The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong by Laurence J. Peter, Raymond Hull (1994) Paperback

by Laurence J. Peter

Why is the human race foundering in a morass of occupational, academic, and administrative inefficiency? Here, at last, is the answer in the delightful, dead-pan humor of this book.

Not only do the authors reveal why the world is so completely screwed up, but they provide proven techniques for creative control of personal, social, and business problems. They analyze the reasons for human failure and tell how to achieve a state of well-being by avoiding that unwanted, ultimate promotion.

Students of Freud, Potter, and Parkinson will be fascinated by this satirical examination of man's tendency to escalate himself to oblivion at his level of incompetence.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Psychology, Management, Humor, Leadership, Self Help

179 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Dr. Laurence J. Peter was an educator and "hierarchiologist," best known to the general public for the formulation of the Peter Principle.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I musta read this little gem of a book back in 1961, when my mom the librarian was hauling new acquisitions home for me to read. I LOVED it.

And its moral guided me through the storm clouds of the following 60 years of my life!

Its moral is simple...

"Everyone - if they wish it - is promoted BEYOND THE LEVEL OF HIS OR HER COMPETENCE.'

And that explains the headaches, sloughs and quagmires of modern offices pretty well, don't it?

Yep.

And I remembered it in 1991, when I was sternly treated and peremptorily transferred to a Badass Slough of an Office for questioning authority abusively.

The abusive part came from my ire - for I was at the time SURROUNDED by managers who had successfully outlived their competence.

Yikes.

And in my new dungeon of a workplace I VOWED that I would never again seek promotion!

So, for the next 15 years until my pension kicked in, I never coveted a larger salary.

Imagine my smiles when, in 2003, my position was automatically upgraded to middle management level!

Wow...

