Incompetence Rises

Over the last thirty years of my working life, I have been continually amazed at how many times a person who fails or does poorly on a project or large task usually gets promoted to manage the outcome of their failure.

It happens time and time again.

The Peter Principle states that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence“. In some cases though, The Dilbert Principle is more a appropriate scenario - where success occurs despite the earliest signs of incomepetence.

Such a scenario basically unfolds where there are limited resources to assign to a task of some visibility and importance. The management at the time has no option but to assign the task someone not who is either not properly trained, lacks a deep understanding of the task, or is simply incapable.

The projects of the task always run far beyond the projected timeline, and tremendously over budget. The planning that should have been put into the task at the beginning was either not performed, based on false assumptions, or was completely misleading in the result.

As the project progresses, sympathies increase for this person performing or leading the task. Their visibility increases as they are always the orator on the issues at hand – and as time progresses, they are seen to be the subject matter expert on the task.

At some time, the project completes. Everybody takes a deep sigh of relief, only to find shortly thereafter that the problems cascading from the result of the task now involve more and more persons to deal with them. More firefighters, if you will.

So this incompetent oaf who started the project, took it down the misguided roads to ruin, has actually made a positive name for themselves by the sheer genius of their incompetence.

As a result, they get promoted to manage the fiasco. And most of the time they do so lovingly and passionately. They do so in a defensive – reactive mindset. Suggestions made to fix the outstanding problems are often rebutted by the new manager by such phrases as “trust me, you don’t want to go there” , “that’s how we have always done it”, or “the problem is just too complicated for you to understand”.

Often times the succession of this person up the corporate ladder does not end there. They remain visible as a tough person who has fought battles and understands the underlying issues.

This is only one example of the Dibert extension of the Peter Principle in motion.

And this, my friend, is one way in which incompetence rises to the top of the heap.