The problem with incompetence is its inability to recognize itself.

-Orrin Woodward

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to a new order of things. I’m your host, Eddie Killian, and this is a weekly podcast we’re creating conversations and community around building winning individuals and organizations is our goal.

As an author and journalist I have had exceptional opportunities to study the workings of civilized society. I have investigated and written about government, industry, business, education and the arts. I have talked to and listened carefully to members of many trades and professions. People have lofty, middling and lowly stations.

I have noticed that with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant.

I have seen a three-quarter mile-long highway bridge collapse and fall into the sea. Because despite checks and double checks, someone had botched the design of a supporting pier.

I have seen town planners supervising the development of a city on the floodplain of a great river, where it is certain to be periodically inundated.

Lately, I read about the collapse of three giant cooling towers at a British power station. They cost a million dollars each, but we’re not strong enough to withstand a good blow of wind.

I noted with interest that the indoor baseball stadium in Houston Texas was found upon completion to be procured really ill-suited to baseball. On bright days, fielders could not see fly balls against the glare of the skylights.

I observed that appliance manufacturers as regular policy establish regional service depot’s in the expectation, justified by experience that many of their machines will break down during the warranty period.

Having listened to umpteen motorists complaints about faults in their new cars, I was not surprised to learn that roughly 1/5 of the automobiles produced by major manufacturers in recent years have been found to contain potentially dangerous production defects.

Please do not assume that I am a jaundiced ultra-conservative crying about contemporary men and things just because they’re contemporary. And competence knows no barriers of time or place.

Macaulay gives a picture drawn from a report by Samuel Pappas of the British Navy in 1684. The naval administration was a property of wastefulness corruption, ignorance and indolence. No estimate could be trusted, no contract was performed, no check was enforced. Some of the new men of war were so rotted that unless speedily repaired, they would go down at their moorings. The sailors were paid so little punctually that they were glad to find some user who would purchase their tickets at 14% discount. Most of the ships that were afloat, were commanded by men who had not been bred to the sea.

Wellington, examining the roster of officers assigned to him for the 1810 campaign in Portugal said, I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.

Civil War General Richard Taylor, speaking of the Battle of the seven days remarked, Confederate commanders, know no more about the typography within a day’s march of the city of Richmond than they did about Central Africa.

Robert E. Lee once complained bitterly I cannot have my orders carried out.

For most of World War Two, the British Armed Forces thought with explosives, much inferior weight for wait to those in German shells and bombs. Early in 1940, British scientists knew that the cheap simple addition of a little powdered aluminum would double the power of existing explosives. Yet the knowledge was not applied until late in 1943.

In that same war, the Australian commander of a hospital ship checked the vessels water tanks after a refit and found them painted inside with red LED would have poisoned every man aboard.

These things and hundreds more like them. I have seen and read about and heard about, and I have accepted the universality of incompetence.

I’ve stopped being surprised when a moon rocket fails to get off the ground because something is forgotten. Something breaks something doesn’t work or something explodes prematurely.

I now expect that statesmen will prove incompetent to fulfill their campaign pledges. I assume that if they do anything, it will probably be to carry out the pledges of their opponents.

This incompetence would be annoying enough if it were confined to public works or politics, space travel, and such vast remote fields of human endeavor, but it is not just close at hand to an ever-present pestiferous nuisance.

As I write this page, a woman in the next department is talking on the telephone. I can hear every word she says. It is 10pm And the man in the apartment on the other side of me has gone to bed early with a cold, I can hear his intermittent cough and when he turns on his bed, I hear the spring squeak. I don’t live in a cheap rooming house. This is an expensive modern concrete high-rise apartment block. What’s the matter with people who designed and built it.

The other day a friend of mine bought a hacksaw, took it home and began to cut an iron bolt and his second stroke the blade snapped and the adjustable joint of the frame broke so that it could no longer be used.

Last week, I wanted to use a tape recorder on the stage of a new high school auditorium. I could get no power for the machine. The building engineer told me that in a year’s occupancy, he had been unable to find a switch that would turn on current in the base plugs on stage. He was beginning to think that they were not wired up at all.

This morning, I set out to buy a desk lamp. In a large furniture and appliance store. I found a lamp that I liked. This salesman was going to wrap it and I asked him to test it first. I’m getting cautious nowadays. He was obviously unused to testing electrical equipment because it took him a long time to find a socket. Eventually he plugged the lamp in then could not switch it on. He tried another lamp of the same style that would not switch on either. The whole consignment had defective switches I left.