What goes around comes around -

And in the end my Peterless recalcitrance was blessed.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:'Tongue in Both Cheeks'.(c) This is a must-read for anyome maddened with the office stuff! A himorous innoculation against getting fed up with hierarchiology, structurophillia, staticmanship, bureaucracies, meetings, trainings, ream buildings, procedures, politics, interaction, communication, actions and inaction. Q: “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” (c)
Q:
In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence...
Peter’s Corollary states:In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.
... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence...
“The combined Pull of several Patrons is the sum of their separate Pulls multiplied by the number of Patrons.” (Hull’s Theorem.) The multiplication effect occurs because the Patrons talk among themselves and constantly reinforce in one another their opinions of your merits, and their determination to do something for you. With a single Patron, you get none of this reinforcement effect. “Many a Patron makes a promotion.”...
Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull...
In any economic or political crisis, one thing is certain. Many learned experts will prescribe many different remedies.(c)
Q:
The Percussive Sublimation
The Lateral Arabesque
Peter’s Inversion
Hierarchal Exfoliation
Peter’s Bridge
Peter’s Pretty Pass
Peter’s Circumambulation
There’s no Patron like a new Patron!
Final Placement
The Alger Complex
the Pseudo-Achievement Syndrome
Peter’s Nuance
Hypercaninophobia (top-dog fear)
Summit Competence
Compulsive Incompetence
Abnormal Tabulology
Phonophilia
Papyrophobia
Papyromania
Fileophilia
Tabulatory Gigantism
Tabulophobia Privata
Auld Lang Syne Complex
Rigor Cartis (an abnormal interest in the construction of organization and flow charts, and a stubborn insistence upon routing every scrap of business in strict accordance with the lines and arrows of the chart, no matter what delays or losses may result)
Compulsive Alternation
Teeter-Totter Syndrome
The Downward, Upward and Outward Buckpasses
The John Q. Public Diversion
The Caesarian Transference.
Cachinatory Inertia
Structurophilia
Edifice Complex
Initial and Digital Codophilia
General Purpose Conversation
Side-Issue Specialization
Peter’s Placebo
Utter Irrelevance
Ephemeral Administrology
Convergent Specialization
Peter’s Parry
Creative Incompetence
Socrates Complex
Hierarchal Regression
(c) Delicious Terms!
Q:
I have not been protected from the Peter Principle. Recently a school of business administration invited me to give a lecture and then scheduled my appearance in no less than five different rooms at the same time. An association of industrial engineers and systems experts asked me to address their convention but misinformed me regarding the date, the time, and the place. Appliances I have purchased still fail to operate, or break down within thirty days, my car is returned from the service shop with mysterious defects, and the government continues to increase the number of regulations which influence my life, while it ensnares itself in bureaucratic red tape. (c)
Q:
My father loved The Peter Principle because it explained why life could be so maddening—and why everyone around you seems, or is doomed to become, incompetent. The people who ran the U.S. Navy and the shipyards didn’t intend to do such lousy work. They were simply victims of Dr. Peter’s immutable principle. They had been promoted inevitably, maddeningly, absurdly to their “level of incompetence.” Dr. Peter also taught my father not to expect the few competent bureaucrats and managers he encountered to stick around for long, as they would soon be promoted to a job that they were unable to perform properly. (c)
Q:
The root of the entire book, the condition of incompetence that Peter called “Final Placement Syndrome,” leads some to develop “Abnormal Tabulology” (an “unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk”). This pathology is manifested, for example, in “Tabulatory Gigantism” (an obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues). My father’s business was especially afflicted with the “Teeter-Totter Syndrome” (“a complete inability to make decisions”) and “Cachinatory Inertia” (“the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business”). (c)
Q:
The popular press occasionally writes about this theme, such as in Jared Sandberg’s 2007 Wall Street Journal piece on the virtues of “strategic incompetence.” Sandberg reports that a manager named Steve Crawley was assigned to organize an office picnic, but was eventually relieved of the job (which he didn’t want) by intentionally demonstrating deep confusion and incompetence. As Sandberg concludes, “Strategic incompetence isn’t about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one doesn’t want to do—without ever having to admit it.” (c)
Q:
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 flood plain 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 were not strong enough to withstand a good blow of wind.
I noted with interest that the indoor baseball stadium at Houston, Texas, was found on completion to be peculiarly ill-suited to baseball: on bright days, fielders could not see fly balls against the glare of the skylights. (c)
Q:
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.” (c)
Q:
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 till late in 1943. (c)
Q:
In the same war, the Australian commander of a hospital ship checked the vessel’s water tanks after a refit and found them painted inside with red lead. It would have poisoned every man aboard. (c)
Q:
I am no longer amazed to observe that a government-employed marriage counselor is a homosexual. (c) Uh-huh. And I knw of a real textbook on family life recently compiled by a nun. One can only hope she's very knowledgeable of the subject.
Q:
I recently ordered six hundred square feet of fiber glass insulation for a cottage I am renovating. I stood over the clerk at the order desk to make sure she got the quantity right. In vain! The building supply firm billed me for seven hundred square feet, and delivered nine hundred square feet! (c)
Q:
I receive mail from a large university. Fifteen months ago I changed my address. I sent the usual notice to the university: 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 in their records, dictated the new address and watched a secretary take it 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, had been receiving my mail from the university. She herself has just moved again, and my mail from the university has now started going to her new address! (c)
Q:
A multitude of different explanations is as bad as no explanation at all. (c)
Q:
We see indecisive politicians posing as resolute statesmen and the “authoritative source” who blames his misinformation on “situational imponderables.” Limitless are the public servants who are indolent and insolent; military commanders whose behavioral timidity belies their dreadnaught rhetoric, and governors whose innate servility prevents their actually governing. In our sophistication, we virtually shrug aside the immoral cleric, corrupt judge, incoherent attorney, author who cannot write and 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.(c)
Q:
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 through a hierarchy, and of what happens to them after promotion. (c)
Q:
Probationer-teacher C. Cleary’s first teaching assignment was to a special class of retarded children. Although he had been warned that these children would not accomplish very much, he proceeded to teach them all he could. By the end of the year, many of Cleary’s retarded children scored better on standardized achievement tests of reading and arithmetic than did children in regular classes.
When Cleary received his dismissal notice he was told that he had grossly neglected the bead stringing, sandbox and other busy-work which were the things that retarded children should do. He had failed to make adequate use of the modelling clay, pegboards and finger paints specially provided by the Excelsior City Special Education Department. (c)
Q:
“Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.”(c)
Q:
Is Exfoliation for You?
Would you like to be somewhere else? Is your present placement in military service, school or business your choice or are you a victim of legal or family pressure? With planning and determination you, too, can make yourself either super-competent or super-incompetent. (c)
Q:
For instance, when asked to comment on how her son achieved his military prowess, George Washington’s mother answered, “I taught him to obey.” America was thus presented with one more non sequitur. How can the ability to lead depend on the ability to follow? You might as well say that the ability to float depends on the ability to sink. (c)
Q:
The situation is worse than it used to be when civil service and military appointments were made through favoritism. (c)
Q:
S. Freud seems to have come closer than any earlier writer to discovering the Peter Principle. Observing cases of neurosis, anxiety, psychosomatic illness, amnesia, and psychosis, he saw the painful prevalence of what we might call the Generalized Life-Incompetence Syndrome.
This life-incompetence naturally produces sharp feelings of frustration. Freud, a satirist at heart, chose to explain this frustration mainly in sexual terms such as penis envy, castration complex and Oedipus complex. In other words, he suggested that women were frustrated because they could not be men, men because they could not bear children, boys because they could not marry their mothers and so on...
Always looking within the patient, he became famous on the strength of his theory that man is unconscious of his own motivations, does not understand his own feelings and so cannot hope to relieve his own frustrations. The theory was unassailable, because nobody could consciously and rationally argue about the nature and contents of his unconscious.
With a stroke of professional genius he invented psychoanalysis, whereby he said he could make patients conscious of their unconscious.
Then he went too far, psychoanalyzed himself and claimed to be conscious of his own unconscious. (Some critics now suggest that all he had ever accomplished was to make his patients aware of his own—Freud’s—unconscious.) In any event, by this procedure of self-psychoanalysis he kicked the ladder from under his own feet.
If Freud had understood hierarchiology, he would have shunned that last step, and would never have arrived at his level of incompetence.(c) This is wonderful! Dear old Freud might have been beatedn at his own game!
Q:
C. N. Parkinson, eminent social theorist, accurately observes and amusingly describes the phenomenon of staff accumulation in hierarchies. But he tries to explain what he calls the rising pyramid by supposing that senior employees are practicing the strategy of divide and conquer, that they are deliberately making the hierarchy inefficient as a means of self-aggrandizement.
This theory fails on the following grounds. First, it assumes intent or design on the part of persons in supervisory positions. My investigations show that many senior employees are incapable of formulating any effective plans, for division, conquest or any other purpose. (c) Love it!
Q:
2) A favorite recommendation of efficiency experts is the appointment of a co-ordinator between two incompetent officials or two unproductive departments. A popular fallacy among these experts and their clients is that “Incompetence co-ordinated equals competence.”(c)
Q:
Socrates was an incomparable teacher, but found his level of incompetence as a defense attorney. (c)
Q:
Many F.P.S. patients feel anxious because they know quite well that they are doing very little useful work. They are unlikely to follow any suggestion that they should do still less.(c)
Q:
The competent employee normally keeps on his desk just the books, papers and apparatus that he needs for his work. After final placement, an employee is likely to adopt some unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk. (c)
Q:
One teeter-totter victim in government service resolved his problem in an original manner. When he got a case that he could not decide, he would simply remove the file from the office at night and throw it away. (c) LoL!
Q:
Church committees, school trustees and foundation boards find themselves in the same complex situation. They see so much incompetence in the professions that they decide to invest in buildings rather than people and programs. As in other psychological complexes, this results in bizarre behaviour. (c)
Q:
I drew the inference that the hierarchy cannot trust a man who manages his finances so well that he does not rush to the bank and cash or deposit his pay check in order to cover his bills. Spellman, in short, had shown himself incompetent to behave as the typical employee is expected to behave; hence he had made himself ineligible for promotion. (c)
Q:
Refusal to pay one’s share of the firm’s or department’s Social Fund; refraining from drinking coffee at the official coffee break; bringing one’s own lunch to a job where everyone else eats out; persistent turning off of radiators and opening of windows; refusing contributions to collections for wedding and retirement gifts; a mosaic of stand-offish eccentricity (the Diogenes Complex) will create just the modicum of suspicion and distrust which disqualifies you for promotion. (c)

