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Peters Hide Amongst Us and Must Be Exposed
Disclaimer
I have worked in one organization for less than 10 years with three different bosses.
The use of the name Peter isn't referring to principle's eponym, but rather people who make it true. Parker is the first P name I thought of.
The Peter Principle
The Peter Principle states that:
This makes intuitive sense as a concept and why it continues to happens despite being known for the same reason: why stop promoting a high performer? After all, past performance is almost always indicative of future results!
What isn't talked about is what happens after Peter gets into his final position. There are a few options available to him:
All three types of Peters exist in the world, but the distribution likely isn't equal—the first option of holding on for dear life seems to be the most common. And in order to not be noticed, Peter must camouflage himself in a ghillie suit made of corporate lingo while ensuring his toes are well behind the company and his boss' lines at all times. Who would notice Peter is horrible at his job when he makes his boss happy, is vocally supportive of the company culture, and actively participates in company initiatives? In fact, some may say that those three qualities make him great at his job!
The Parker Principle
The Parker Principle states that:
(Sure, Parkers may experience their names gradually or even automatically turn to Peter at some point during their next few promotions, but ignore that for now.)
Competence compensates for lack of compliance in other areas. Organizations don't care that Parker says lewd remarks or doesn't attend mandatory meetings if he's helping them reach their bottom line, whether that's related to money, fame, or some other goal. They may even pave the road for him and offer a new car.
Tradeoffs exist in all markets, including this one: the organization is trading their supposed values and procedures for betterment in Parker's area. "Rules for thee, but not for me" becomes "Rules for thee (except you if you make us enough money), but not for me". This is obvious when stated, yet still interesting to see the dichotomy in action between people at the same level of the hierarchy.
Some examples in my organization around people who are the exact same rank:
Now that the names have been listed, it's time spotlight them in the audience and call them to the stage.
Exposing Peters to Highlight Parkers
The existence of Peters is sad, rage-inducing, and understandable at the organizational and individual level. It's sad because Peters probably didn't know they'd be a Peter before the promotion; again, why would they suddenly suck at their job if their current one is going well? (This ignores a long build-up of suckiness over the course of multiple job promotions, but to the previous sentence's point, most promotions include step function increases in responsibilities that may not be filtered for in their current role.) It's rage-inducing because most organizations either haven't acknowledged the existence of Peters, or if they have, don't seem to do much about them. It's understandable for the same reasons it's sad, but also because no self-interested person would resign once (if) they realize they're a Peter—there's no point. Hold on, rake in that dough, and with enough bullshitting and manuevering maybe another rung can be climbed.
But these feelings shouldn't get in the way of trying to oust Peters from their positions of power to ensure Parkers get their time on the throne. Powerful Peters reduce an organization's potential prosperity by definition: unintelligent leaders are likely to make suboptimal, if not downright detrimental, decisions that can send damaging ripples both up and down the hierarchy. On the other hand, Powerful Parkers increase an organization's likelihood of success for the opposite reasons as their Peter counterparts.
Highlighting Peters requires precision and nuance. Other Peters may catch on and attempt to stifle the exposé efforts. It's like They Live, the organization edition. Some ideas on doing so, with the understanding that they may backfire and strengthen their position's stronghold due to seemingly competent responses:
Highlighting Parkers is straightforward and smiled upon:
Organization-wide Discrimination Against Peters
Organizations, and not just individuals, must take a stand against Peters for the sake of their betterment and competitiveness in the markets they serve. Any organization would jump at the opportunity to increase efficiency by double-digit numbers, which is exactly what a purge of Peters would enable. People are still fallible and prone to bias and judgment.
Testing for potential Peters when they are still a Parker is simple:
There are issues with this approach whose risks can be mitigated:
It's also important to maintain objectivity when reviewing the individual to ensure more powerful people aren't just swinging their political weight around with nothing to back it up. Parker would create a resume for his promotion that would be reviewed by others, while the reviewing parties would also bring evidence that supports and opposes the promotion. The trial period would also take note of objective measures (unbeknownst to Parker to ensure no gaming of the system) to ensure actual competence and not just
vibes. Goodharting would need to be avoided, hence the hidden metrics to ensure the promotee has well-rounded performance during their trial period. In a dystopian world, sentiment analysis can be performed on the reviewer's texts, messages, and emails to get rough feelings towards the promotee.The Parker Principle seems to be a rehash of the old "competent asshole" trope, which the last generation of HR has worked tirelessly to discredit and discourage. To wit:
This longer exists, except maybe for the cream of the crop of quants (maybe @BurdensomeCount can chime in on how life is as a Parker). I wholeheartedly agree that there is no shortage of people rising to the top of the corporations because they are better at "being in a corporation" than "accomplishing [goal of corporation]", but what's the solution here?
If Peters are so much worse for corporations than Parkers, why can't Parkers run circles about them? Shouldn't there be a species of Parker that is singlemindedly devoted to Machiavellianism just as much as the Parkers you describe are devoted to their respective crafts? Or do they get their names changed to Peters once they realize that the real money is in climbing the hierarchy? In that case, this seems like a problem of incentives that can't be solved by top-down mandates, only by a change in corporate culture/structure.