I recently ordered 600 square feet of fiberglass insulation for a cottage that I’m renovating. I stood over the clerk at the order desk to make sure that she got the quantity right and vein. The building supply firm billed me for 700 square feet and delivered at 900 square feet.

Education, often touted as a cure for all ills is apparently no cure for incompetence and competence runs riot in the halls of education. One high school graduate in three cannot read at a normal fifth-grade level. It is now commonplace for colleges to be giving reading lessons to freshmen. In some colleges. 20% of freshmen cannot read well enough to understand the textbooks.

I received mail from a large university 15 months ago I changed my address. I sent the usual notice to the university and my mail kept going to the old address. After two more change of address notices and a phone call. I made a personal visit. I pointed with my finger to the wrong address and their records dictated that the new address and watch the secretary ticket down the mail still went to the old address. Two days ago, there was a new development. I received a phone call from the woman who had succeeded me in my old apartment and who of course has been receiving my mail from the university. She herself has moved again. And my mail from the university has now started going to her new address.

As I said I became resigned to this omnipresent incompetence. Yet I thought that if only its cause could be discovered, then a cure might be found. So I began asking questions.

I heard plenty of theories.

A banker blame the schools. All the kids these days are learning with inefficient work habits.

A teacher blamed politicians with such inefficiency at the seat of government, what can you expect from citizens? Besides, they resist our legitimate demands for adequate education budgets? If only we could get a computer in every school?

An atheist blamed the church’s dragging the people’s minds with fables of a better world and distracting them from practicalities.

A churchman blamed radio, television and movies many distractions of modern life have drawn people away from the moral teachings of the Church.

A trade unionist blames management to greedy to pay a living wage. A man can’t take any interest in his job on his starvation pay.

A manager blamed unions the workers just don’t care nowadays thinks of nothing but raises and vacations and retirement pensions.

An individualist said the welfare state ism produces a general don’t care attitude.

A social worker told me that moral eccentricity in the home and family breakdown produces irresponsibility on the job.

A psychologist said that the early repression of sexual impulses causes a subconscious desire to fail as atonement for guilt feelings.

A philosopher said, Men are human Accidents will happen.

A multitude of different explanations is as bad as no explanation at all. And I began to feel that I would never understand incompetence.

Then, one evening in a theater lobby, during the second intermission of a dully performed play, I was grumbling about incompetent actors and directors and got into conversation with Dr. Lawrence J. Peter, a scientist who had devoted many years to the study of incompetence.

The intermission was too short for him to do more than what my curiosity. After the show I went to his home and set until 3am. Listening to his lucid started in really original exposition of a theory that at last answered my question, why incompetence?

Peter exonerated Adam, agitators and accident and arraigned one feature of our society as the perpetrator and rewarder of confidence.

Incompetence explained! My mind flamed at the thought, perhaps the next step might be incompetence eradicated.

With characteristic modesty, Dr. Peter had so far been satisfied to discuss his discovery with a few friends and colleagues and given an occasional lecture on his research. His vast collection of incompetence IANA. His brilliant galaxy of incompetence, theories and formula had never appeared in print.

Possibly my principle could benefit mankind, said Peter, but I’m frantically busy with routine teaching and the associated paperwork. Then there are faculty committee meetings and my continuing research. Someday, I may sort out the material and arrange it for publication, but for the next 10 or 15 years, I simply won’t have time.

I stressed the danger of procrastination and at last Dr. Peter agreed to a collaboration, he would place his extensive research reports and huge manuscript at my disposal, and I would condense them into a book. The following pages present Professor Peter’s explanation of his principle, the most penetrating social and psychological discovery of this entry. Dare you read it? Dare you face in one blinding Revelation, the reason why schools did not bestow wisdom, why governments cannot maintain order, why courts do not dispense justice, and why prosperity fails to produce happiness. Why utopian plans never generate utopias?

Do not decide lightly. The decision to read on is revocable. If you read, you can never again regain your present state of blissful ignorance. You will never again unthinkingly venerate your superiors or dominate your subordinates never. The Peter Principle once heard cannot be forgotten.

What you have to gain by reading on by conquering and competence in yourself. And by understanding and competent and others. You can do your own work more easily. gain promotion and make more money. You can avoid painful illnesses, you can become a leader of men. You can enjoy your leisure, you can gratify your friends, confound your enemies, impress your children, and enrich and revitalize your marriage.

