How to understand the Peter Principle

The previous two articles, I tell you the Murphy's Law and the Parkinson's law, this article I specifically re-introduce the Peter Principle for everyone, the three laws known as the twentieth century, the three found in Western culture.

Peter Principle (The Peter Principle) by the American management scientist 劳伦斯彼得 (Laurence.J.Peter) according to hundreds of organizations of the incompetent failure analysis and summarized instance, in 1960, presented a workshop. The specific content is: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Peter pointed out that every employee in the original position as the performance of good performance (competence), will be promoted to higher level positions; Thereafter, if continued competency will be further enhanced until he can not reach the qualified positions. Peter thus infer, "Every position ultimately will be an incompetent occupied by workers of their work. Hierarchical organization of work tasks is not yet reached the most incompetent staff levels completed." Every employee will eventually reach Peter Hill, where he's Promotion Quotient (PQ) is zero. As for how to upgrade to this high speed, there are two ways. First, is above the "pull", that is, relying on nepotism and acquaintances such as pull from above; the other, are both "push", that is, self-training and advancement, while the former is widely used. Any exposure to commercial, industrial, political, administrative, military, religion, education, everyone in all walks of life and levels of organization are closely related, are all controlled by the Peter Principle. Of course, the principle assumption is: long enough, the five levels of organization have enough class.

Each organization at the beginning of time is always full of vitality, but when the system becoming increasingly mature, the Peter Principle that the symptoms start to appear. Bureaucratic quality pollution limits their performance, but the incompetence of staff on board to ensure a higher level jobs. Incompetent staff will each bring a bad effect on a group of incompetent staff will make the work rate was chaotic state. Before long, the entire system will enter a sluggish period, we call this phenomenon the "system depression." Hierarchy of human behavior well their limitations and control, difficult to play their own individuality and innovation, together with the people in the company seems to have done just for the climb, and higher positions are able to adapt themselves, whether it is their favorite whether it can play its own advantages and points of interest then no one considered. In this "system depression" the poor under the human, can "line up puppet" to describe the term, they will go through life, punch card, fill in a form, the stages of the implementation of meaningless ritual. Today, the "line up puppet" has become a powerful social forces, they include ordinary people, the silent people, managers, workers or consumers, of course, may include you and me.

Peter principle for all of us around on their own and other people's work and life reflect the current situation of the deep. That is, a person's work and whether the ultimate goal in life is to realize self-value of money or gain job? Sadly, most people now have the latter as its ultimate goal, but they often do not find, in fact, really successful people are always the former as its ultimate goal, in simple terms, that is, they work and interests closely together. Reality, we can always find such a situation: a very talkative, like technology, engineers forced the family, community efforts to secular pressure to climb, eventually climbed to the management and leadership positions, but because of his personality and preferences do not match resulting pressure surge in long-term psychological and physiological sub-health state. Dislocation phenomena like this everywhere, the frightening thing is not to climb the staff is so mental, and even has been a leader in high places is the idea that they think the biggest reward of subordinates is promoted and promoted, while ignoring the everyone's personality, interests and character.

So by Peter Principle, I think we can get this at least some inspiration:

First, to understand self, understand one of the ultimate purpose of work and life. Is self-worth or just meaningless appreciation and promotion.

Second, find out their reasonable position, not in order not to suit their goals.

Third, the establishment of scientific views on employment, VIP best use of everyone for their different positions.

Fourth, there must be equality of job outlook, job does not compete with the points, only the value of each person can create simple to use direct visual effectiveness, and potential benefits should be measured indirectly.

Fifth, not only to create a flat organization, but also to create flat salary system, that is the so-called gap between the upper and lower pay can not be too much. Can not take a high-level strategic management are far higher than the income of a skilled, good at problem-solving engineer. Because it can not simply judge the size of both the value created.

Peter Principle and Parkinson's Principle of some closely related, both are trying to convey the development of organizations and enterprises with bloated always been expanding, always by the end of each post can not be as qualified employees. And the law of the timing of the two very similar, Parkinson's Law made in 1958, while the Peter Principle is put forward in 1960, in fact, the proposed laws have far-reaching background. 20 century is the age of five 60 stage of unprecedented development of the U.S. economy, particularly the dramatic increase in monopoly capital profits, large companies have grown, it also sparked the efficiency of large companies reduce the phenomenon of depth.

In a sense, we can say that Peter Principle and Parkinson's cause and effect principle of the two surfaces from each other are big companies described symptoms produced by Peter Principle is put forward as the main staff in constant desire to climb, leading to end of each post there are not as qualified employees. The Parkinson's principle is to continue to expand along this step, that is, when a manager is not qualified for his position that the time will tend to recruit a number of capabilities than their own people as the assistant, the long run, organizations and institutions will more expansion, more and more low efficiency.

Deep understanding of these two principles help us to generate self-development and organizational structure of the correct and comprehensive concept.