Recent Updates #5

In this blog post, I will be discussing the concept introduced in the latest article posted by The Economist. In this article, titled, “The Promotion Curse”, it discusses the concept of the Peter Principle, first introduced by Laurence Peter in a book published in 1969. The article states that the Peter Principle says that people work their way up in an organization until there is eventually a job they are not qualified for and someone’s career will stall, which leads to the conclusion that senior staff members who have been in the same position for a long time are “incompetent”.

The article goes further to describe studies that have been done to test this theory. The studies it mentions concluded that it takes different skills to do different things in a company. For example, companies often promote the best sales people; however, the skills it takes to manage those sales people are completely different, so making that good sales person a manager would be pointless. 

According to the article, this led to Scott Adams’ discussion of the Dilbert Principle, which he discusses in his book:

The Dilbert Principle states that the least competent people are more likely to get promoted so that they do not do the actual work in the company. This means that to promote someone with a unique set of skills to a higher position would mean to get rid of that person’s skills in that particular department, and companies do not want to do that. Therefore, if this is true, it could lead to the conclusion that promotions are often not given to the best workers and the ones that most likely deserve it most, which is the total opposite of what promotions are meant to do and the motivation they are meant to evoke.

This all leads to my opinion on the topic. In my opinion, both of these principles make a lot of sense and are both nothing I have ever thought about before. When strictly looking at the Peter Principle, I think in most cases it is true that people work their way up the hierarchy of the company and get to a point where they cannot go any further. However, I am not sure if I believe this is due to incompetence or possibly just the fact that higher positions are full, even though that specific person would be qualified. As for the Dilbert Principle, I agree with a lot of these concepts, as well; however, I also do not believe it applies to every company because many companies have promotion plans put in place that allow people to work their way up, without being forced to stay in one section of the company, simply because they are good at that particular job. However, I think both principles make valid points and are true in many cases, which has changed the way I view promotions significantly.

Sources:

The Promotion Curse. 2019. The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, www.economist.com/business/2019/06/16/the-promotion-curse.