THE PETER PRINCIPLE -- HIERARCHIOLOGY -- DILBERTOLOGY --

This is fun!  Synonyms for "Ineptocracy"

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/dilbert-slideshow/20120417-dt120417-gif-photo-050753003.html

I guess I hit a nerve.  It's a sign of the world we live in. I even got sent to a historical German quote.  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1767 wrote “To become more than a sergeant? I don't consider it. I am a good sergeant; I might easily make a bad captain, and certainly an even worse general. People have had this experience.”

This thought really awakened the readership.  So many reminded me that this is the contemporary way of talking about the "Peter Principle" which dates back from the 1969 humorous book "The Peter Principle" by Dr. Laurence J.Peter and Raymond Hull.  For those of you who may have been born in the latter part of the 20th century, I quote the Peter Principle for you: "Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence."  What is left unsaid here is what I said last night, Employees get there because an incompetent superior promoted them.  

I read "The Peter Principle" more than once while I was an active member of the Ecclesial Confraternity, otherwise known as the Hierarchy.  You can read what my thoughts were/are about that particular organization by clicking on the link above.  It just so happens that I got my brain food for my convictions from Dr. Peter as well.  He introduced the corollary of the "salutary science of Hierarchiology.  The mantra is, "The hierarchy must be preserved."

The principles and corollaries of these definitions all point to the same fundamental phenomenon: "All the truly high quality, valuable, productive work is performed and brought to its culminating value by the people who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

These, in turn, practice the antithetical management strategy of "managing upward."  Last night I mentioned the practice of the Inept who manage the incompetent in order to make them [the Inept] continue to look good.  Tonight, I turn it around and say that in "The Peter Principle" one of the corollaries of the principle is that the Competent manage the incompetent into thinking  that it is the Incompetent who are responsible for the success of the organization.  That assures the security and the freedom of the Competent while keeping the incompetent happy and proud of their success.

I will conclude this pseudo-intellectual discussion by stating the the "very competent" [super competent] is always in jeopardy.  This is the individual whose competence threatens the rest of the hierarchy through the practice of above average aptitude in more than one discipline.  I have personally seen "very competent" performers be fired for peccadilloes or eased out, even if it takes a "golden parachute," in order to protect and preserve the hierarchy. 

Dr. Peter made us laugh, but that didn't mean that we "didn't have a yen to cry" as we digested the truths contained in his book. 
P.S. Dilbertology states that: "Management was never competent at all." That's a different story, but the lead cartoon fit so well, that I used it anyway.