The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

by Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990) and Raymond Hull (1919-1985)

For anyone who is frustrated with the dysfunction of a bureaucracy, this satirical study of hierarchiology—the social science of hierarchies—will shed some light. The Peter Principle states, “In a hierarchy, everyone tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

“Many of them, to be sure, may win a promotion or two, moving from one level of competence to a higher level of competence. But competence in that new position qualifies them for still another promotion. For each individual, for you, for me, the final promotion is from a level of competence to a level of incompetence.”

“Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence… An employee’s prospects of reaching his level of incompetence are directly proportional to the number of ranks in the hierarchy—the more ranks, the more incompetence.”

“In most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence. Ordinary incompetence, as we have seen, is no cause for dismissal: it is simply a bar to promotion. Super-competence often leads to dismissal, because it disrupts the hierarchy, and thereby violates the first commandment of hierarchal life: the hierarchy must be preserved.”

PSEUDO-PROMOTIONS. “The percussive sublimation is a pseudo-promotion… He was hopelessly incompetent, a bottleneck, so management kicked him upstairs to get him out of the [way]… He has simply been moved from one unproductive position to another. Does he undertake any greater responsibility than before? No… The percussive sublimation can serve to keep the drones out of the hair of the workers!”

EVALUATIONS. “As I often tell my students, ‘Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.’ … The competence of an employee is determined not by outsiders but by his superior in the hierarchy. If the superior is still at a level of competence, he may evaluate his subordinates in terms of the performance of useful work—for example, the supplying of medical services or information, the production of sausages or table legs or achieving whatever are the stated aims of the hierarchy. That is to say, he evaluates output.

But if the superior has reached his level of incompetence, he will probably rate his subordinates in terms of institutional values: he will see competence as the behavior that supports the rules, rituals and forms of the status quo. Promptness, neatness, courtesy to superiors, internal paperwork, will be highly regarded. In short, such an official evaluates input.” This idea is similar to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Indeed, you have probably observed people whose main skill is complying with, enforcing, or gaming the bureaucratic rules—not the actual work of the organization.

FUNDING. “As soon as money is offered, a way must be found to spend it.” Completing the job under budget upsets the hierarchy because it undermines the argument that lackluster results are due to insufficient funding.

MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS. A consulting firm cannot justify its exorbitant fee by telling management that the organization is well-organized as is.  Instead, they are likely to recommend changes. “By discreet questioning they discovered the real reason why the survey had been ordered; several directors felt that they could not sufficiently influence the firm’s policy.” So the consultants’ advice to the board stated, “You are understaffed, and many of your existing employees are wrongly placed. We recommend the creation of certain new posts, and the promotion of a number of your employees.’ Once the organization was thoroughly stirred up, the dissident directors could place or promote protégés just as they wished, thereby strengthening their influence at various levels and in various departments of the hierarchy.” Everyone is happy.

“A favorite recommendation of efficiency experts is the appointment of a coordinator between two incompetent officials or two unproductive departments. A popular fallacy among these experts and their clients is that ‘Incompetence coordinated equals competence.’”

SCHOOL. The author also comments on social promotion as a variant of the Peter Principle. “This phenomenon I designate Hierarchal Regression… Education certificates, diplomas, and degrees are losing their value as measures of competence. Under the old system we knew that a pupil who ‘failed’ Grade 8 must at least have been competent in Grade 7.We knew that a pupil who ‘failed’ first-year university must at least have been a competent high-school graduate, and so on. But now we cannot assume any such thing. The modern certificate proves only that the pupil was competent to endure a certain number of years’ schooling.”

He proposes an alternative. “At present, a student who ‘fails’ Grade 8 is sublimated to Grade 9. Under my plan, he would be arabesqued from Grade 8 to a year, say, of Freshman Academic Depth Study. He could then repeat his year’s work, preferably with special emphasis on the points that he failed to understand before. This extra experience, his own growing maturity and—with luck—more competent teaching, might prepare him for Grade 9… Thus the lateral arabesque lets him out sideways. It does not interfere with the education of the pupils who are still moving upward, and it does not diminish the worth of the grades and degrees which those upward-moving pupils achieve.”