The remedy you propose is just more technocracy, which you're already acknowledging as having failed us thus far - if the hiring and/or promotion process is broken to the point where Peters are promoted beyond their competence ceiling, why would this same firm be able to put together a hiring/promo committee that's any more competent than the current performance of the firm, and not going to get instantly gamed by Peters? How would they staff them with hyperfocused Parkers to weed out all the Peters that have already excelled at the game and risen to the top? I suppose we can hire quickly and fire the bottom 10% or so on an annual basis, but make sure we keep a banner of principles of leadership hanging somewhere to make sure that everyone knows where their North Star is, but that hasn't worked out too well thus far. If the people you're trying to get rid of have the unifying characteristic of being able to game corporate and regulatory systems, how can you (as a Parker, presumably) hope to beat them at their own game? You can't solve a social problem with technology (I think).
But why would the Parkers subject themselves to this? "Oh, we let you get away with whatever you want, but now if you want more money we also want to see how well you can adhere to the latest HR handbook. Oh, and there's also a circular firing squad comprised of all the people that were better at politics and worse at working than you that will have final veto on your promotion." The Parkers would just leave for a less onerous firm that just gives compensation for competence and lets the Peters go to HR training.
Yes, after all:
Peters (including HR) are the first type. Parkers the second. There are certain biological dispositions that tend to bucket one into either category, sex being by far the most important in Western countries where women aren't forced into productive labor, which is why this tendency eventually developed into today's gender war where more women than men are in welfare positions [produce nothing and created directly or indirectly by law]). Notably, the Peters use Parker language ("women in STEM") to justify this.
Startups reliably outcompete major corporations (OpenAI is still ahead of everyone, for instance). Major corporations can't act like this partially because it's illegal (again, due to last generation of HR's hatred of competence, see above) but also because of inertia.
Yes, but when they get successful they tend to name themselves [or be named] the regional dialect's way to pronounce "Caesar" (for no reason in particular, I'm sure) and, once they have achieved their goals, become indistinguishable from a Peter. Or their successors inevitably do, and then we're back to the same cycle.
That's an interesting observation. Do you think it's just a matter of exceptional people being the exception and shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves the best we can do?
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I think one of the key problems is all Peters were Parkers until their last promotion. I don't think there's a good option for what happens when you convert a Parker into a Peter, except maybe something like the Military's up or out but that means forcing the retirement of a lot of Parkers when they reach the career filter (about O-7 in the officer corps).
Perhaps having regular shake ups where everyone changes teams and roles on some regular schedule.
I suspect a major cIause is when highly competent Parkers can't swap into the mental shift of delegating when their responsibility exceeds what a single person can do. I also wonder whether having a failed manager, highly competent track makes sense, letting high achievers contribute their expertise without a managerial role.
Yes, and there's a second major clause when you can longer unblock your direct reports by helping them directly. I've seen enough team leads carry their teams by basically working 60-hour weeks until the ICs learned by watching the boss do things the right way.
When your team is so big you have to manage other managers and not ICs, it's very easy to become adrift, especially if you relied on your own direct competence to manage by example. It's very easy to be carried away by the unending stream of meetings, thinking this is what your job is now about: communicating deadlines and reporting progress. You're constantly busy, this means you're making progress, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, and it's a pitfall I've experienced directly, it's not. Your job is to manage your team.
You have explicit KPIs to meet or deliberately ignore, you have to find out the real benefit you can bring to some C-level, your team wants to do stuff that looks great on a CV. And it's your job to harmonize these goals.
If your team is blocked, you have to unblock them, but now you can't afford a deep dive yourself. You need people that can dive for you, you have to get them to dive before you miss the deadline and your own role is now negotiating primarily non-technical unblocking solutions with other managers.
I think there are three tiers:
These are all very different skill sets.
An IC is evaluated on whether they are good at the job. A manager is evaluated on whether the ICs they manage collectively deliver the job relative to the expectations negotiated with senior managers. Senior managers deal with politics, optics, and strategy.
All of these roles are important and it says a lot about you if you denigrate any one of them. I think of this as analogous to discussions of class: if you think the working class is great, but the upper-middle class sucks, or the reverse, you don’t get it. (See Fussel)
I think the transition between these role tiers is hard and harder for some than others. If you are a technical person who thrives on solving problems, you are probably a Parker IC. You may stay a Parker as a manager if your team is strong and you stay involved technically. You probably suck at performance reviews and morale stuff, but this might be fine. But when you rise to Senior management it’s a nightmare. You hate politics, but you have to play politics anyway and you are bad at it. You miss the forest for the trees, etc. Too many people like this too high up and the culture becomes combative and "my way or the highway" egotism.
Another person might be less technical and more of an operator: less interested in the problems than the big picture. And the biggest picture is their own career which they pursue ruthlessly. They may be okay as an IC, but they love the power and responsibility of management and do well as managers and senior managers. They probably care more about their reports as people rather than as problem-solving cogs, but technical ICs tend to not like these people anyway because they are grasping and don’t know how to actually make the thing. Ultimately people like this are good at navigating organizations and too many of these people and you get endless politics and empire building which bloats the company and the firm fails to to actually do the thing.
I think one of Elons great skills is his “small highly technical teams” that limit the Parker ICs from having to navigate a web set for them by the operators above. This is only possible because Elon is technical enough himself to obviate the need for management layers. A rare thing.
I feel like the better analogy here is not social class but rather the military: ICs correspond to enlisted men, managers-of-ICs to NCOs, and managers-of-managers to commissioned officers. Competence across all three strata is vital to the ability of the armed forces to fight and win wars.
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