The Peter Principle (7 page)

CHAPTER 8
Hints & Foreshadowings

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration.”

P. B. S
HELLEY

I
T IS THE
custom to ornament every scientific work with a bibliography, a list of earlier books on the same subject. The aim may be to test the reader’s competence by laying out for him an awe-inspiring course of reading; it may be to prove the author’s competence by showing the mountain of dross he has sifted to win one nugget of truth.

Since this is the first book there is no formal bibliography. I confess to this apparent shoddiness of scholarship, since guile is not my long suit, in firm belief that the future shall vindicate my unorthodoxy.

With these considerations in mind, I have decided to mention some authors who, although they never wrote on this subject, might have done so, had they thought of it. This, then, is a bibliography of proto-hierarchiologists.

The unknown originators of several proverbs had some intuitive understanding of incompetence theory.

“Cobbler, stick to your last” is clearly a warning to the journeyman cobbler to be wary of being promoted to foreman of the boot-repair shop. The hand that skillfully wielded awl and hammer might well fumble pen, time sheet and work schedule.

“Too many cooks spoil the broth” suggests that the more people you involve in any project, the greater are the odds that one of them, at least, has reached his level of incompetence. One competent vegetable peeler, promoted to his level of incompetence as cook, may add too much salt and ruin the good work of the other six cooks who helped make the broth.

“Woman’s work is never done” is a sad commentary on the high proportion of women who reach their level of incompetence as housewives.

In his Rubáiyát, O. Khayyám remarked sourly on the high incidence of incompetence in educational and religious hierarchies:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument

About it and about: but evermore

Came out by the same door where in I went.

I have mentioned elsewhere the existence of a “hierarchal instinct” in men: their irresistible propensity to arrange themselves by ranks. Some critics have denied the existence of this instinct. However, A. Pope noticed it over two centuries ago, and even saw it as the expression of a divine principle.

Order is Heav’n’s first law; and this confest,

Some are, and must be, greater than the rest.

   
(E
SSAY ON
M
AN,
Epistle IV,
II. 49–50)

He accurately observed the satisfaction that is obtained from doing one’s work competently:

Know, all the good that individuals find,

Or God and Nature meant to mere Mankind,

Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense,

Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence.

   
(
Ibid.,
11. 77–80)

Pope enunciates one of the key principles of hierarchiology:

What would this man? Now upward will he soar,

And little less than angel, would be more.

   
(E
SSAY ON
M
AN,
Epistle I,
II. 173–74)

In other words, scarcely an employee is content to remain at his level of competence: he insists upon rising to a level that is beyond his powers.

S. Smith’s description of occupational incompetence is so vivid that it has lingered on as the basis of a cliché.

If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so easily that we can say they were almost made for each other.
1

W. Irving points out that “Your true dull minds are generally preferred for public employ, and especially promoted to city honors.” He did not realize that a mind may well be bright enough for a subordinate position, yet appear dull when promoted to prominence, just as a candle is all very well to light a dinner table, but proves inadequate if placed on a lamppost to illuminate a street corner.

K. Marx undoubtedly recognized the existence of hierarchies, yet seemed to believe that they were maintained by the capitalists. In advocating a non-hierarchal society, he obviously failed to see that man is essentially hierarchal by nature, and must and will have hierarchies, whether they be patriarchal, feudal, capitalistic or socialistic. On this point his insight is vastly inferior to that of Pope.

Then, with glaring inconsistency, Marx proposes, as the ruling principle of his non-hierarchal dream society, “From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.” This suggests the creation of twin hierarchies of ability and neediness.

Even if we overlook this inconsistency in the Marxian scheme, the Peter Principle now shows that we cannot hope to obtain work “from each according to his ability.” To do that, we should have to keep employees permanently at a level of competence. But that is impossible: each employee must rise to his level of incompetence and, once arrived at that level, will
not
be able to produce according to his ability.

So we see Marxist theory as a pipe dream and another opiate of the masses. No government which has tried to apply it has ever been able to make it work. Marx must be dismissed as an unscientific visionary.

We seem to find better science among the poets. E. Dickinson’s aphorism

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne’er succeed

is psychologically sound when “success” receives its hierarchiological meaning of final placement at the level of incompetence.

C. W. Dodgson, in
Through the Looking-Glass,
refers to life at the level of incompetence when he makes the Queen say, “Now
here,
you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” In other words, once an employee has achieved final placement, his most vigorous efforts will never win him any further promotion.

S. Freud seems to have come closer than any earlier writer to discovering the Peter Principle. Observing cases of neurosis, anxiety, psychosomatic illness, amnesia, and psychosis, he saw the painful prevalence of what we might call the Generalized Life-Incompetence Syndrome.

This life-incompetence naturally produces sharp feelings of frustration. Freud, a satirist at heart, chose to explain this frustration mainly in sexual terms such as penis envy, castration complex and Oedipus complex. In other words, he suggested that women were frustrated because they could not be men, men because they could not bear children, boys because they could not marry their mothers and so on.

But Freud missed the point in thinking that frustration comes from the longing for a change to a more desirable position (man, father, mother’s husband, father’s wife, etc.), in other words, a longing for a promotion! Hierarchiology now shows us, of course, that frustration occurs as a result of promotion.

