2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
Surely you at least once thought that everyone around you did not understand anything in their work. Quite possibly the way it is.
Despite the fact that we live in an age of continuous progress, things constantly go wrong. Every now and then we are faced with incompetence: long lines, useless pieces of paper, delayed flights, poor Wi-Fi. In 1969, Canadian educator Laurence J. Peter explained why our ambitions and achievements do not solve the problem of incompetence, but, on the contrary, exacerbate it.
With the Industrial Revolution, factories appeared, and with them hierarchies and career ladders. And our ambitions got a new way out - promotion. Imagine that you are a young, ambitious person taking a job for the first time. You try, perform well, and get promoted. Gradually, you move up the career ladder higher and higher.
However, such a system is not ideal. You get promoted based on how you performed in your previous position, but that doesn't mean you'll be good in your new one. In the end, you get a position that you don't understand, that is, you reach your level of incompetence. They can't raise you further, but they can't lower you either. This is the Peter Principle.
Over time, every position in the organization is filled by an incompetent person.
And this affects all areas: schools, hospitals, factories, banks, police. Do you think how is anything done at all? It's just that the work is done by those who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. But one cannot get rid of hierarchies: they are at the heart of the structure of our society.
Peter saw feigned incompetence as the solution. You need to pretend that you have already reached your level of incompetence. Sounds absurd. That is, the only way to avoid getting stuck in a position you don't understand is to pretend you don't understand anything about your current position.
The Peter Principle may sound like a joke, but it has quite tangible implications in the real world. It is often the cause of flight delays, internet interruptions and oil spills. How many more mistakes like this will happen? If you continue in the same spirit, all of humanity can reach their level of incompetence.
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