The Peter Principle (8 page)

Another point: Parkinson based his law on the Cheopsian or feudal hierarchy.

The reason for this is that Parkinson made his discovery in the armed forces, where obsolete traditions and modes of organization have the strongest foothold.

To be sure, the feudal hierarchy has not disappeared, but a complete hierarchiological system must also recognize the existence and explain the operations of several other hierarchal forms.

For example, the
Flying T Formation

This diagram clearly illustrates that a company with 3 major divisions, 23 vice-presidents and 1 president does not fit the traditional pyramidal model.

In this recent modification the broad pyramidal base of employees is replaced by a computer.

Many departments are supported by one computer, producing an inverted pyramid. A similar form results when numerous executive, supervisory and sales staff are supported by a highly automated production process.

I have already described, in Chapter 3, the Free-Floating Apex—a condition which exists when a director is in charge of a non-existent department, or when a staff is assigned to another department leaving the administrator to his lonely office.

Unfortunately Parkinson’s investigation does not go far enough. It is true that work can expand to fill the time allotted but it can expand far beyond that. It can expand beyond the life of the organization and the company can go bankrupt, a government can fall, a civilization can crumble into barbarism, while the incompetents work on. We must therefore regretfully dismiss Parkinson’s attractive-sounding theory. Nevertheless, great praise is due to him for drawing attention to those phenomena which are now, for the first time, scientifically explained by the Peter Principle.

CHAPTER 9
The Psychology of Hierarchiology

“Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play.”

T. G
RAY

A
FTER ONE OF
my hierarchiology lectures a student handed me a note which included the following questions. “Why did you not give us some insight into the mind of the incompetent loafer type you described so vividly? After final placement, does the employee realize his own incompetence? Does he accept his own parasitism? Does he know that he is swindling his employer, frustrating his subordinates, and eating like a cancer at the economic structure of society?” Recently I have received many questions of this type.

A Dispassionate Survey

I must first emphasize that
hierarchiology is a social science
and as such employs objective criteria in its evaluation rather than emotion-laden terms like “loafer,” “parasite,” “swindling” or “cancer.” The question of insight, though, is worthy of consideration. My approach to behavioral science has been that of an objective observer. I discovered the Peter Principle through observing overt behavior and have avoided introspection or inferences regarding what is going on in the minds of others.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

Yet the question of insight is, in essence, an interesting one: “What understanding does the individual attain into his own copelessness?” My answers to this question are subjective and lack the scientific rigor of the balance of this work.

In most cases I have found little indication of real insight. However, a few cases in my study were in analysis, and I was able to obtain psychiatric reports. These showed that patients rationalized and blamed other people for their difficulties.

Where depth analysis was achieved, there was more acceptance of self. Yet I never observed, in an individual, any understanding of the hierarchal system, or of
promotion as the cause of occupational incompetence.

P
SYCHIATRIC
F
ILE
: C
ASE
N
O
. 12 S. N. Stickle was a competent stock clerk with Bathos Brothers Lead Weight and Sinker Company. By hard night-school study, Stickle gained diplomas in warehouse management and elementary non-ferrous metallurgy. He was promoted to assistant warehouse foreman.

After six years in this post, Stickle asked for another promotion. He was told that he lacked leadership ability: he could not make the warehousemen obey his commands; so he was not eligible for promotion to warehouse foreman.

But Stickle could not accept the truth about his own incompetence as a supervisor. He rationalized that the big, burly warehousemen scorned him because he was only five feet six inches tall.

He bought elevator shoes, and took to wearing a hat in the warehouse; this made him look taller. He attended a body-building studio, gained weight and developed bulging muscles. Still the warehousemen did not obey him.

Stickle brooded over his physical deficiencies, developed a severe complex, and eventually sought psychiatric advice.

