The Peter Principle

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence," Dr Laurence Peter, 1919-90, Canadian academic, from the 1969 book, The Peter Principle, written by Dr Peter and Raymond Hull - Peter was the academic, Hull the writer.

This is not meant to be a cheap stab at people, but a stab at the organisations people tend to make to establish 'order'. As I see it people do good work, burn out, get promoted then construct ivory towers so that people 'under' them cannot see the quality of their 'work'.

So why do these static hierarchies exist? Some ideas:

1. As people get older they loose interest in what they do but cannot be paid less
2. There is some primitive desire to dominate and be dominated
3. Fresh ideas must be suppressed, too many would become unmanageable (now there's a circular argument)

Well this list could go on forever, indeed it could have to end up becoming a treatise on the human condition. I like the ideas Pirsig put forward with his discussion of Quality. I see this relating to the topic of management because in the end hierarchies exist because we're still living the patterns of our ancient past. We are organised by social not intellectual considerations. Its like watching chimps scratching, fighting, mating, preening, displaying. Of course there is a certain attractiveness to the noble savage, the innocence of instinctual living, but we have nuclear bombs now...

It always amazes me how short human history is. Was it really only 150 000 years ago that we emerged as a species? Was it only 9000 years ago that we started 'writing'. Its incredible, I knew my great-grandmother fairly well, I could talk to her about her great-grandmother, and the stories she'd been told about her great grand-mother. That could have been a conversation that took place only 20 years ago about stories from 9 generations ago, so perhaps 200 years in the past. That's the end of the 17th century!

Nevertheless we are carrying a lot of baggage. In the 17th century people had huge families, disease was rife, medicine primitive, and we were 'tied' to the land. The point being, that if we get past the next major hurdles, namely energy scarcity, over-population, and pollution then we stand a good chance of getting beyond our lament to medieval society, and might be able to move onto a way of living that would keep the trekkies happy :-)

Footnote:

Of course there are some inspirational people who can provide leadership that helps the people around them. What do we do with these people though, put them in an institutional hierarchy?