Career Perspective (19 ) — The Different Aspects I See From The Peter Principle
In the workplace today, more and more companies have started to focus on staff training in order to evolve. This is especially so, when they find that the old style of thinking reduced their performance and they are unable to meet new challenges. However, we still see that some companies are not willing to spend the staff-training budget on their employees, especially small to medium-sized companies. Sooner or later, these companies end up promoting inexperienced employees to a higher level even though these employees are still amateurs.
To explain this phenomenon, Laurence Johnston Peter published a book called ” The Peter Principle” explaining his theory. The Peter Principle is an observation that an employee does well and gets rewarded with a promotion. This hierarchy rises continually through a promotion basis until employees reach a level of respective incompetence.
So what will it take to promote an unqualified employee to a higher level in the hierarchy? This could also cause subordinates to continually question the capacity of the high level management and they may lose their faith in the company. As a matter of fact, promotions are a trick to anchor employees down especially when someone is about to resign and move onto a better company. In conclusion, turnover is high but gossip is more pervasive.
However, the Peter Principle theory only explains the unfit employee at a high level within the hierarchy, but the company mode keeps switching rapidly in the modern business world. So I would like to explain the Peter Principle from different aspects, and not just focus on unqualified employees.
1. Gresham’s Law
Don’t panic if your supervisor is incapable of being a supervisor. The truth is that employees may leave when they realize that the rules of the company are unfair and unchangeable. Eventually, the staff that remain are still unqualified and the call for new hires happens all over again. That is exactly what makes bad money drive out good.
2. Company culture shock :
The company could work with a headhunter to hire unqualified employees especially when they have run out of candidates to fill their promotion list. Nevertheless, the first thing a new hire encounters is the company culture, especially, when their job task is staff management. Sooner or later, the supervision and subordinates will face conflict especially when the new hire’s managerial style is not accepted.
