The Peter Principle by Dr. Laurence J. Peter (Buccaneer Books)

Dr. Peter depicted his ideas as timeless and immutable facts of organizational life. 

“Incompetence,” he argued, “knows no barrier of time or place.” He warned that extremely skilled and productive employees often face criticism, and are fired if they don’t start performing worse. 

The Peter Principle, once heard, cannot be forgotten. That every organization contained a number of persons who could not do their jobs.

The employee had been promoted from a position of competence to a position of incompetence. Sooner or later, this could happen to every employee in every hierarchy. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. Ordinary incompetence is no cause for dismissal: it is simply a bar to promotion. Super-competence often leads to dismissal, because it disrupts the hierarchy, and thereby violates the first commandment of hierarchal life: the hierarchy must be preserved.

The Peter Principle is so funny because it is so true. It is filled with practical ideas that we can all use to limit the damage that incompetence does to our organizations and ourselves.

Yes, the book is archaic in some ways, especially in its use of sexist language and examples. Yet the book’s main ideas remain.

This is the reason why the schools do not bestow wisdom, why governments cannot maintain order, why courts do not dispense justice, and why prosperity fails to produce happiness.

5/5