“I am, as I've said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.” -Billy Joel
Raise your hand if you’ve ever silently referred to a colleague as “stupid” or “incompetent”?
For those with your hands up, I applaud your honesty.
For those with your hands down, stop lying to yourself.
While there is no reason to condone name-calling in any workplace, it’s unrealistic to eliminate any means for someone to privately express frustration with the quality of someone else’s work. If anything, I worry about people who claim they never even express private frustration, as those people are simply waiting to blow after years of keeping big feelings inside.
I’ve come a long way in this regard. But while I rarely throw out hurtful words in the heat of conflict, I’m human and not above expressing intense frustration through my internal monologue. And I’m certain I’m not alone.
The more we aim to embrace rationality in our leadership practice, the more we realize that much of what we refer to as “stupid” or “incompetent” behaviors are actually the human mind functioning exactly as intended. To thrive, we must recognize that terms like these arise in a specific context, and understanding them without judgment is a far better strategy than name-calling.
Peter Principle
Tell me if this hypothetical sounds familiar.
You know someone who thrives in one leadership role, but when promoted to the next rung on the ladder, they flop miserably. For example,
Ever met an amazing teacher who was a terrible principal?
Did you once supervise an outstanding camp counselor who couldn’t handle being a division head?
Can you think of a time you promoted someone who became overwhelmed with supervising staff?
And on and on. We’ve all been there before. Meet the Peter Principle (PP).
I used to think the Peter Principle had something to do with Peter Pan. Instead, it’s just the name of a book written by Laurence J. Peter. My idea was more fun but still very, very wrong.
The Peter Principle states:
“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.”1
Here’s one of the first video clips on the subject:
Upon seeing the word “incompetence,” one is tempted to see the PP as an insult. But it’s more subtle and interesting than that. Instead, the PP is rooted in Peter’s understanding of what he calls “hierarchology,” the study of hierarchies.
Picture a pyramid-like hierarchy.
In this structure, the people at the bottom look at those at the top and desire upward movement. The incentives are aligned to make that desire sensible: higher salaries, more prestigious titles, etc. However, rising in a hierarchy means new roles with different responsibilities, often completely different from the skills that got this person noticed in the first place:
Because people want increased incentives regardless of their readiness, people will keep aiming higher until it becomes too much for them (i.e., their “level of incompetence”) instead of stopping at exactly the point in the hierarchy where they are perfectly suited.
At the same time, the higher one goes in a hierarchy, the more their performance is judged based on the quality of the people they hire or promote.
Thus, it’s not hard to imagine how an organization can have a bunch of people promoted to positions they cannot handle and a bunch of supervisors who won’t do anything about it because it will make the supervisors look bad.
It’s the circle of life!
Call it the Michael Scott principle, if you’d like…
It’s also how Peter Gibbons from Office Space ends up with 8 bosses…
For Laurence Peter, the PP is a force of human behavior like gravity; there are pressures from below pushing people up in the hierarchy, even if they are not ready for it, and pressures from above to keep ill-suited people in their roles to protect people at the top. But more importantly, the PP provides a window into why defining “competence” is far more complicated than it may appear when managing relationships between managers and direct reports:
In a hierarchy, Peter argues that “The competence of an employee is determined not by outsiders but by his superior in the hierarchy.”2 As a result, it’s possible that an employee will have a similar or different definition of competence than their supervisor, and this alignment will likely be determined by whether or not the supervisor is competent.
If a person’s supervisor is competent, they will “evaluate…subordinates in terms of performance of useful work,”3 defining competence as the furtherance of positive outcomes.
However, if a person’s supervisor rose to their level of incompetence, this supervisor will define competence as “the behavior that supports the rules, rituals, and forms of the status quo.”4
“But wait,” you ask.
“What if the status quo actually supports worse outcomes for the organization?”
Exactly.
The best outcomes for the organization and the supervisor are not necessarily the same; if the supervisor is incompetent, they may discourage competent behaviors. In fact, Peter argues that, in most hierarchies, “super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.”5 The hierarchy is designed to protect itself.
I will confess that the PP is one of the hardest principles in management science for me to accept because I hate that some organizational systems can be designed to thrive by encouraging poor performance. But these organizations exist everywhere, and awareness is far better than naivete.
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Now that we’ve deeply dived into incompetence, let’s get more optimistic and focus on stupidity.
(I need better jokes.)
Notwithstanding the Peter Principle, one can somewhat define competence by comparing the intended result of an organization with an actual result. But stupidity is far more idiosyncratic. We need to call Carlo Cipolla (spoiler: he’s no longer alive.)
In The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, Cipolla defines a stupid person as “a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.”6 If you’ve ever wondered why some person or organization engages in behaviors that not only do not help them but actively hurt their interests, you are witnessing stupidity as defined by Cipolla.
I like the definition, even as I struggle with it. Some Jewish organizations make decisions that, from the outside looking in, seem to fit the criteria of what we would call “stupid”:
Making bad hires and then giving those bad hires contract extensions.
Spending huge sums of money on consultants who repeatedly say the same things while never implementing their suggestions.
Eliminating programs or reducing services critical to their core mission.
Jewish organizations make these mistakes all the time (sometimes, every day.)
But I suspect many of you knew this already.
What makes The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity an important read is that Cipolla is remarkably egalitarian and qualifies as “stupid” under his definition. This is the second law of human stupidity, “The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.”
In other words, regardless of what words you or someone else use to describe yourself or your organization, none of those qualities eliminate the possibility of stupidity. And maybe that’s for the best.
If nothing else, a repeated theme of Moneyball Judaism is that everyone occasionally acts against their rational interests. So give yourself and break. And other people, too, while you’re at it.
Sprouts Explain Stupidity
80,000
The number of names on fake resumes that were evaluated in a recent study by a group of economists to see how seemingly minor things like a candidate’s name affect their employment prospects.
The results on the discrimination report card were…not great.
What I Read This Week
So You Think You’ve Been Gaslit?: We’ve already discussed gaslighting, which is very real. But what happens when a highly specific term becomes a catchall? The results are strange.
Rebecca Solnit Comments on Social Media: Solnit is generally credited with coining the term “mansplaining.” I enjoy everything she writes, much of which is funny, all of which is a thoughtful critique of the world we live in. This article was no exception.
The True Costs of Churches Going Out of Business: Evidence shows that fewer religious institutions, such as churches and synagogues, negatively affect individuals and society. Here’s the latest analysis.
Self-Care Cannot Fix Burnout: If employees are burning out at your organization, focus your efforts on your system, not the employee’s motivation. Too often, it’s the opposite.
How To Think About Time: To paraphrase Johnny Carson, weird, wild stuff.
Ibid., 30.
Ibid.
Ibid., 31.
Ibid., 34.
All citations can be found by clicking on the link from the Internet Archive.