea of errors in which a few obscure truths may here and there be found.”

C.
DE
B
ECCARIA

W
E HAVE SEEN
how the Peter Principle operates in some simple hierarchies—school systems, factories, auto-repair shops and so on. Now let us examine the more complex hierarchies of politics and government.

During one of my lectures a Latin-American student, Caesare Innocente, said, “Professor Peter, I’m afraid that what I want to know is not answered by all my studying. I don’t know whether the world is run by smart men who are, how you Americans say, putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” Innocente’s question summarizes the thoughts and feelings that many have expressed. Social sciences have failed to provide consistent answers.

No political theorist so far has satisfactorily analyzed the workings of governments, or has accurately predicted the political future. The Marxists have proved as wrong in their analysis as have the capitalist theoreticians. My studies in comparative hierarchiology have shown that capitalistic, socialistic, and communistic systems are characterized by the same accumulation of redundant and incompetent personnel. Although my research is incomplete at this time, I submit the following as an interim report. If funds are made available, I will complete my research on comparative hierarchiology. When this is done I intend to study
universal hierarchiology.

Interim Report

In any economic or political crisis, one thing is certain.
Many learned experts
will prescribe
many different remedies.

The budget won’t balance: A. says, “Raise taxes,” B. cries, “Reduce taxes.”

Foreign investors are losing confidence in the dollar: C. urges tight money, while D. advocates inflation.

There are riots in the streets. E. proposes to subsidize the poor; F. calls for encouragement of the rich.

A foreign power makes threatening noises. G. says, “Defy him.” H. says, “Conciliate him.”

Why the Confusion?

       
1) Many of the experts have actually reached their level of incompetence: their advice is nonsensical or irrelevant.

       
2) Some of them have sound theories, but are unable to put them into effect.

       
3) In any event, neither sound nor unsound proposals can be carried out efficiently, because the machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies, riddled through and through with incompetence.

Let us consider two of the branches of government—the legislature which frames laws, and the executive which, through its army of civil servants, tries to enforce them.

The Legislature

Most modern legislatures—even in the undemocratic countries—are elected by popular vote. One might think that the voters would, in their own interests, recognize and elect the most competent statesmen to represent them at the capital. That is, indeed, the simplified theory of representative government. In reality, the process is somewhat more complicated.

Present-day politics is dominated by the party system. Some countries have only one official party; some have two; some have several. A political party is usually naïvely pictured as a group of like-minded people co-operating to further their common interests. This is no longer valid. That function is now carried on entirely by
the lobby,
and there are as many lobbies as there are special interests.

A political party now exists primarily as
an apparatus for selecting candidates
and getting them elected to office.

A Dying Breed

To be sure, one occasionally sees an “independent” candidate get elected by his own efforts, without party endorsement. But the enormous expense of political campaigning makes this phenomenon rare enough at the local and regional levels, and unknown in national elections. It is fair to say that parties dominate the selection of candidates in modern politics.

The Party Hierarchy

Each political party, as any member knows, is a hierarchy. Admittedly, most members work for nothing, even pay for the privilege, but there is nevertheless a well-marked structure of ranks and a definite system of promotion from rank to rank.

I have so far shown the Peter Principle in its application to paid workers. You will see now that it is valid in this type of hierarchy, too.

In a political party, as in a factory or an army, competence in one rank is a requisite for promotion to the next. A competent door-to-door canvasser becomes eligible for promotion; he may be allowed to organize a team of canvassers. The ineffective or obnoxious canvasser continues knocking on doors, alienating voters.

A fast envelope stuffer may expect to become captain of an envelope-stuffing team; an incompetent envelope stuffer will remain, slowly and awkwardly stuffing envelopes, putting two leaflets in some, none in others, folding the leaflets wrongly, dropping them on the floor, and so on, as long as he stays with the party.

A competent fund raiser may be promoted to the committee which nominates the candidate. Although he was a good beggar, he may not be a competent judge of men as lawmakers and may support an incompetent candidate.

Even if a majority of the nominating committee consists of competent judges of men, it will select the candidate,
not for his potential wisdom as a legislator, but on his presumed ability to win elections!

The Big Step: Candidate to Legislator

In bygone days, when great public meetings decided the results of elections, and when public speaking was a high art, a spellbinding orator might hope for nomination by a party, and the best orator among the candidates might win the seat. But of course the ability to charm, to amuse, to inflame a crowd of ten thousand voters with voice and gesture did not necessarily carry with it the ability to think sensibly, to debate soberly and to vote wisely on the nation’s business.

With the development of electronic campaigning a party may give its nomination to the man who looks best on TV. But the ability to impress—with the aid of makeup and lighting—an attractive image on a fluorescent screen is no guarantee of competent performance in the legislature.

