"Peter Principle" - My notes on the book

Here is the second installment of my effort to take notes on books I'm reading or have read in the past.

The book is "The Peter Principle - Why things always go wrong".

A startling & controversial book about incompetence and promotions.
Here are the four points that really stood out from this book :

Level of incompetence : Have you reached your ?

Mr. Peter notes that everyone rises to their highest level of incompetence.
Let's take a typical journey in the technology world :

1. A highly motivated intern joins a company full time - When he joins that is his level of incompetence
2. After a couple of years, he is better with coding & moves into a senior position with a bit more responsibilities - say managing a team of two interns
   Again, the incompetence comes due to no prior experience - nothing which he can't overcome.
3. After a few more years come the "lead" roles - it may be architecture, development or even an assistant project manager.
   So on & so forth.

The principle states that in an organization, as soon as one performs better at their duty, they are promoted to a level where they are incompetent.

The thought is a bit scary, but keep in mind that's how competence usually flows in the organization.
People who won't go up the chain usually are out - out of the organization but at the same level in another one.
So if you ever enter an organization and wonder how it even operates, there are two cases :
a.) You have run into a level freshly promoted and still learning the ropes
b.) The people at that level cannot be promoted, since although they have been at their jobs for a while, they haven't learned the ropes

Types of managers/superiors

This was so spot on.
There are two types of managers/superiors

• Output driven superior

  These, will evaluate their subordinates by their output, their actual useful work.

• Input driven superior

  These, they will concentrate more on the inputs of their subordinates - are they punctual, do they follow the company rules & rituals, neatness etc.
  Although they do look at the useful work they produce, it's not the basis for evaluating the subordinates.

Without a doubt, these are the B level managers that should be avoided at all expense.
Performance should be the sole yard stick for evaluation without a doubt.
It doesn't mean that they can be horrible to work with - in fact top performers are great team players.
Stellar individual contribution doesn't equate to a non-team player.

Push & Pull - the ways of promotion land

There are two ways people get promoted, however, there is only one way which really works.

• Push - You work harder and harder to push yourself to the top

Per the author this is a sub-optimal way to be promoted.

• Pull - You build relationships with your superiors and eventually get pulled up to the top

Well, this would be unfortunate, but it actually does seem true.
I'm pretty sure everyone's got a few examples about this being true.
Here is the thing though, for an incompetent person it might work once, but not every time.
Since, at the end of the day an organization has an intrinsic survival instinct and it'll remove anyone with too much power but no direction.

Final Placement Syndrome

When someone reaches the highest level they can achieve in an organization they actually start suffering.
And this suffering manifests in physical, mental health.
No, surprise here actually.
Everytime I've heard "My job is boring", simply means that the work is no more challenging to them.
There is another variant to this - "It's easy, but just too much" - well, in that case maybe the highest efficiency hasn't been reached yet by the person.

So that's it, these were my "learnings" from the book & my interpretations.
Hope you learned something new today and the post made you ponder about your job/career :)

More blogs on my site - less talk, more DO

https://www.ltmd.co/peter-principle-my-notes-on-the-book/