4 Actions That Short Circuit the Peter Principle
by Miki Saxon
Hiring is one of the things where the “move fast and break it” mantra can cause real damage, including blowing product release schedules and, in extreme cases, blowing holes in your team or even destroying it.
A couple of yesterday’s links offered ways to avoid the Peter Principle when hiring, here are some others.
- Analyze your openings and identify the attitudes needed to perform and be successful in your company, not the experience. Just because they have held a similar position previously doesn’t mean they did it well. And even if they did, the ability may not carry over with a different boss and/or culture.
- Interview for attitude above experience and don’t rule out someone who hasn’t held a similar position — at some point every boss became one via promotion.
- Managing is composed of various skills; in that respect it is no different than any other specialty, such as engineering, marketing or finance. Supply training/coaching to anyone promoted to management; nobody is born knowing how, nor is it taught particularly well in college.
- Find ways to reward exceptional effort beyond promotion to a position that isn’t aligned with ability and interests. When people know there are financial/prestigious alternatives to management they are more likely to speak up when offered a promotion they don’t really want. The image above shows one approach that has been successful in technical and nontechnical fields, because the compensation between pairs is equal on each level.
As in most cases, to change results, change how you think.
Image credit: RampUp Solutions
