Avoid the “Peter Principle”

Your Company Tries to Avoid the “Peter Principle”, But Have They Unwittingly Embraced the “Dilbert Principle” Instead?

In 1968, Dr. Laurence J. Peter wrote a small (under 200 pages), tongue-in-cheek book titled, The Peter Principle. In addition to being an instant success, his theory became – and remains – a classic interpretation of how not to build a management team. For those of you who were sick and missed the class and for those who are new to the wonderful world of management, The Peter Principle basically states that “in both private business and bureaucratic government, employees tend to be continually promoted until they rise to their level of incompetence.” Since its publication, many managers and experts have removed their tongues from their cheeks. They’ve realized that this result happens in too many corporate settings.

As a consequence, large segments of corporate America work hard to avoid knowingly following The Peter Principle. Its simple logic has been proven correct in real world studies. Originally, many in the private corporate universe were quick to point their professional fingers at the obvious target – state and federal government. However, upon deep reflection, corporate leaders had to admit the beliefs of Dr. Peter afflicted the world of private business, too, with sometimes strongly negative results in their bottom lines.

After looking in their corporate mirrors, many companies adopted new, cutting edge strategies to avoid being affected. Installing new productivity measurement techniques, leadership development programs and analyses, and management goal setting procedures, corporations have attempted to identify future leaders and good managers. In many cases, it has worked quite well; in other situations, attempting to quantify leadership has had mixed results.

And then, just when many thought it safe to “enter the water” again, The Dilbert Principle reared its humorous – and sometimes, ugly head. University of California at Berkeley M.B.A. graduate, Scott Adams, created Dilbert and his comic strip adventures. A highly skilled master of satire, Adams originally explained The Dilbert Principle in a Wall Street Journal article in 1995. He received so much positive feedback, he decided to expand his theory by authoring a book, The Dilbert Principle, the following year. What is the short, paraphrased definition of The Dilbert Principle? “Corporations tend to promote the least competent employees to management positions to try to limit the operational damage they can inflict on their companies.” Once corporate America and European business leaders stopped laughing, many discovered that they might have been “guilty as charged.”

Unlike The Peter Principle, which has been much more universally embraced as a potential problem to avoid, The Dilbert Principle, as a serious corporate commentary, has many detractors. While many issue negative reviews as a necessity of self preservation, other nay sayers will quickly point out that this condition simply doesn’t exist as it violates all the prudent rules of promoting leaders. Human Resource professionals tend to argue against the validity of the theory because they believe that modern technological and analytical methods used to identify management talent (and avoid The Peter Principal) typically eliminate the possibility of promoting people just to limit their potential damage.

However, The Dilbert Principle has many proponents, also. In fact, The Dilbert Principle has become suggested, or even required reading in some management training programs and business schools in the U.S. Like escaping the flu, at a minimum, management professionals should know of the existence of The Dilbert Principle if only to avoid its implementation at all costs.

While it’s fairly safe to assume that most companies would not deliberately implement The Dilbert Principle in their management structure, there are enough documented cases to believe that it has happened, with the projected negative results. Should it exist in some form at your company, do your best to eliminate the practice. In many ways, The Dilbert Principle could be more damaging than The Peter Principle. At least The Peter Principle acknowledges that many employees were productive at one or more lower positions in order to be promoted to their level of incompetence.

The Dilbert Principle is based on the belief that the “real work” is accomplished by employees who are not in middle management positions, but who are lower on the corporate ladder. While every senior executive understands how critical the performance of the workforce “in the trenches” is to operations, most upper management wants their middle management tier to enhance, solidify, and improve that performance, not take up space and waste company money with little output. Or as Adams satirically says, “Who says these people were ever competent?”

While everyone tries to avoid The Dilbert Principle, you would be hard pressed to find a talented, experienced manager, who hasn’t previously agreed with Adams in one or more cases. At times, this reaction may be the real damage done by a making a promotion that is obviously not warranted by performance and leadership display. Other talented staff, whether aspiring to or already in management positions, could start believing that your company may not be the right place to advance their career. Correctly or incorrectly, other employees often look at this practice as an example of management incompetence. Should it happen more than once, a pattern may be assumed to be unfolding.

It is too difficult to recruit, train, and keep talented employees, in and out of management. To risk losing one or more of these productive staff members is normally unacceptable. As most experienced managers know, you always run the risk of losing talented employees because of their effectiveness, but the lesser stars tend to stay, as they have “nowhere to go.” Following The Dilbert Principle, purposely or unwittingly, will only escalate this risk.

Look honestly at your operations. Can you identify any possible instances of The Dilbert Principle taking over? Hopefully, your answer will be an emphatic “No”. If you believe you’ve found a suspected instance of the dreaded principle being used, hopefully you can identify it as a simple mistake and not a corporate game plan. If you are an H.R. professional, stay vigilant in your goal to keep The Dilbert Principle on the comic strip pages of your local newspaper and out of your company operations. Even Dilbert-creator, Adams will be pleased.