The Peter Principle: In Every Hierarchy The Cream Rises Until It Sours

Perhaps you’re harboring doubts about the Peter Principle, as you can recall several cases where it didn’t apply in your own workplace. If someone is promoted even though he obviously reached his level of incompetence, this must be an exception to the rule, right?

Nope. That’s called a pseudo-promotion.

Pseudo-promotions are just sideways shifts, leaving employees in the same place in the food chain with no real increase in power. Percussive Sublimation is what happens when someone who is already at their level of incompetence receives a promotion in another division.

A Lateral Arabesque promotes someone incompetent by offering them a shiny new job title. Take a certain Mr. Schmidt, who is now an incompetent Senior Facility Manager, even though he did the exact same job as a maintenance man. The larger the organization, the more Lateral Arabesques you’ll find.

When it seems impossible that someone so incompetent can be promoted, it might be Peter’s Inversion: a nurse wakes you up to remind you to take your sleeping pill; though the goal is for you to sleep, her reminding you was more important to her.

This may seem counter-intuitive, but it isn’t. Competence is both relative and subjective, as it’s something usually determined by your superior. If a rule enjoins nurses to remind every patient of his pills, the nurse followed the rules to perfection. These non-exceptions show that the Peter Principle exists in any organization with a hierarchy.