[Jan-Maat]

" In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" p22
"in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" (p24)
"work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence" (ibid)

This 1969 book is a prime exemplar of several trends in business writing. (i), the book whose central idea can be written on the back of a postcard (see above, unless your handwriting is very big) yet is spun out to in this case 157 pages of text illustrating and repeating the same, (ii), the best-seller. So we can say that the ideal business book says little over many pages and sells lots - less said, more sold perhaps, from which we may conclude, that the purchasers like to follow the herd and are looking for easy answers, perhaps they are believers in there being a silver bullet in regard to which the essays in The mythical man month are a good prophylactic. In which case Peter's book will be a blow, because its message is that in a hierarchy incompetence is inevitable and unavoidable - maybe this is one reason why some years ago business gurus gabbled about flat organisations resulting in huge chaotic spans of control.

I imagine most people can tell a Peter principle story or two, mine is about a former head of department, according to legend he was a prompt and proactive junior in the department, was prompted to a supervisory role in which he was distinctly average, but being less disliked than the other supervisor was promoted to head the department when there was a reorganisation. What astonished me was that whenever he had to present a paper to the board he would simply phone in sick. Even better this behaviour was accepted by his superiors as perfectly acceptable. I suppose he was a good boost to those with fragile self-esteems. When he left his superior mentioned that she felt he was good at his job because he was liked by his team - it was true that occasionally he would take us to the pub and buy us one drink each and then amuse himself by trying to throw cigarettes into his mouth, and us, by mostly missing his target, but equally he gave no technical lead other than not to confirm anything in writing ever, and swore he'd only make a round of tea in a leap year this an unpopular stance in a British office. The thing about the peter principle is that by dismissing or demoting an incompetent the persons who made the appointment are shown to have poor judgement for promoting an incompetent in the first place. Peter extends his argument to politics, for him logically the more senior the more likely to be incompetent.

Lasting message: sit back, take a deep breath, and anticipate problems.

[Kristi Siegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The other day, out of nowhere, one of my sons asked me, “What’s the Peter Principle?” I scrambled together something about people tending to get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. Then, of course, curiosity compelled me to find the book. And I did—quite a feat considering the number of books we own and the lack of any discernable organization. It was, as I remembered, a slim, black hardcover; it was also the 1969 edition, the year it was first published. Even if the book were a first edition—it doesn’t appear to be—its worth would be diminished. As usual, my husband marked and underlined the crap out of it.

My answer to my son was reasonably accurate. Early on, Peter & Hull provide the principle: “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." It was only afterward that I wondered why my son had asked the question. But it was too late; he was already out the door.

While much of the book is taken up with permutations on the original principle, the book is much more and pretty wise at that. I’d also forgotten the book includes wonderfully droll Victorian-looking black-and-white pictures. Intrigued, I found out the authors got permission from Punch to publish the pictures without their original captions.

But back to the wisdom. Most of us are competitive enough to view a promotion favorably, and perhaps accept a new position without enough reflection. I was pretty happy as a college teacher, but flattered when I received one promotion and then another. Now I’m mostly in administration and miserable. I’m not sure I would have accepted Peter & Hull’s advice had I remembered it pre-promotion: “Lasting happiness is obtainable only by avoiding the ultimate promotion, by choosing at a certain point in one’s progress, to abandon one-upmanship…” Hmmm…

The book is also wickedly funny. Consider this section on the distinction between Pseudo-Achievement Syndrome and Final Placement Syndrome. They provide a useful selection of choices based on the question, “‘Is the person accomplishing any useful work?’ If the answer is:

a) ‘YES’ – he has not reached Final Placement Syndrome and therefore exhibits only the Pseudo-Achievement Syndrome.
b) ‘NO’ – he has reached his final level of incompetence, and therefore exhibits the Final Placement Syndrome.
c) DON’T KNOW – you have reached your level of incompetence. Examine yourself for symptoms at once!”

Answer “c” cracked me up.

