Golden Oldies: Launch Or Destroy—It’s Your Choice
by Miki SaxonPoking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
The Peter Principle was published in 1969, but the principle was just as true in 3000 BC as it is in 2018 and all the time in-between. It’s a lucky team that has a boss wise enough to keep the principle firmly in mind.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule, recently wrote a 40th anniversary tribute called The Peter Principle Lives.
For those of you too young to remember, the Peter Principle states that “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
“Dr. Peter argued, “When people do their jobs well, society can’t leave well enough alone. We ask for more and more until we ask too much. Then these individuals—promoted to positions in which they are doomed to fail—start using a bag of tricks to mask their incompetence. They distract us from their crummy work with giant desks, replace action with incomprehensible acronyms, blame others for failure, cheat to create the illusion of progress.”
Well put and oh, so, ironic.
The very supermen who performed such extraordinary feats of financial legerdemain were actually at the peak of their Peter Principle.
Sutton writes, “If Dr. Peter were alive today, he’d find that a new lust for superhuman accomplishments has helped create an almost unprecedented level of incompetence. The message has been this: Perform extraordinary feats, or consider yourself a loser.”
What do you ask of your people?
Do you ask for competency; for them to do the best they are capable of at that point in time? Do you give them the tools, training, support and opportunities to grow and develop?
Or do you promote your people before any of these happen, tossing them into the deep end of the pool to swim—or drown.
As a manager at any level you hold your people’s future in your hands. At any point you have the choice of helping them on their path to success, slowing them down or destroying them.
What do you choose?
Image credit: Barnes and Noble