Many a man, under the old and the new systems, has made the upward step from candidate to legislator, only to achieve his level of incompetence.

Incompetence in the Legislature

The legislature itself is a hierarchy. An elected representative who proves incompetent as a rank-and-file member will obtain no promotion.

But a competent rank-and-file legislator is eligible for promotion to a position of greater power—member of an important committee, committee chairman or, under some systems, cabinet minister. At any of these ranks, too, the promotee may be incompetent.

So we see that the Peter Principle controls the entire legislative arm of government, from the humblest party worker to the holders of the loftiest elective offices. Each tends to rise to his level and each post tends in time to be occupied by someone incompetent to carry out its duties.

The Executive

It will be obvious to you by now that the Principle applies also to the executive branch: government bureaus, departments, agencies and offices at the national, regional and local level. All, from police forces to armed forces, are rigid hierarchies of salaried employees, and all are necessarily cumbered with incompetents who cannot do their existing work, cannot be promoted, yet cannot be removed.

Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity.
1

Equalitarianism and Incompetence

The situation is worse than it used to be when civil service and military appointments were made through favoritism. This may sound heretical in an age of equalitarianism but allow me to explain.

Consider an imaginary country called Pullovia, where civil service examinations, equality of opportunity and promotion by merit are unknown. Pullovia has a rigid class system, and the high ranks in all hierarchies—government, business, the armed forces, the church—are reserved for members of the dominant class.

You will notice that I avoid the expression “upper class”; that term has unfortunate connotations. It is generally considered to refer to a class which is dominant by reason of aristocratic or genteel birth. But my conclusions apply also to systems in which the dominant class is marked off from the subordinate class by differences of religion, stature, race, language, dialect or political affiliation.

It does not matter which of these is the criterion in Pullovia: the important fact is that the country has a dominant class and a subordinate class. This diagram represents a typical Pullovian hierarchy which has the classical pyramidal structure.

The lower ranks—the area marked SC—are occupied by employees of the subordinate class. No matter how brilliant any of them may be, no one is eligible to rise above CB, the class barrier.

The higher ranks—the area marked DC—are occupied by dominant-class employees. They do not start their careers at the bottom of the hierarchy, but at the level of the class barrier.

Now, in the lower area, SC, it is obvious that many employees will never be able to rise high enough, because of the class barrier, to reach their level of incompetence. They will spend their whole careers working at tasks which they are able to do well. No one is promoted out of area SC, so this area keeps, and continually utilizes, its competent employees.

Obviously, then, in the lower ranks of a hierarchy, the maintenance of a class barrier ensures a higher degree of efficiency than could possibly exist without the barrier.

Now look at area DC, above the class barrier. As we have already seen, an employee’s prospects of reaching his level of incompetence are directly proportional to the number of ranks in the hierarchy—the more ranks, the more incompetence. The area DC, for all practical purposes, forms a closed hierarchy of a few ranks. Obviously, then, many of its employees will never reach their level of incompetence.

Moreover, the prospect of starting near the top of the pyramid will attract to the hierarchy a group of brilliant employees who would never have come there at all if they had been forced to start at the bottom.

Look at the situation another way. In Chapter 9 I shall discuss efficiency surveys, and shall show that the only effective way of increasing efficiency in a hierarchy is by the infusion of new blood at its upper levels. In most present-day systems, such infusion takes place at intervals, say after a reorganization, or during periods of rapid expansion. But in Pullovian hierarchies, it is a continuous process: new employees are regularly entering at a high level, above the class barrier.

Obviously, then, in areas SC and DC, below and above the class barrier, Pullovian hierarchies are more efficient than those of a classless or equalitarian society.

A Contemporary Class System

Before I am accused of recommending the establishment of a class system here, let me point out that we already have one. Its classes are based, not on birth, but on the prestige of the university which one has attended. For example, a graduate of Harvard is referred to as “A Harvard Man” but a graduate of Outer Sheepskin College is not referred to as “A Sheepskin Man.” In some hierarchies, the graduate of the obscure college—no matter how competent he may be—does not have the same opportunities for promotion as the graduate of the prestigious establishment.

The situation is changing. There is a strong trend toward making university graduation a prerequisite for more and more positions, even in the lowest ranks of certain hierarchies. This should increase the promotion potential of all degree holders, and therefore diminish the class value of the prestige degree.

My personal studies of this phenomenon are incomplete, due to that most lamentable dearth of funds, but I will hazard a prediction that with every passing year, each university graduate will have greater opportunities for reaching his level of incompetence, either in private employment, or in government.