This knowledge, in short, will revolutionize your life. Perhaps save it.

So if you have courage, read on, mark, memorize and apply the Peter Principle.

I’ve just finished reading the introduction to the book, The Peter Principle, subtitled why things always go wrong. It’s written by Dr. Lawrence J. Peter and Raymond Hall, who wrote the introduction.

The author, Mr. Peter was born in 1999 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He died in 1990 in California. He was a professor of education at the University of Southern California, California, USC from 1966 until 1970. And he wrote The Peter Principle with Raymond Hall, which is considered a satirical calm commentary on his experiences with educational and other bureaucracies.

After being rejected by over 30 publishers, it ended up selling over 8 million copies and was translated into 38 languages. After the Peter Principle was released, and its subsequent success, Peter wrote eight more books, including a serious series of four volumes, titled Competencies for Teaching. Subtitled, Systems of accountability for teacher education.

His cohort and authoring the book The Peter Principle is Raymond Hall. And he was also born in 1919 in Canada and passed away in 1985. He was a playwright and television screenwriter and a lecturer. He wrote many nonfiction books, numerous magazine articles, short stories and poetry over his lifetime. He is best known as the co-author of The Peter Principle. He is also known for saying, He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon Whittle himself away. whole study creative writing at the University of British Columbia, at the age of 30, discovered that he had an aptitude for the craft. After graduation, he eventually began writing television screenplays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He later branched into writing for the stage, and in time formed, the Gas Town Players.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to beat you up with reading verbatim the entire book, but I am going to read chapter one. I think this is a great way to carry on through from the introduction and give you an idea of where this book and its ideas really do go. And this chapter is actually shorter than the introduction.

So don’t fret. We’ll will get done with this pretty quick, but it’s well worth the read. So here we go. Chapter One, the Peter Principle, and there’s a little quote here by MD Cervantes, “I begin to smell a rat.”

When I was a boy, I was taught that men upstairs knew what they were doing. I was told Peter, the more you know, the more you go. So I stayed in school until I graduated from college, and then went forth into the world clutching firmly these ideas in my new teaching certificate. During the first year of teaching, I was upset to find that a number of teachers, school principals, supervisors, and superintendents appeared to be unaware of their professional responsibilities, and incompetent in executing their duties. For example, my principals main concerns were that all window shades be at the same level, that classrooms should be quiet, and that no one step on or near the rose beds. The superintendent’s main concerns were that no minority group, no matter how fanatical should ever be offended, and that all official forms be submitted on time, the children’s education appeared farthest from the administrators mind.

At first, I thought that this was a special weakness of the school system in which I taught so I applied for certification in another province. I filled out the special forms, enclosed the required documents and compiled willingly with all the red tape. Several weeks later, back came my application and all the documents.

No, there was nothing wrong with my credentials. The forms are correctly filled out. An official departmental stamp showed that they had been received in good order. But an accompanying letter said the new regulations require that such forms cannot be accepted by the Department of Education unless they have been registered at the post office to ensure safe delivery, you will please re mail the forms to the department making sure to register them this time.

I began to suspect that the local school system did not have a monopoly on incompetence.

As I looked further afield, I saw that every organization contained a number of persons who could not do their jobs.

A universal phenomenon.

Occupational incompetence is everywhere. Have you noticed it? Probably we all have noticed it.

We see indecisive politicians posing as resolute statesman, and the authoritative source who blames his misinformation on situational imponderables, limitless are the public servants who are indolent and insolent military commanders whose behavorial timidity belies their dread not rhetoric, and governor’s whose innate civility prevents their actual governing. In our sophistication, we virtually shrug aside and the immortal cleric corrupts judge, incoherent attorney or author who cannot write an English teacher who cannot spell. At universities we see proclamations authored by administrators whose own office communications are hopelessly muddled, and droning lectures from inaudible or incomprehensible instructors.

Seeing incompetence at all levels of every hierarchy, political, legal, educational and industrial. I hypothesized that the cause was some inherent feature of the rules governing the placement of employees. Thus began my serious study of the ways in which employees move upward and through a hierarchy and of what happens to them after promotion.

For my scientific data hundreds of case histories were collected. Here are three typical examples.

Municipal Government file, case number 17, J, s, Minion*…

There’s an asterisk here, and it shows that there’s a note at the bottom of the page that states: “Some names have been changed in order to protect the guilty.”

