Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull described this phenomenon in their 1969 book.
The Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently.
Eventually, they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”).
They remain at that level for the rest of their time in the organisation being unable to earn further promotions.
Unfortunately, this is unavoidable because until you promote people to a higher level, and see them working on the ground, you cannot tell if they will prove to be competent at that level or not.
This is very problematic, because someone who was productive at the earlier level becomes totally unproductive at the next level. So not only do you fail to get a good person at the new level, which you were counting on, but you lose a productive manager of your team.
Is there a solution for this?
In my own way, I have tried to beat the Peter Principle and occasionally succeeded.
Here is what to do:
- Do not promote someone outright to a new level. Ask them to do the work of that level first, without a formal promotion, and without promising any such promotion. Try them out with the next level responsibility for 3 months at least. And see how that works out. If it goes well, give them the damn promotion. If not, respectfully thank them for handling higher responsibility and give them back their previous role where they were competent.
- Get them to upskill. Make them learn unrelated skills that they will not care to learn in the regular scheme of things. Ask them to solve small problems outside their domain of competence – in situations where failure will not bother you particularly. Reading, observing other competent people at their best and facing new challenges often unlock levels of competence in people that they did not even know existed.
If you are an HR professional who is not growing fast enough, not getting the promotions you want – chances are that you are a victim of the Peter Principle.
Could it be the case?
You have to save yourself because you cannot explain the Peter Principle to your boss.
It can lead to you getting fired, because chances are that your boss is also stuck there because he hit his Peter Principle ceiling and would get triggered.
Instead, introspect, and pick a new skill that will help you to develop a new level of mastery and new domain of competence.
To beat the Peter Principle you don’t try to go higher, which may be your natural instinct. You need to try to go wider. Pick an adjacent but useful domain and start learning it.
If you are an HR professional who is great at recruiting or performance management but you seem to hit the limit, try to learn labour and employment law.
It will unlock new levels of competencies in you that will open doors for you that you didn’t know existed.
You can take up additional responsibilities and implement new initiatives BEFORE you get that promotion and prove that you can do it.
Here’s are a couple of HR professionals who benefited when they learned labour and employment laws and broke free from the Peter principle:
Kavita Somara was working in a garment manufacturing company in Jaipur in HRM Operations. As she learned labour laws, she took up additional responsibility in the factory for policy implementation and compliance, and secured a promotion as an Assistant General Manager of Human Resources (AGM HR) with a 25% increase in her previous salary!
Labour and employment law expertise is required in service sector companies, tech startups, e-commerce, logistics companies, IT companies as well.
Here’s an example of someone who was working in a large Indian company, who benefited from learning labour laws:
Sahana H S, an HR professional who was working as a Lead Compliance Partner for People Operations at Flipkart, Bangalore, secured a double promotion with an increment in just 3 months as she implemented learned labour laws and POSH internally within her company!
Would you like to achieve similar growth and results yourself?
Do you want to know how they did it so that you can do it too, for free?
It only takes 6-12 months.