While the book lapses into occasional cutseyness (a new word, and don’t you dare refudiate it!) and the self-evident, I’m thinking employers should re-read it now and then and take a look around.

The last chapter, “Creative Incompetence” was my personal favorite. Here, Peter & Hull explain how to avoid getting promoted by practicing a bit of harmless incompetence such as picking up rubber bands and paper clips out of the wastebasket in a show of “niggling, officious economy” or occasionally parking your car in the place reserved for the company president.

A light read that provokes more thought than you’d imagine.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thankfully, I got fired from my company before I reached my level of incompetence.

[Elyse · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Peter Principle: Everyone in a hierarchy will inevitably rise to his or her level of incompetence.

Let me explain: Say there is a really good and reliable car mechanic. The shop owners realize this and promote him to shop foreman. But the mechanic has no experience or talent for scheduling, budgets, and Human Relations. He and the mechanics under him become miserable and stressed because of this incompetence.

I remember reading this book during high school. Naturally I didn't have much experience to compare it to since I was merely a part-time bakery clerk with only one other clerk and the two owners. I did experience nepotism though. (The other clerk was a sister of the owner and was allowed to take a gallon of ice cream home with our free baked goods. Being a stupid skinny kid I thought this was SO unfair and would grumble under my breath about the ice cream. I got free baked goods. Who looks FREE baked goods in the mouth?!)

This book has withstood the test of time. It was published in 1969. And it is funny. Americans - Do you remember when Steve Colbert "anchored" a night show years ago and pretended to be a complete rightwing a-hole? Peter is writing in the same spirit.

Now that I am retired from the working world I see few flaws in the Peter Principle. Things haven't changed much. Peter was a bit sexist at times but social justice for women was in the fledgling stage when he wrote this. I forgive him.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was (mostly) a cute and charming read with some interesting insights into the inefficiency you often encounter among businesses and individual workers. Basically, Peter says, if workers do well (and especially if they have "pull"), they will keep being promoted until they reach a point where they can no longer do their job well. But once that happens, they usually won't be demoted unless they're exceptionally incompetent. Rather, they will remain in their positions. To compensate for their incompetence, additional workers may be brought in to help them, while their title may be redefined so that they can continue being glibly inefficient while others pick up their slack.

Though I sometimes felt Peter was overstating his case, many points and examples resonated with my experience. I thought his point about varying definitions of competence was particularly well-taken, i.e., to a boss, competence is less about being good at what you do and more about being a worker who maintains the organization's hierarchy. In fact, being too good at what you do can pose a threat to the organization's hierarchy and result in your dismissal. Basically, we're all kind of doomed to mediocrity and incompetence, both in our own careers and as individuals who have to deal with workers in other businesses. I think it's a bit of an overstatement, but to the extent that it's true it's pretty depressing when you think about it. Thankfully, some of the book's humor keeps you from getting too depressed about it.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first encountered this book in the early 70s when my father thought it was hilarious, but I never bothered to read it until it was mentioned by someone on Fark.com as a funny book. It was funny, but mostly in a repetitive and finally in a melancholy way. The writer points out that instead of striving for promotions that cannot ultimately bring us any happiness but only frustration (and explains how his principle can be applied to the human race as a whole—a bunch of hopeless self-promoters), we should instead concentrate on doing good work. A very Christian (not in the evangelical or fundamentalist sense, but only in the “how to live your life well” sense) and a very Taoist notion.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long before Dilbert, there was The Peter Principle.

I hear it referenced every so often, though most quoting it have never actually read it. I decided to at least remedy that for myself.

Published in 1969, it still remains shockingly accurate. Despite it's exaggerated and humorous approach, it's also sobering and serious when you can immediately think of *exact* work scenarios that match his examples.

Definitely a classic. Like the best of Dilbert, prepare to cringe with it's accuracy - and perhaps learn how to avoid the pitfalls described.

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Everyone rises to their own level of incompetence." Knowing this kept me from going completely insane in the world of banking in the 1980's.

[Brok3n · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny because it's true

It was 1969, and I was a high school student when the sound of The Peter Principle was heard in the land. I remember hearing the adults in my life talking about it. What is The Peter Principle? It's a simple idea intended to explain why nothing works the way it should.

You get a job in some organization (could be a company, could be a public school, could be a university -- doesn't matter), and you try to do your job competently. If you succeed, you are promoted to a new position, where your job is different. Specifically, it is not the job in which you just demonstrated competence. Once again, you try to do your job. Two things can happen. One, you are competent, and you get promoted again. Two, you are incompetent, and you don't get promoted -- you remain in the job you are unable to perform competently. (You might think you would be fired or demoted, but in point of fact those outcomes are very rare for ordinary incompetence.) Thus, The Peter Principle (which author Laurence J. Peter named after himself):

In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence

Thus, in a typical organization, every long-time employee is working at a job at that he/she is not competent to fill. Who, if anyone, does the actual work?

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

As a high school student I heard the gist of all this. I did not, however read the book until some years later. I believe I was a grad student at Stanford when I got the book out of the library.

I was surprised to find that The Peter Principle was meant to be funny. (And it is! -- not laugh-out-loud funny, but definitely chuckle-under-your-breath funny.) Now you may ask, "How could you possibly have believed that such an idea was serious?" Two answers: First, I have rather a blind spot in this regard. Second, if you ask that question, you are probably one of those blessed innocents who have not read very many books about business management. The popular business management literature is full of seriously-intended books based on ideas that are less well thought-out and less insightful than The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle is a parody of this literature.

