From the course: Management Tips

Unlock this course with a free trial

Join today to access over 22,500 courses taught by industry experts.

Avoiding the Peter Principle

Avoiding the Peter Principle

From the course: Management Tips

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Avoiding the Peter Principle

“

- One of the more peculiar realities of life at work is the Peter Principle. This is one of the inefficiencies inherent in organizational hierarchies. The idea is that eventually everyone will rise to his or her level of incompetence. Due to their success in one role it's assumed that they will experience success in a more advanced role. Of course the new role might simply be outside of their ability. The classic example is a person who's good as a functional specialist. Let's say they're an auditor, and so it's assumed they're a good candidate to become a manager in the auditing area, but the skillset for managing is very different than the skillset for auditing, thus we have a problem. One solution might be simply demoting people back to the right level, but that's pretty brutal, so maybe a better approach is to think about how to prevent the Peter Principle from happening in the first place. If you're a manager and you hope to avoid making this mistake when you make promotion…

Contents