Back to the test.

J S minion was a maintenance foreman in the Public Works Department of Excelsior city. He was a favorite of the senior officials at City Hall. They all praised his unfailing affability. I like Minion, said this Superintendent of works. He has good judgment and is always pleasant and agreeable.

This behavior was appropriate for minion’s position. He was not supposed to make up policy, so he had no need to disagree with his superiors.

The superintendent of works retired, and Minion succeeded him. Minion continued to agree with everyone. He passed to his foreman every suggestion that came from above. The resulting conflicts in policy and the continual changing of plans soon demoralized the department. Complaints poured in from the mayor and other officials, from taxpayers and for the maintenance workers union.

Minion still says yes to everyone, and carries messages briskly back and forth between his superiors and his subordinates. nominally a superintendent, he actually does the work of a messenger. The maintenance department regularly exceeds its budget, yet fails to fulfill its program of work. In Short, Minion, a competent Foreman became an incompetent superintendent.

Service industries file case number three.

E. Tinker was exceptionally zealous and intelligent as an apprentice at the GE Reese auto repair, Incorporated, and soon rose to journeyman mechanic. In this job, he showed outstanding ability in diagnosing obscure faults, and endless patients and correcting them. He was promoted to foreman of the repair shop.

But here his love of things mechanical and his perfectionism became liabilities. He would undertake any job that he thinks looks interesting, no matter how busy the shop may be. We’ll work on it somehow. He says.

He will not let a job go until he is finished and fully satisfied with it.

He meddles constantly. He is seldom to be found at the desk, he is usually up to his elbows in a dismantled motor, and while the man who should be doing the work stands watching other workmen sit around waiting to be assigned new tasks. As a result, the shop is always overcrowded with work, always in a muddle and delivery times are often missed.

Tinker cannot understand that the average customer cares little about perfection. He wants his car back on time. He cannot understand that most of his men are less interested in motors than in their paycheck. So, Tinker cannot get on with his customers or with his subordinates.

He was a competent mechanic, but he’s now an incompetent foreman.

Military file. Case number eight.

Consider the case of the late renowned general a good one. His hearty and formal manner and his racy style of speech, his scorn for petty regulation, and his undoubted personal bravery made him the idol of his men. He led them to many well-deserved victories.

When Goodwin was promoted to Field Marshal, he had to deal not with ordinary soldiers but with politicians and allied generally suppose.

He would not conform to the necessary protocol. He could not turn his tongue to the conventional courtesies and flatteries he quarreled with all dignitaries and took to lying for days at a time drunk and sulking in his trailer, the conduct of the war slipped out of his hands and into those of his subordinates. He had been promoted to a position that he was incompetent to fill.

An important clue.

In time, I saw that all such cases had a common feature, the employee had been promoted from a position of competence to a position of incompetence. I saw that sooner or later this could happen to every employee in every hierarchy.

Hypothetical case file, Case number one.

Suppose you own a pill-rolling factory, perfect pill Incorporated, your Foreman pill roller dies of a perforated ulcer, you need a replacement. You naturally look among your rank-and-file pill rollers.

Miss Oval, Mrs. Cylinder, Mr. Ellipse, and Mr. Cube all show various degrees of incompetence. They will naturally be ineligible for promotion. You will choose other things being equal your most competent pill roller Mr. Sphere and promote him to foreman.

Now, suppose Mr. Sphere proves competent as a foreman. Later when your general foreman lagree moves up to works manager sphere will be eligible to take his place.

If on the other hand sphere is an incompetent foreman, he will get no more promotion. He has reached what I call his level of incompetence. He will stay there until the end of his career.

Some employees like ellipse and cube reach a level of incompetence in the lowest grade and I never promoted some like sphere, assuming he is not a satisfactory Foreman reach it after one promotion.

E. Tinker the automobile repair shop foreman reached his level of incompetence on the third stage of the hierarchy, General Goodwin reached the level of incompetence at the very top of the hierarchy.

So my analysis of hundreds of cases of occupational incompetence led me to formulate the Peter Principle, which is:

In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence.

On a side note, he mentioned that Mr. sphere would have level rose to his level of incompetence, and he would stay there until the end of his career. And that doesn’t hold true because what happens when these people reach the top of their incompetence, they leave the company with that last title and move into another company with a higher title. The next level up look at all of these things that I’ve been able to do to this point. So I should be coming into your organization at this next level. And they can move from company to company to company gaining levels, even though they are incompetent at each of them. As long as they leave before it comes back to bite them in the butt. They’ve still harmed the company and their time there or at least successfully taken money for giving no real value.