During therapy Dr. Harty tried to help Stickle by telling him about small men who had achieved fame and fortune. This made Stickle more depressed: now he saw himself not only as small, but as an obscure failure. His self-confidence deteriorated further, and he became still less competent as a supervisor.

Psychiatry, Like Love, Is Not Enough

The Stickle case shows that, without an understanding of the Peter Principle, psychiatry is at a severe disadvantage in trying to treat problems arising from occupational incompetence.

Dr. Harty was diverted by an irrelevancy, Stickle’s stature. Stickle’s situation was simply that, within the Bathos Brothers’ hierarchy, he had reached his level of incompetence. No psychiatric treatment could alter that fact.

But Stickle might have been consoled had he been shown that his coming to rest in the position of assistant warehouse foreman was
not failure, but fulfillment.

He might have been happier had he realized that his was not a solitary example of misfortune, but that everyone else, in every hierarchal system was, like him, under the sway of the Peter Principle.

I do feel that an understanding of the principle will aid the analysis of all cases exhibiting any degree of copelessness.

Insight Is Not Enough, Either!

Sometimes, after granting a promotion,
management attains insight
and realizes that the promotee cannot properly fulfill his new responsibilities.

“Grindley
isn’t working out too well
as foreman.”

“Goode
wasn’t quite big enough,
after all, to fill Betters’ shoes.”

“Miss Cardington
isn’t shaping up
as filing supervisor.”

Occasionally
the employee
also attains this insight and accepts his own incompetence for the higher rank. Here, too, insight produces much regretful thought, but little or no action.

I
NSIGHT
F
ILE
, C
ASE
N
O
. 2 F. Overreach, a competent school vice-principal in Excelsior City, was promoted to principal. Before one term was over, he realized that he was incompetent for the job.

He asked to be demoted. His application was refused!

He remains, unhappy and resentful, at his level of incompetence.

Outside Investigators

I mentioned that management and employees do sometimes achieve insight into occupational incompetence but do little to counteract it. You may now be thinking, “But what about vocational aptitude tests? What about efficiency surveys? Surely disinterested outside observers can diagnose incompetence and can prescribe appropriate remedies.”

Can they? Let us look at these experts and see how they run.

Placement Methods, Old-fashioned and Newfangled

In olden days, entry into most careers was governed by random placement, based on the employer’s prejudices, on the employee’s wishes or on chance (an applicant happens to turn up seeking work just at the moment when a vacancy occurs). Random placement is still operative in some hierarchies, particularly the smaller ones.

Random placement often puts an employee into a position that he is barely competent to fill. His mediocre work is blamed on a vicious character, flabby will-power or plain laziness. He is exhorted to work harder. He is edified with such adages as “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” and “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

In bad favor with his superiors, his first promotion is long delayed. (He may even come to believe that he is worthless, undeserving of any advancement at all: I call this condition
The Uriah Heep Syndrome.
)

Random placement is now largely superseded by examinations and aptitude tests. The prevailing attitude is best expressed in the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try something else.”

Of course, it is no use giving aptitude tests if you have no competent person to mark the papers and interpret the scores. With incompetent handling, the test system is only a disguised form of random placement.

But, if competently handled, aptitude tests have their uses. We have general aptitude or intelligence tests, which sample ability with language, ingenuity, computational facility and so on. There are clerical tests which indicate skill in remembering numbers, copying names and addresses and so forth. There are tests which rate a person for mechanical ability, artistic ability, physical skill, social intelligence, scientific reasoning and persuasiveness.

Test results are commonly expressed in a “profile,” a graphic representation of the employee’s competence in various skills. Here is such a profile.

The purpose of this testing is to place the employee, as soon as possible, in a job which will utilize the highest competence level on his profile. Obviously,
any promotion will be to an area of less competence.

Let us see how this works in practice.

P
LACEMENT
T
ECHNIQUES
F
ILE
, C
ASE
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. 17 The profile shown above actually resulted from the testing of C. Breeze, a young commerce graduate, who applied for a post with the I. C. Gale Air Conditioning Company. You will notice that Breeze is above average in persuasive ability, and also has high general intelligence.