That said, Peter, although not serious, is not entirely wrong. In fact, if you have done time in a big organization, you have probably seen The Peter Principle in action -- I certainly have. The Peter Principle is funny because it's true. (It's also quite short -- what more could you ask for?)

Blog review.

[Don Stanton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Old thinking from an old era and limited by scope and diminished by a time and the resiliency of human nature.
An excellent book to read outdated series of motivation and success, how to name it today I would call it "Puff the Magic Peter Principle"
I have seen too many people in my life who excelled beyond on themselves, in spite of themselves, against all odds of success.
The major 2 things missing from the Peter Principle all are the to determination of self worth and the lack of the human soul to see beyond itself. A best seller in its day it appealed to two directional thinkers and managers like.
A good book to read if you're stuck in the sixty's.

[Kelly Schuknecht · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea of the Peter Principle is that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." When people tend to do their job well, they are eligible for promotion and that cycle continues until they are promoted into a role for which they are incompetent to perform the duties. At that point they have reached their "final placement." They are no longer eligible for further promotions because they have reached their level of incompetence.

According to Dr. Peter, "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." The many employees who may never realize they have reached their final placement utilize a number of the techniques to stay happily "busy" without producing anything:

1. Perpetual Preparation - confirming the need for the action, studying alternative methods, obtaining expert advise, having the mentality of "first things first."
2. Side Issue Specialization - "Look after the molehills and the mountains will look after themselves."
3. Image Replaces Performance - "an ounce of image is like a pound of performance."
4. Utter Irrelevance - participating in various committees, boards and other meetings and rarely being in their own office performing a job.
5. Ephemeral Administrology - serving many temporary appointments, as a substitution.
6. Convergent Specialization - becoming extremely specialized in something of little significance.

We all know people who engage the above techniques to get through their work day without really doing their job, right? Perhaps ignorance is bliss.

I honestly couldn't put this book down. It was just so funny. The fact that it was written in 1969 added another level of humor as Dr. Peter briefly discussed computers and the incompetence of housewives. For example: "'Woman's work is never done' is a sad commentary on the high proportion of women who reach their level of incompetence as housewives."

The Peter Principle is light and entertaining, but is also very relevant. I would recommend this book for anyone in a position of management.

[Josiah DeGraaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a hard time completely knowing what to make of this book and Peter's writing style, but it was a humorous look at some of the very real problems that can exist in a business, and made me think more about key problems that ought to be addressed. The book doesn't give much advice on how to fix or avoid them. But it's memorable in what it points out.

[Ashley D · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 Stars

This book wasn't bad but my head just got more confused near the end of the book. Can't believe my first book in 2025 is an English class book :(

[Mikhail Kalashnikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Принцип Питера давно стал фольклором: «каждый работник продвигается по служебной лестнице до тех пор, пока не достигнет своего уровня некомпетентности».

Я ожидал, что книга будет смешной, иногда пугающей точностью своей сатиры. Психологические наблюдения местами очень тонкие; там есть целая глава о симптомах того, как люди справляются с работой, для которой некомпетентны (например, у них появляются какие-то особые способы оформлять рабочий стол).

Но не ожидал того, что доктор Питер выходит в ней на обобщения про весь мир целиком, предлагая человечеству вместо того, чтобы бежать куда-то к дальним границам прогресса, заняться наконец улучшениями того, что находится прямо под носом. Видимо, в 60-е все думали о технологическом прогрессе и судьбах мира. Фраза «мы достигли такого прогресса, что даже не можем с уверенностью говорить о перспективах выживания человечества» выглядит афоризмом не хуже, чем изначальный закон Питера.


Цитаты:

«Macbeth, a successful military commander, became an incompetent king. A. Hitler, a consummate politician, found his level of incompetence as a generalissimo. Socrates was an incomparable teacher, but found his level of incompetence as a defense attorney.»

«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.”»

«Always do one thing less than you think you can do.» B. M. BARUCH

«We have made so much progress that we cannot even speak with confidence about the prospect of human survival.»

«I have observed that these summit competents are often not satisfied to remain in their position of competence. They cannot rise to a position of incompetence—they are already at the top—so they have a strong tendency to sidestep into another hierarchy—say from the army into industry, from politics into education, from show business into politics and so on—and reach, in the new environment, that level of incompetence which they could not find in the old. »

«The printing press, radio, television have in turn expanded man’s power to propagate and perpetuate his incompetence. Now comes the computer.»

«Escalation of effort in any other field produces comparable results. Under the pressure to get more engineers, scientists, priests, teachers, automobiles, apples, spacemen or what have you, and to get them faster, the standards of acceptance necessarily sink.»

«Promotion in the travel-hierarchy would be expected to advance man from earth traveller to space traveller. But this would be escalation for its own sake. Man has no need to explore the moon, Mars or Venus in person. He has already sent radar, TV and photographic instruments which transmit vivid descriptionsof these heavenly bodies. The reports suggest that they are inhospitable places.

Man would be better off without the promotion to space traveller. But, as we have seen, it is no easy thing to refuse a promotion. The safe, pleasant, effective way is to seem not to deserve it.

<...>

The net result? An enormous store of man-hours, of creativity, of enthusiasm, would be set free for constructive purposes.

We might, for instance, develop safe, com fortable, efficient rapid-transit systems for our major cities. (They would cost less than moonships and serve more people.)

We might tap power sources (e.g., generator plants powered by smokeless trash burners) which would not pollute the atmosphere. Thus we would contribute to the better health of our people, the beautification of our scenery and the better visibility of that more beautiful scenery.