Back to the book.

A new science.

Having formulated the principle, I discovered that I had inadvertently founded a new science hierarchy ology the study of hierarchies.

The term hierarchy was originally used to describe the system of church government by priests graded into ranks. The contemporary meeting includes any organization whose members or employees are arranged in order of rank grade or class.

Hierarchiology although a relatively recent discipline appears to have great applicability to the fields of public and private administration.

This means you!

My principle is the key to an understanding of all hierarchical systems and therefore, to an understanding of the whole structure of civilization. A few eccentrics try to avoid getting involved in hierarchies, but everyone in business industry, trade unionism, politics, government, the armed forces, religion and education is so involved, all of them are controlled by the Peter Principle.

Many of them to be sure, may win a promotion or to moving from one level of competence to a higher level of competence. But competence in that new position qualifies them for still another promotion for each individual for you. And for me, the final promotion is from a level of competence to a level of incompetence.

Again, another asterisk for notes below… The phenomena of percussive sublimation, commonly referred to as being kicked upstairs, and of the of the lateral arabesque are not, as the casual observer might think, exceptions to the principle, they are only pseudo promotions and will be dealt with in chapter three. We’ll talk about that when we get there.

So, given enough time, and assuming the existence of enough ranks in the hierarchy, each employee rises due and remains at his level of incompetence.

Peters Corollary states:

In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.

So, who turns the wheels?

You will rarely find of course a system in which every employee has reached his level of incompetence. In most instances, something is being done to further the ostensible for purposes of which the hierarchy exists.

In other words:

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

And that’s the end of chapter one.

Moments ago, the author’s warned in an aside, that they would discuss Percussive Sublimation, and Lateral Arabesque in Chapter Three. So let’s do that now.

Chapter Three titled, Apparent Exceptions.

Many people to whom I mentioned the Peter Principle do not want to accept it, they anxiously search for and sometimes think they have found flaws in my higher illogical structure. So, at this point, I want to issue a warning: Do not be fooled by apparent exceptions.

Apparent exception number one: The Percussive Sublimation

What about Walt Blockett’s promotion? He was hopelessly incompetent a bottleneck. So management kicked him upstairs to get him out of the road.

I often hear such questions. Let us examine these phenomena which I have named Percussive Sublimation. Did Blockett move from a position of incompetence to a position of competence? No, he would simply been moved from one unproductive position to another.

Does he now undertake any greater responsibility than before? No.

Does he accomplish any more work in the new position than he did in the old? No.

The percussive sublimation is a pseudo-promotion. Some blocking-type employees actually believe that they have received a genuine promotion. Others recognize the truth, but the main function of a pseudo-promotion is to deceive people outside the hierarchy. When this is achieved, the maneuver is counted as a success.

But the experienced higher archaeologist will never be deceived. Hierarchiology. The only move that we can accept as a genuine promotion is a move from a level of competence.

But as the effect of the successful percussive sublimation, assume that block gets employer quickly is still competent, then by moving block it he achieves three goals.

One: he camouflage is the ill success of his promotion policy, to admit the block it was incompetent would lead observers to think quickly should have realized before giving block at that last promotion. That block it wasn’t the man for the job. But a percussive sublimation justifies the previous promotion in the eyes of employees and onlookers, not to hire hierarchiologists

Number two: He supports staff morale. Some employees at least will think if blockhead can get a promotion, I can get a promotion. One percussive sublimation serves as a carrot on the stick to many other employees.

Number three, he maintains the hierarchy even though block it is incompetent, he must not be fired. He probably knows enough of Quigley’s business to be dangerous to competitive hierarchy.

This is a common phenomenon.

Hierarchiology tells us that every thriving organization will be characterized by this accumulation of Deadwood at the executive level, consisting of percussive subcommittees and potential candidates for progressive sublimation. One well-known appliance manufacturing firm has 23 vice presidents.

A paradoxical result.

The Waverly Broadcasting Corporation is noted for the creativity of its production department. This is made possible through percussive sublimation. Waverly has just moved all of its non-creative nonproductive, redundant personnel into a palatial $3 million head office complex.