This oversight of Freud’s occurred because of his extremely introspective nature: he persisted in studying what was going on (or what he imagined was going on) inside his patients. Hierarchiology, on the other hand, studies what is going on
outside
the patient, studies the social order in which man operates, and therefore realistically explains man’s function in that order. While Freud spent his time hunting in the dark recesses of the subconscious, I have devoted my efforts to examining observable and measurable human behavior.

Freudian psychologists, in their failure to study the function of man in society, might be compared with a man seeing an electronic computer and trying to understand it by speculating on the internal structure and mechanism without trying to find out what the instrument was used for.

Still, let us not minimize Freud’s pioneering work. Although he misunderstood much, he discovered much. Always looking within the patient, he became famous on the strength of his theory that man is unconscious of his own motivations, does not understand his own feelings and so cannot hope to relieve his own frustrations. The theory was unassailable, because nobody could consciously and rationally argue about the nature and contents of his unconscious.

With a stroke of professional genius he invented psychoanalysis, whereby he said he could make patients conscious of their unconscious.

Then he went too far, psychoanalyzed himself and claimed to be conscious of his own unconscious. (Some critics now suggest that all he had ever accomplished was to make
his patients
aware of
his own
—Freud’s—unconscious.) In any event, by this procedure of self-psychoanalysis he kicked the ladder from under his own feet.

If Freud had understood hierarchiology, he would have shunned that last step, and would never have arrived at his level of incompetence.

By thus undermining the grand structure, which he had built on the impenetrability of the unconscious, Freud prepared the way for his great successor, S. Potter.

Potter, like Freud, is a satirical psychologist (or a psychological satirist), and he can fairly be ranked with Freud for keenness of observation and boldness in creating a picturesque and memorable terminology to describe what he saw.

Like Freud, Potter observed and classified many phenomena of human frustration. The basic condition of being frustrated he calls being “one-down,” and the exhilarated feeling caused by removal of frustration he calls “one-up.” He assumes that men have an innate urge to advance from the former state to the latter. The technique for making this move he calls “one-upmanship.”

The main difference between the two men is that Potter rejects Freud’s doctrine of unconscious motivation. He explains human behavior in terms of a conscious drive to outdo other people, triumph over circumstances, and so become one-up. Potter also repudiates Freudian dogma that the frustrated patient must receive professional aid, and expounds a do-it-yourself brand of psychology. He teaches various plots, ploys and gambits that, if properly used, will enable the patient to become one-up.

The One-upman, the Lifeman, the Gamesman, to summarize Potter’s elegantly expressed theories, are all using various forms of obnoxious behavior to move themselves up the ranks of social, commercial, professional or sporting hierarchies.

Potter writes so entertainingly that we tend to overlook the central weakness of his system, the assumption that, if only the One-upman can learn enough ploys, he can keep on rising, and can be permanently one-up.

In reality, no amount of One-upmanship can raise a man above his level of incompetence. The only result of the technique will be to help him reach that level sooner than he would have done otherwise. And, once there, he is in a one-down situation which no amount of lifemanship can cure.

Lasting happiness is obtainable only by avoiding the ultimate promotion, by choosing, at a certain point in one’s progress, to abandon one-upmanship, and to practice instead what he might have called
Staticmanship.
I shall point out later, in the chapter on Creative Incompetence, how this can be done.

Meanwhile, I must salute Potter as a truly great theoretician who ably bridged the gap between the Freudian Ethic and the Peter Principle.

C. N. Parkinson, eminent social theorist, accurately observes and amusingly describes the phenomenon of staff accumulation in hierarchies. But he tries to explain what he calls the rising pyramid by supposing that senior employees are practicing the strategy of divide and conquer, that they are deliberately making the hierarchy inefficient as a means of self-aggrandizement.

This theory fails on the following grounds. First, it assumes intent or design on the part of persons in supervisory positions. My investigations show that many senior employees are incapable of formulating any effective plans, for division, conquest or any other purpose.

Second, the phenomena that Parkinson describes—over-staffing and underproduction—are often directly opposed to the interests of the supervisory and managerial personnel. Efficiency becomes so low that businesses collapse, and the responsible employees find themselves out of work. In governmental hierarchies they may be badgered and humiliated by legislative committees, or commissioners, investigating waste and incompetence. It is scarcely conceivable that they would deliberately injure themselves in this way.

Third, other things being equal, the less money that is spent on the wages of subordinates, the larger will be the profits of the business, and the more money will be available for salaries, bonuses, dividends and fringe benefits for the high-ranking staff. If the hierarchy can function efficiently with a thousand employees, management has no motive for employing twelve hundred.

But suppose the hierarchy is not operating efficiently with its thousand employees. As the Peter Principle shows, many, or most, senior employees will be at their levels of incompetence. They cannot do anything to improve the situation with their existing staff—everyone is already doing the best he can—so in a desperate effort to attain efficiency, they hire more staff. As pointed out in Chapter 3, a staff increase may produce a temporary improvement, but the promotion process eventually produces its effect on the newcomers and they, too, rise to their levels of incompetence. Then the only apparent remedy is another staff increase, another temporary spurt and another gradual lapse into inefficiency.

This is the reason why there is no direct relationship between the size of the staff and the amount of useful work done. Staff accumulation cannot be explained by Parkinson’s conspiracy theory: it results from a sincere, though futile, quest for efficiency by upper-level members of the hierarchy.