This is the weekly Careers newsletter.
Radhika Panjwani is a freelance writer from Toronto.
“In hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence,” Vancouver-born educator Laurence J. Peter famously wrote in the best-selling book, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong.
Mr. Peter’s satirical commentary, which he co-authored with Raymond Hull, was published in 1969 but the authors’ tongue-in-cheek observations about inept workers and corporate ladders ring true today, say management professionals.
“Look around where you work and pick out the people who have reached their level of incompetence,” Mr. Peter wrote. “You will see that in every hierarchy, the cream rises until it sours.”
An example of the Peter Principle would be how a competent teacher may turn out to be an adequate assistant principal but an incompetent principal.
The Peter Principle became a well-known maxim of management after the book’s resounding success. The theory states: a competent person will get promoted to a position that requires different skills and will do the job poorly causing a company to be rife with incompetent workers. The book’s takeaways are:
- Employees are usually promoted to the point of incompetence.
- Companies must only promote employees who are fully qualified to take on the role they’re being promoted to and not because they are doing well in their current role.
- Most work in an organization is accomplished by those who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess, authors of Uncommon Leadership: how to build competitive advantage by thinking differently, say the Peter Principle can be an “early warning system” to spot bad managers. Case in point: management must watch for the subtle ways weak managers will avoid doing a task that’s part of their new role because they are likely clueless.
In the book, Mr. Peter terms this strategy as “unconscious incompetence.” This is when a manager avoids the real work and instead substitutes it with inane tasks they are likely good at but are unnecessary for effectively performing at their level.
“It may be too easy to promote people because of their technical expertise, their personality or their ability to ‘get along’ with others or with systems,” write Mr. Higson and Mr. Sturgess in a blog. “The problem is that all too often, these people are just no good at what they’re promoted to do: they can’t manage.”
High performance does not equal leadership
Economists Alan Benson, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue analyzed the performance and promotion arc of 53,035 sales employees working in the U.S. over a six-year period. They found 1,531 sales representatives – who excelled in their jobs – were promoted to sales managers even though they did not have leadership skills.
“Using microdata on the performance of sales workers at 131 firms, we find evidence consistent with the Peter Principle, which proposes that firms prioritize current job performance in promotion decisions at the expense of other observable characteristics that better predict managerial performance,” the economists wrote. “We estimate that the costs of promoting workers with lower managerial potential are high, suggesting either that firms are making inefficient promotion decisions or that the benefits of promotion-based incentives are great enough to justify the costs of managerial mismatch.”
Stuck with an incompetent manager?
Kathy Caprino, a U.S.-based career and leadership coach and author of The Most Powerful You, says the challenge for organizations is that there aren’t many people who are truly up to the task of leading. So, instead of focusing on promoting the right person, companies should offer support and training for all employees by encouraging them take a stab at higher-level tasks, problem evaluation and solving, communicating resolutions and strategies to a broader audience.
“A better approach is to start leadership training from day one for all employees, no matter the level,” said Ms. Caprino, who is also founder of Kathy Caprino LLC, a leadership development and professional success consulting firm. “Teach them to truly manage and not just “do” their jobs, and to think and behave like an inspiring leader.”
Ms. Caprino’s three pieces of advice for those stuck working for an incompetent manager:
- A workplace is a “system” mostly focused on homeostasis, for example, maintaining equilibrium. Often, bad managers aren’t just a one-off problem but a sign of a bigger, more prevalent problem. Look at the whole picture and decide if it’s the place for you.
- Establish specifically why your boss is a bad manager and consider how prevalent their “bad” behaviour is.
- Interview regularly for jobs outside your current organization as it will give you an idea of your current value in the market.
“It’s clear there’s an even greater negative impact than a specific dollar amount to the cost of a bad [manager],” said Ms. Caprino. “It’s a widespread hit to the work culture when someone who isn’t equipped is promoted or hired as a manager. A bad manager impacts turnover, morale, engagement, trust, belonging, loyalty, productivity, innovation, company performance and reputation.”
What I’m reading around the web
- This article in ideas.ted.com shows you how to deal with a know-it-all colleague. Suggestions include looking for their deep-seated insecurity, asking yourself if their confidence is warranted and checking biases.
- This blog in The Vector Impact offers several tips on the benefits of a great career portfolio and what items to include.
- This report from the World Economic Forum introduces us to the firms at the technological forefront of their industries.
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