We might improve the quality and safety of our automobiles, landscape our freeways, highways and avenues, and so restore some measure of safety and pleasure to surface travel».

[K.A. Ashcomb]

I can't rate this book. The concept of the Peter Principle is brilliant. The idea that we all rise to our level of incompetence in hierarchies has merit. It might explain a lot about our failures in politics, schools, bureaus, and businesses, and international relations. Laurence J. Peter shows how this happens with anecdotes and through caricature employees. And I think he is right to some extent. But when it comes to the explanation and the research. It is weak; only observations of things that prove his concept and not beyond that. Also, there was one thing, which made me want to throw the book out, the outdated views about humans and how we should be and want to be. Okay, this is a humorous book and should be taken as such. Still, I truly couldn't tell if he meant seriously that a housewife had risen to her level of incompetence when she was making herself busy outside the house with hobbies and other tasks and ignoring her primary job, which is to take care of her husband and children. First, he ignores the impact environment, situations, and our personal sense of meaning has on our behavior, needs, and wants (of the housewife and of the others he had used as examples.) Secondly, that is just plain wrong to think of a housewife and her dynamic relationship with her family and life through a level of incompetence as if there could be some objective level of competence here. I might be mistaken and didn't understand that the writer was taking a jab at the situation and customs of old hierarchies. And okay, I have to understand that this book was written in the sixties, so the roles he was accustomed were different to some extent. So here I am, confused about the book. It has a point, and considering our public affairs through people rising to their level of incompetence is great exercise, but to consider all human interactions and situations even in hierarchies through the Peter principle is like using a hammer when you actually need to screw something. That said, you should read this book.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a naughty and fascinating book. It is of its time - published in 1969. There is a discussion of 'housewives' and 'homosexuals.' Therefore, be prepared for a bit of 1960s throwback/flashback.

But this book offers an answer - a provocative arc of an argument - to a key question.

Why are incompetent people promoted? Why are we led by incompetent people in schools, universities, public and private sectors - and government?

This book provides the answer: the Peter Principle. Employees are promoted from positions of competence to incompetence. Therefore, at the peak of our organizational power, the person is - actually - incompetent.

Wow. Yep. Changes our view of the world, somewhat.

This book attempted to configure a "new science": Hierarchiology.

Therefore The Peter Principle is not only about promoting from competence to incompetence, but understanding the structure of an organization. So promotions emerge because a superior agrees to this promotion. The superior is incompetent, and then proceeds to surround themselves with incompetence.

Indeed, the book confirms how, “the brilliant, productive worker ... not only wins no promotion, but is even dismissed from his post." The reason is that, “in most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence."

Put another way, "Ordinary incompetence" leads to promotion.

While there may be many critiques of this argument, it provides a strategy for thinking about organizational culture. My current work is investigating Jean Baudrillard's "double refusal." That is, the refusal to lead and the refusal to be led. Incompetent leaders who no one follows. The Peter Principle offers a provocative theory to continue this work.

Just a reminder - the book is over 50 years old. The language is confronting. But the argument is worth considering.

[Tadas Talaikis · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence". Employees are promoted to positions in which they are no longer competent, and there they remain.

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

“The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to where they can do the least damage: management.”

“Hierarchical organizations tend to be become oligarchic in their decision making – meaning that power is concentrated in
a few hands.”

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” [Parkinson, 1955]

"1. An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.
2. Officials make work for each other.”

Damn, now I know the science behind why there is an idiot on every corner :-D

[C.M. Halstead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly put. Once you see the principle in daily life many things come clear with bosses, co-workers, and the parenting we receive. This forces many decisions, stay, leave, accept them as they are. Work for someone else. Educate myself more. The list goes on.

Everyone rises to a level of incompetence, its what we do there that defines us.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN extremely enlightening, extremely depressing book. Once you read it, it's all too easy to see it at work in every facet of western society, including the financial crisis of 2008-9.

Every person in getting a management or administration degree ought to be required to read this.

[Ignacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Realmente un muy agradable libro que abre los ojos al mundo en el que seguimos estando. A pesar de su antigüedad sigue estando vigente lo que sugiere. Fórmulas sencillas que pueden ser de gran utilidad tanto en la vida profesional y personal.

[Jan Ruusuvuori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tragically, sarcastically, entertainingly accurate

[Jake Abrams · Rating 1 out of 5]

From here on out I swear to stop wasting my time reading stupid crap such as this.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Dr. Laurence Peter was born in Vancouver, Canada during the year of 1919, the world was not prepared for his revolutionary doctrine. Today we suffer the consequences because few have heeded his warning, we all think we are the exception to his principle. I’m not talking about a prophet or spiritualist, I’m talking about one of the most brilliant analysts of modern society.

With this simple phrase on p.15 of my edition of The Peter Principle he explained nearly every problem the human species has faced as we have entered increasingly complex organizations in the development of our civilization,

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence given enough time and enough levels in the hierarchy

And the more I’ve thought about it, internalized it, experienced corporate hierarchy… the more I’ve realized that it explains everything.

A housing bubble caused by artificially low inflation rates? Some blame Greenspan but the reality is that he was just serving above his level of competence. It makes sense. America’s colony in Iraq flubbed? Some blame Bush or his subordinates but the reality was that they were serving above their level of competence. We all do from time to time. We all think we are the exception.

