The Peter Principle in Action
🥇 - The Peter Principle and UK Prime Ministers
If we ever needed a reminder of the value of robust hiring and promotion processes, then we need look no further than the number of UK Prime Ministers in the last few years. It culminated recently in the short-lived residency at Number 10 Downing Street by Liz Truss.
The Rest is History podcast described it as so
"Never before in British history has there been such a spectacular case of somebody getting a job for which they are utterly unqualified and then imploding so dramatically in front of the cameras."
This isn't a political statement. Conservative, Labour, or Liberal, it doesn't matter to me. What does matter is "Who" mistakes are expensive. Who, in this context, refers to the people we put in place to make the "What" decisions. Who decisions are often more important than the What decisions.
"The most important decisions that business people make are not what decisions, but who decisions."
Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great
Aside from the reputational damage of getting it wrong, the cost of bad hires or promotions is estimated to be 15x an employee's base salary in hard costs and productivity loss.
Therefore, it is essential to have a robust hiring and promotion process in place; otherwise, we risk falling foul of The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle, a management concept first presented in a 1969 book by the same name, describes the following paradox: if organisations promote the best people at their current jobs, they will inevitably promote people until they are no longer good at their jobs. In other words, organisations manage careers so that:
"Every employee tends to rise to the level of their incompetence."
While the book was initially intended to be satire, it became a popular management concept as it does make a serious point about the shortcomings of how promotions happen within organisations. The Peter Principle arises when the skills and behaviours that make people successful at one job level don't lead to continued success when promoted.
The excellent book, "Who: The A Method for Hiring", one of my top two reads during 2022, refers to "voodoo hiring methods" that all share an assumption that it is easy to assess a person. I wish it were so, but it is challenging, and so a structured and robust process is required to find the A players to make the best What decisions. And it all starts by not making the common Who mistakes:
Being unclear about what is needed in the job.
Having a weak flow of candidates.
An inability to pick out the right candidate from a group of similar-looking candidates.
So if you are responsible for senior hiring and promotion decisions at your organisation, then ask yourself:
How robust is our hiring process?
Do we have a scorecard that details the role's mission, outcomes and required competencies clearly and concisely?
Do we have a systematic way to source A players?
Is our interview process better than being a random predictor of job performance?
How do we support the incoming hire and newly promoted person?
Do we have a structured onboarding approach beyond simple compliance and box-ticking?
Do we provide specialist transition coaches to our incoming and newly promoted executives to improve the odds of success?
📫 - Favourite quote
This quote was recently shared with me. It resonated - the level of virtue signalling and broader advice from experts - neither group having any skin in the game is at astronomical levels. Yet the most outstanding leaders push on through the noise as they can see the underlying signal. Something for all you creators, entrepreneurs and change agents out there.
🧐 - Newly discovered content of interest
This brilliant Heineken commercial from five years ago
This New Heineken Ad is Briliant #OpenYourWorld
Well worth 4 minutes of your life.
We are all different.
Real life isn't black and white.
Boom!
🧾 - An absorbing and insightful (short) read
Paul Graham - founder of Y-combinator - his writing is profoundly insightful and has powerful foresight. He wrote this article in 2004 - WHAT YOU CAN'T SAY
Here is an extract to wet your appetite:
"I can think of one more way to figure out what we can't say: to look at how taboos are created. How do moral fashions arise, and why are they adopted? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able to see it at work in our own time.
Moral fashions don't seem to be created the way ordinary fashions are. Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone imitates the whim of some influential person. Moral fashions more often seem to be created deliberately. When there's something we can't say, it's often because some group doesn't want us to.
The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. The irony of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for repeating Copernicus's ideas. Copernicus himself didn't. In fact, Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. But by Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas.
To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo.
I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them."
🐣 - Something I am doing differently or entirely new
Listening to the Founders podcast by David Senra. Highly recommended.
⚖ - Et cetera
Perhaps the following will provide insight and be of help with a problem you are currently facing:
Do you need a new perspective on a challenge you're struggling with?
Are you starting a new role and want to make a positive impact and quickly establish credibility?
My latest article is here - "Every problem doesn't have to be your problem."
The RYSE Journal - "A coach in your pocket."
I'd love to hear from you. I read all messages and try to respond in a timely fashion.
All the best, until next month.
Rob