![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 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”). This pathology is manifested, for example, in “Tabulatory Gigantism” (an obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues). 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”). 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. They had been promoted inevitably, maddeningly, absurdly to their “level of incompetence.” Dr. Navy and the shipyards didn’t intend to do such lousy work. 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. 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. 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. 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. ![]() I have not been protected from the Peter Principle. The Downward, Upward and Outward Buckpasses 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) Many learned experts will prescribe many different remedies.(c) In any economic or political crisis, one thing is certain. Never stand when you can sit never walk when you can ride never Push when you can Pull. With a single Patron, you get none of this reinforcement effect. “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. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their 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. In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence. Q: “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” (c) 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. Imagine my smiles when, in 2003, my position was automatically upgraded to middle management level!Īnd in the end my Peterless recalcitrance was blessed. So, for the next 15 years until my pension kicked in, I never coveted a larger salary. The abusive part came from my ire - for I was at the time SURROUNDED by managers who had successfully outlived their competence.Īnd in my new dungeon of a workplace I VOWED that I would never again seek promotion! "Everyone - if they wish it - is promoted BEYOND THE LEVEL OF HIS OR HER COMPETENCE.'Īnd that explains the headaches, sloughs and quagmires of modern offices pretty well, don't it?Īnd I remembered it in 1991, when I was sternly treated and peremptorily transferred to a Badass Slough of an Office for questioning authority abusively. I LOVED it.Īnd its moral guided me through the storm clouds of the following 60 years of my life! 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. ![]()
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