As acquaintances enter the work force and through my own witness to the mindset of the low level employee, everyone seems to be focused primarily on ascending to the higher levels. Why? I think it is what we do as a species. It is our fate. I don’t mean to dissuade blame from individuals, removing responsibility from personal action. I only intened to explain that we shouldn’t expect success, we should expect blindingly stupid failure and then be pleasantly surprised when things aren’t flubbed up. That’s not being cynical or “realist”. It is just recognizing human nature. Incompetence knows no boundaries of time or place.

The Peter Principle when published in 1969 raised a storm because many did not want to accept that they existed at their level of incompetence. Business people didn’t take it seriously because it was written tounge-in-cheek with full blown laugh out loud moments. Far different from the bland, dry language they were used to while obtaining their MBAs. I thoroughly enjoyed the book because it is an opportune time for me to examine if I have already achieved my level of incompetence.

While the explanations of the Principle could easily be redundant… (the plot is summarized at the beginning as Dr. Peter states the principle) this book isn’t redundant, like a Dilbert cartoon with some acute wisdom. Dr. Peter describes, through various case studies and examples, that every perceived exception to the Principle isn’t really an exception at all. Complex hierarchies will see its members achieve the ominous final placement. Someday I too can reach this level.I can get stressed out while making poor decisions. I too can wear the badge of administrative “success”: the ulcer.

This might all seem a bit pessimistic. A little defeatist. But not at all. The solution is to focus our species on moving forward instead of upwards. We see our cohorts in groups struggling for status on a, “treadmill to oblivion.” But Dr. Peter clearly states that we can rescue ourselves by seeing where this unmindful escalation is leading us. If we focus on the quality of our situation we can achieve previously ignored success without obtaining a literal or figurative promotion.

By applying this principle to our everyday experience, we witness many byproducts. For example, the applied Peter Principle approximates that employees in a hierarchy, “do not truly object to incompetence, they merely gossip about incompetence to mask their envy of employees who have pull.” … with pull being the ability to develop a relationship with someone above you in the hierarchy who can pull you up with them. How poignant. We decry good ‘ol boy networks but rarely focus on the one thing that could break them up, changing our focus from output to input. I can put in a 40-50 hour work week but would I be more productive if I worked 30-35 hours? We may never know because a full-time job insists that I work 40-50 crushing and life imbalancing hours. Society has focused on input in this situation. Can we think of a better solution to this situation? I’ll apply Peter’s Bridge to this question: if you can’t think of a better solution you have already reached your level of incompetence.

Although the observations made in the Peter Principle are obviously applicable to corporate environments, Laurence Peter made some other candid observations of society in these pages. Such as, exposing our modern caste system on p.64 and p.83 of the 2009 edition:

…we have a class system, it is based not on birth but on the prestige of the university one has attended. The graduate of an obscure college does not have the same opportunity for promotion… but as college degrees become the prerequisite for more jobs, soon everyone will have access to his or her level of incompetence.

…with incompetent handling, the test system is only a disguised form of random placement. The purpose of testing is to place the employee as soon as possible in a job which will utilize the highest competence level on his profile. Obviously, any promotion will be to an area of less competence.

Brilliant stuff that has played out over the last 30+ years just as Dr. Peter predicted.

Lasting happiness can only be obtained by avoiding the ultimate promotion, by choosing at a certain point in one’s progression to abandon one-upsmanship and to practice staticsmanship. Don’t ascend, celebrate your competency. Thwart promotion with creative incompetence. Demonstrate to your superiors that you aren’t quite material for the next level. If you are a business: don’t expand your markets globally so that you become too big to fail, celebrate your contribution to the community with sustained profits. If you are a species: don’t try to conquer space, pay attention to everything you can fix on your home planet.

The Principle is, on the surface, a critique against bloated governments and corporations but in actuality it is a deeper critique of society, exemplified in Chapter 15: The Darwinian Extension. Humans have ascended to the top of the Earth’s species hierarchy but questions whether our cleverness allow new levels of success or impending incompetent failures.

Hope is little alluded to. As diplomas and degrees are losing their values as measures of competence. The modern certificate now proves that the recipient was competent to endure a certain number of schooling. Our only measure of academic achievement has lost all value. Additionally, we’ve tried to outsource intelligence to machines, that we are incompetent to operate. In summary,

…those who achieve their levels of incompetence could be kept harmlessly busy, happy and healthy. This change would set productive work free for the millions of people pleasantly employed in looking after the health and repairng the blunders of all those incompetents. The net result? An enormous store of man-hours, of creativity, of enthusiiasm would be set free for constructive purposes. We might… develop safe… efficient rapid-transit system for out major cities. We might tap power sources… which would not pollute the atmosphere. We might improve the quality and safety of our automobiles, landscape our freeqays … and restore some measure of safety and pleasure to surface travel. We might learn to return to our farm lands organic products that would enrich without poisoning the soil.

In summary: we can choose life-quality-improvement in place of mindless promotion. And on a larger scale we can choose prosperity instead of growth.

I hope we embrace the message of The Peter Principle as we begin to re-organize in the face of peak oil, scarce energy and monetary system alternatives.

[Tzu-Hsi Yen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter is truly a talented social observer and pattern finder. He collected many interesting stories in companies, schools, and government. He coined many funny names about hierarchical dynamics “patterns”. It’s obvious when you read the description of patterns. However, it’s hard to summarize that good by yourself. I truly hope that I can do that as well.

[Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the principle that employees are promoted to positions of increasing complexity and responsibility until they can no longer perform their jobs, at which point they remain indefinitely in the position at which they are incompetent, Peter concludes: "Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." He also observes that employees at both extreme ends of the competence bell curve are not allowed to live. "Ordinary incompetence, as we have seen, is no cause for dismissal: it is simply a bar to promotion. Super-competence often leads to dismissal, because it disrupts the hierarchy, and thereby violates the first commandment of hierarchal life: the hierarchy must be preserved."

Here is a nice post-Freudian analysis:

"S. Freud seems to have come closer than any earlier writer to discovering the Peter Principle. Observing cases of neurosis, anxiety, psychosomatic illness, amnesia, and psychosis, he saw the painful prevalence of what we might call the Generalized Life-Incompetence Syndrome.

This life-incompetence naturally produces sharp feelings of frustration. Freud, a satirist at heart, chose to explain this frustration mainly in sexual terms such as penis envy, castration complex and Oedipus complex. In other words, he suggested that women were frustrated because they could not be men, men because they could not bear children, boys because they could not marry their mothers and so on.

But Freud missed the point in thinking that frustration comes from the longing for a change to a more desirable position (man, father, mother’s husband, father’s wife, etc.), in other words, a longing for a promotion! Hierarchiology now shows us, of course, that frustration occurs as a result of promotion.

This oversight of Freud’s occurred because of his extremely introspective nature: he persisted in studying what was going on (or what he imagined was going on) inside his patients. Hierarchiology, on the other hand, studies what is going on outside the patient, studies the social order in which man operates, and therefore realistically explain man’s function in that order."

It is always important to distinguish between the private understanding of oneself and how one functions in the world as a social/political/moral being. Compare Magill's Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say:

“Plentiful commentary on the conscience stretches back to the Indian Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita, Buddhist texts, and to the concept of taqwa, in Islam, but Western reformers would have been reading ancient Greek and Latin texts—newly discovered during the Renaissance—that spoke of the Greek notion of συνέδρτον, or sundeidesis: “to know with something else,” or “to know something about one’s self.” ... St. Thomas Aquinas regarded the conscience as “reason attempting to make right decisions” with the help of synderesis, a Latin word designating an echo of awareness of the absolute good implanted by God but corrupted by society and tradition.” (Magill, Sincerity, p. 26)

May we all find the light of our inner competence and eschew the socially constructed scenarios wherein we perform incompetently.

[Sean Goh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being written nearly 50 years ago, the accuracy of Peter's skewering managerial observations is still on point. Disregard the blatant sexism ('women' seems to appear in the same sentence as 'housewife' 100% of the time).
The entire chapter 14 is hilarious (strategic incompetence), and you'll never know if people are actually faking it (or are they?).
___
Incompetence knows no barrier of time or place. One of the reasons why so many employees are incompetent is that the skills required to get a job often have nothing to do with what is required to do the job itself.

Strategic incompetence isn't about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one doesn't want to do - without ever having to admit it.

In every hierarchy, the cream rises until it sours.

The lateral arabesque: When an incompetent employee is given a new and longer title and moved to an office in a remate part of the building (damage control)

It is the custom to ornament every scientific work with a bibliography, a list of earlier books on the same subject. The aim may be to test the reader's competence by laying out for him an awe-inspiring course of reading; it may be to prove the author's competenceby showing the mountain of dross he has sifted through to win one nugget of truth.

A favourite recommendation of efficiency experts is the appointment of a co-ordinator between two incompetent officials or two unproductive departments. A popular fallacy among these experts and their clients is that "Incompetence co-ordinated equals competence".

Many men feel that there is a certain aura of competence associated with heavy indulgence in bodily pleasures. It is reflected in such phrases as "He has a wonderful appetite," "He's a great ladies' man," and "He can hold his liquor."

Peter's Prognosis: Spend sufficient time in confirming the need, and the need will disappear.

[Remo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Igual que la Ley de Murphy, este libro cuenta medio en serio medio en broma muchas cosas que son serias del todo. El principio de Peter es sencillo de enunciar: En una jerarquía, todo empleado tiende a ascender hasta su nivel de incompetencia. El mecánico brillante puede ascender a jefe de mecánicos y ser una máquina, luego jefe de taller y tener algún punto flojo y luego gerente y ser un auténtico desastre. A partir de ahí no ascenderá más. Hemos conseguido convertir un gran jefe de mecánicos en un gerente mediocre.
El corolario del principio de Peter es fácil de deducir: Tarde o temprano, todo puesto termina siendo ocupado por un incompetente.
Hay un montón de ingenio y esfuerzo dedicado a estas dos frases, así como estudio de la realidad de las empresas "tradicionales" que conviven y aceptan que esto tenga que pasar en lugar de cambiar la manera en que eligen a las personas. Hay muchos nombres divertidos para cosas (cuando asciendes a alguien para que deje de bloquear un puesto que necesitas lo llama la sublimación percuciente, entre otras muchas observaciones hilarantes). Al final, no sabes si es un libro de humor o si realmente el autor opina seriamente que esto es un problema y simplemente tiene buena mano para elegir nombres descacharrantes. En cualquier caso es una lectura muy llevadera e instructiva.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for anyone who wants to remain happy in their job and in the society & working environment he’s in.
Even though written many decades ago, still perfectly applies to today’s (governmental, business, educational, national institutional etc) systems!!
It raises awareness towards oneself and own level of (in)competence as well as the actors in one’s workplace (and he offers multiple examples from different working domains) providing with tips and tricks in order to survive, elude, evade, avoid falling into the “trap” of the system which proves that each and every one of us will at a certain point in life reach his/her level of incompetence.
Practical and full of wisdom!