Breeze was hired as a salesman and in time achieved two promotions: first to District Sales Manager, where he still spent much of his time selling, and then to General Sales Manager, a supervisory and organizational post.

Note that his lowest score, much below average, is in organizational ability. This is the very faculty that he now uses daily. For example, his salesmen are assigned arbitrarily. Hap Hazard, an inexperienced salesman, was sent to call on two new important clients and managed to lose both sales and goodwill. Conn Manly, a new employee who had achieved an impressive sales record, was promoted to district sales manager. He showed little sincere interest in his salesmen. His calculated, crafty methods of manipulation have reduced morale of his men to a new low.

C. Breeze also mismanaged paperwork. The size and topography of sales territories had no relationship to transportation, volume of business or salesmen’s experience and ability. His memos and records are beyond comprehension and his desk looks like a litter pile.

As the Peter Principle predicts, his career has proceeded from competence to incompetence.

Aptitude Testing Evaluated

The main difference between tested and untested employees is that the tested people reach their levels of incompetence in fewer steps and in a shorter time.

Efficiency Surveys

We have seen that outside intervention at the time of initial placement cannot prevent but in fact hastens achievement of incompetence levels. I will now examine the operations of efficiency experts who, of course, usually appear on the scene at a later stage, when a hierarchy has achieved a high Maturity Quotient. (M.Q. defined, Chapter 7.)

First, we must remember that the investigating experts, too, are subject to the Peter Principle. They have reached their position by the same promotion process that has crippled the organization they are surveying. Many of the experts will be at their level of incompetence. Even if they can see deficiencies, they will be unable to correct them.

E
FFICIENCY
S
URVEY
F
ILE
, C
ASE
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O
. 8 Bulkeley Cold Store and Transfer Ltd. hired Speedwell and Trimmer, Management Consultants, to survey its operation. Speedwell and Trimmer found that the Bulkeley organization was no more inefficient than most firms in the same line of business. By discreet questioning they discovered the real reason why the survey had been ordered: several directors felt that they could not sufficiently influence the firm’s policy.

What could Speedwell and Trimmer do? Suppose they said, “Gentlemen, there is not much wrong with your firm. You are as efficient as your competitors.”

There is good reason to believe that Speedwell and Trimmer fear dismissal in such an instance. They may feel they would get the reputation of being inefficient management experts; they would see the Bulkeley survey taken over by a rival firm.

Under this emotional stress they felt obliged to say, “Gentlemen, you are understaffed, and many of your existing employees are wrongly placed. We recommend the creation of certain new posts, and the promotion of a number of your employees.”

Once the organization was thoroughly stirred up, the dissident directors could place or promote protégés just as they wished, thereby strengthening their influence at various levels and in various departments of the hierarchy. The board was satisfied, and Speedwell and Trimmer received their fee.

Management Surveys Evaluated

       
1) An efficiency survey, in effect, temporarily weakens, or even suspends, the operation of the Seniority Factor in a hierarchy. This automatically hastens promotion, or facilitates initial placement, for employees who have Pull (Pullees).

       
2) A favorite recommendation of efficiency experts is the appointment of
a co-ordinator between two incompetent officials or two unproductive departments.
1
A popular fallacy among these experts and their clients is that “Incompetence co-ordinated equals competence.”

       
3)
The only recommendation
that actually produces an increase of output is “Hire more employees.” In some instances, new recruits will do work which is not being done by the old employees who have reached their level.

The effective management consultant realizes this and recommends various lateral arabesques and percussive sublimations of high-ranking incompetents and hierarchal exfoliation of super-incompetent low-ranking employees. Competent consultants also make useful recommendations regarding personnel practices, production methods, color dynamics, incentive schemes and so forth, which can improve the efficiency of the competent employees.