I had to look up the word arabesque. It refers to a ballet move. 

JARGON. The social science of hierarchiology comes with its own jargon.  

Ephemeral Administrology refers to an Acting Director or a Pro Tem Chair. “The employee no longer has to cope with his own job (which he cannot do, anyway, having reached his level of incompetence), and he can justifiably refrain from taking any significant action in the new post. ‘I can’t make that decision: we must leave that for the permanent director.’ … [This] may continue for years, filling one temporary post after another.”

“Structurophilia is an obsessive concern with buildings—their planning, construction, maintenance and reconstruction—and an increasing unconcern with the work that is going on, or is supposed to be going on, inside them. I have observed structurophilia at all hierarchal levels, but it undoubtedly achieves its finest development in politicians and university presidents.”

“Initial and Digital Codophilia is an obsession for speaking in letters and numbers rather than words. For example, ‘F.O.B. is in N.Y. as O.C. for I.M.C. of B.U. on 802.’”

“Summit Competence is rare… They cannot rise to a position of incompetence—they are already at the top—so they have a strong tendency to sidestep into another hierarchy—say from the army into industry, from politics into education, from show business into politics and so on—and reach, in the new environment, the level of incompetence which they could not find in the old.”

“In the Teeter-Totter Syndrome one sees a complete inability to make the decisions appropriate to the sufferer’s rank… One teeter-totter victim in government service resolved his problem in an original manner. When he got a case that he could not decide, he would simply remove the file from the office at night and throw it away.”

Some addition terms from the seven-page glossary.

  • Free-Floating Apex—a supervisor with no subordinates.
  • John Q. Diversion—undue reliance on public opinion.
  • Papyrophobia—abnormal desire for a clean desk.
  • Peter’s Invert—one for whom means have become ends in themselves.
  • Peter’s Placebo—An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
  • Professional Automatism—an obsessive concern with rituals and a disregard of results.
  • Rigor Cartis—abnormal interest in charts, with dwindling concern for realities that the charts represent.
  • Tabulatory gigantism—obsession with large-size desks.

OMISSION. There is one phenomenon I did not see in the book: the creation of documentation and correspondence with a revisionist history to deflect culpability when things go wrong. I propose we call it Peter’s Pravda.

STILL RELEVANT? The 2009 edition features a foreword by organizational psychologist and Stanford professor Robert I. Sutton* who notes, “Many of Dr. Peter’s ideas are also supported by modern behavioral science research.”

Peter writes, “Even high employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees lead only in the sense that the carved wood figurehead leads the ship.”

Sutton adds, “Dr. Peter observed that one reason so many employees are incompetent is that the skills required to get a job often have nothing to do with what is required to do the job itself. The skills required to run a great political campaign have little to do with the skills required to govern. There is nothing about being a great surgeon that prepares a doctor to run hospital… Many organizations, from hospitals to law firms, use such standards to select new leaders—yet devote little or no attention to their management skills. They often end up with lousy leaders and lose their best individual performers. These observations remain just as true [today] as they did in 1969.”

Another sign that the Peter Principle stands the test of time: Lucinda Holdforth, author of 21st Century Virtues, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald (29 July 2023), “When people on LinkedIn say coyly that they are struggling to overcome the curse of imposter syndrome, I often suspect the reason they feel like imposters is because, in fact, they are.”

Peter, Laurence J., and Raymond Hull. The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong. New York: Harper Business, 2009. Buy from Amazon.com

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

*Sutton is the author of  The No Asshole Rule (2010), Weird Ideas that Work (2007), and Good Boss Bad Boss (2012),  as well as coauthor of numerous other books, including The Knowing-Doing Gap (1999), Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense (2006), Scaling Up Excellence (2014), The Friction Project (2024).

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