The Peter Principle and Being Ready for More Responsibility

The most important thing you can do in your work and in your career is to do what you know. It’s fine to try new things. However, when you try new things, you need to be very careful that you remain focused on the things that you know and understand. If you venture outside of what you understand, you’re likely to get into massive trouble very quickly. People who do well in their positions are typically rewarded with more responsibility and a better position. Eventually, however, this position will exceed a person’s level of expertise. This principle is called the Peter Principle, a theory originally conceived in the late 1960s by Dr. Lawrence J. Peter. Dr. Peter wrote: “In a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence.” In easier to understand terms, Dr. Peter wrote, “The cream rises until it sours.” The idea behind the Peter Principle is that, in many organizations, people are going to keep getting thrust upward until they end up failing at what they try to do. What does this mean for you? First, you need to be aware that by excelling at whatever you do, you are likely to advance. There is nothing wrong with this and it’s healthy. However, you need to be ready for the next step. Second, the worst mistake you can make is to be thrust into a position before you’re ready for it. If you aren’t ready, it’s wise to avoid taking on this new responsibility. Otherwise, you could get fired or worse. Several years ago I started a magazine. At the time, our company had at least 100 people working in our headquarters and one day I held a meeting with various people from the company to discuss this magazine. We had hired numerous temporary people. We were doing a lot of work in the student loan business at that time and we had hired temporary employees who were paid not more than $10 an hour to catalogue, mail, and complete other tasks when needed. One day, I grabbed one of these workers and several others and brought them into the office. At the time, I didn’t know who the temp worker was. I just noticed he did not seem that busy. “It’s costing us over $300,000 to get this issue out and we don’t have anywhere near enough advertising running in this issue to break even!” I barked at the group. I instructed the temporary worker that he needed to sell at least $100,000 in advertising and he had three weeks to do it. Every day or so, he would pop into my office. One day he got an ad from Citibank. Another day he got a law school to advertise. I didn’t listen to him, I just kept barking orders at him. The poor guy had never worked at a job paying more than $10.00 an hour and here he was all of a sudden being given the incredibly challenging assignment of hustling up ads for an upstart magazine. He was uneducated and had applied to stuff envelopes. As he sold ads, I started putting more and more pressure on him to sell even more. I started yelling at him and telling him he needed to “stop bullshitting” and “start closing.” I banged my hand on my desk and told him stuff like “now is the time for action!” I gave him pep talks and walked over to him when he was cold calling advertisers and told him what he was doing wrong.

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