The head office contains no cameras, microphones or transmitters. Indeed, it is miles away from the nearest studio. The people at head office are always frantically busy drawing up reports and flowcharts and making appointments to confer with one another.

Recently, a reshuffle of senior officials was announced aimed at streamlining the headquarters operations for vice presidents were replaced by eight vice presidents and a co-coordinating Assistant to the President.

We see that the percussive sublimation can serve to keep the drones out of the hair of the workers.

Apparent exception number two: The Lateral Arabesque

The Lateral Arabesque is another pseudo promotion without being raised in rank sometimes without even a pay raise. The incompetent employee is given a new and longer title and is moved to an office in a remote part of the building.

R. Filewood proved incompetent as office manager for cowardly stationary Inc. After a lateral arabesque, he found himself at the same salary working as coordinator of the interdepartmental communications supervising the filing of second copies of interoffice memos.

Automotive manufacturing file case number eight:

Wheeler automobile parts Limited has developed the lateral arabesque more fully than most hierarchies. The Wheeler operations are divided into many regions. And at last count I found that 25 senior executives had been banished to the provinces as regional vice presidents.

The company bought a motel and ordered one senior official to go and run it.

Another redundant Vice President had been laboring for three years to write the company’s history.

I conclude that the larger the hierarchy, the easier is the lateral arabesque

A case of levitation.

The entire 82 Man staff of a small government department was moved away to another department leaving the director with nothing to do and nobody to supervise Here, we see the rare phenomenon of a hierarchical pyramid consisting solely of the Capstone suspended aloft without a base to support it. This interesting condition I denominate the free-floating apex.

 The author goes on and have four more of these apparent exceptions. Throughout chapter three, I highly recommend that if you choose to, to grab the book and read them, but I’m not gonna go into them here.

Chapter Six is titled, Followers and Leaders.

There are a couple of key pieces in here and some very interesting sentences right off on the first page of the chapter.

They say as you already understand hierarchiology clearly shows that nothing fails like success, when an employee raises to his level of incompetence.

Later, when I discuss Creative Incompetence, I shall show that nothing succeeds like failure.

Following on a little bit later in the chapter, Military File case number 17.

Captain N. Chatters competently filled it administrative posted an army base, he worked well with all ranks and obeyed orders cheerfully and exactly. In short, he was a good follower. He was promoted to the rank of Major and now had to work largely on his own initiative.

But Chatters could not under the measure of solitude that necessarily accompanies a position of authority. He would hang around his subordinates gossiping and joking with them interfering with the performance of their work. He was quite unable to give someone order and let them go get on with it. He had to but in with unwanted advice. Under his harassment Chatter’s subordinates became inefficient and unhappy.

Chatters also spent much time loitering around the office with his colonel. When he could find no legitimate reason for talking to the CEO, he would gossip with the COs secretary. She could not very well tell him to clear out and leave her alone, her work slipped into arrears.

To get rid of Chatters the colonel would set him running errands all over the base.

In this instance, a good follower promoted to a position of leadership:

1. Fails to exercise leadership.
2. Reduces efficiency among his subordinates.
3. Wastes the time of his superiors.

We also saw in chapter three, an employee’s competence is assessed not by disinterested observers like you and me, but by the employer, or more likely nowadays by other employees on higher ranks of the same hierarchy.

In their eyes, leadership potential is insubordination, and insubordination is incompetence.

Good followers do not become good leaders.

I think there’s one of the most important sentences in the book, talking about that one again.

In their eyes of the hierarchy, leadership potential is seen as insubordination and insubordination to them is incompetence. So what does that mean for somebody who actually is a leader within your organization?

Do you have organizational leaders that see the people they lead who have that drive, and a desire to do what’s right for the organization, as insubordination?

I think we’ve done a pretty good job of discussing the basic points of the Peter Principle in this episode, I guarantee you will be returning to this and text in future episodes and diving deeper into the author’s ideas, observations, and how they pertain and are pertinent within business and organizations today.

Links to the Peter Principle are in the show notes. And on my links page at the website, Eddie killian.com.

I don’t get any money for your purchase. If you happen to run over to Amazon and buy the book. We don’t have any links there for that. So feel free to run over there.

Join me next Tuesday’s we continue to travel the path of what is difficult, perilous, and uncertain as we explore introducing A New Order of Things.

I’m your host, Eddie Killian and this concludes Episode Six.

Reference

Peter, L., & Hull, R. (1969). The Peter Principle. New York: Bantam Books.