I always laughed at the idea of a “Peter Principle”.
I don’t deny it exists so much as that it is inevitable to human skill and ability. As you advance, the challenges and necessary skills needed to master the work skyrocket or fail to apply. So as difficulty level rises with each promotion, people have to increase their skills. Not everybody can do that.
Trying to find the cream to rise to the top is not easy. You are trying to find people who have the potential to develop the skills to function competently at new challenges. Those people are few and far between. It is not easy to find them from the original pool of candidates that all have great skills for their current level before promoting.
I think it is just human nature, the bell curve of human skills and abilities, and the difficulty at predicting future returns from past performance.
I don’t have any problem with promoting people who then fail at their new job. I just wish we had a way in our culture to let them return to their old jobs they mastered and try a replacement candidate without labelling them a failure. There shouldn’t be any ego or insult to finding you can’t do the job a higher level, and there should be a way to gracefully return to your previous lower job where you excelled, without a stigma attached to it.
When being promoted from a ‘field’ position to Management, it is critical that you inherit the power to immediately confirm those you are about to manage, including the right to terminate. You are only as good as the people you work “with”, no those who work “for” you. Therefore, you want to work “with’ those who know the job. Like any decent General, it is best to be in the ‘field’ with your troops.
BeGood/Ross
I had two government bosses who were real peters. Both minorities. One was a Yankee who spoke Ebonics. You could tell if he’d dictated a report - straight jive talk. I constantly had to explain what simple common American words meant.
The other one was a muzzy straight out of the ME who hated women, left handed folk, etc. And had an IQ of maybe 80 on a good day. I ended up quiting due to that monster.