# what is "the peter principle"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 28, 1999, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655 "1999-12-28T04:59:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dp)
#### Post date: [December 28, 1999, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/1 "1999-12-28T04:59:00Z")
no message.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [December 28, 1999, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/2 "1999-12-28T05:10:00Z")
The business practices principle articulated by Dr. Laurence Peter that
> [@](#):
>
> In any hierarchy, a person tends to rise to the level of his incompetence.
The idea being that, in management, everyone is promoted for doing a good job until they are finally promoted beyond the last level at which they can excel and are then inadequate to their current positions.
This indicates that a lot of managers (particularly ones whose careers have stalled, but possibly newly promoted managers whose careers we just don’t realize have stalled) are working in jobs that they cannot handle, making bad decisions.
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Tom~
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### Author:  [@Cooper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cooper)
#### Post date: [December 28, 1999, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/3 "1999-12-28T05:27:00Z")
A crucial element of the principal is not that people are just promoted for their excellence, but merely for serving capably for a determined amount of time.
If excellence were the only criteria, then once they reached their last level of competence they would be stalled. The trend to reward longevity (which is necessary for many reasons) is responsible.
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### Author:  [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)
#### Post date: [December 28, 1999, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/4 "1999-12-28T07:57:00Z")
Well, I wanna know who’s responsible for making Peter a “princip **al** ” in this company. I thought he was just a consultant who had at least one princip **le**.
Ray (Horses that switch words on you in the middle of a thread shouldn’t be stalled. . .they should be sent to a glue factory. 😉 )
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [December 28, 1999, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/5 "1999-12-28T14:25:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> A crucial element of the principal is not that people are just promoted for their excellence, but merely for serving capably for a determined amount of time.
Not at all. What Peter wrote was that if you do well in a job, you’re promoted. You continue to be promoted until you do poorly, at which point you stay. Thus the Peter Principle in a nutshell: “People rise until they reach their level of incompetence.”
Peter did talk about “summit competence,” where someone reaches the highest level in the heirarchy without reaching the level of incompetence. However, someone who manages this usually moves on to some other field and makes a botch of it there.
While Peter did discuss people who get promoted after reaching their level of incompetence, he ascribes this to the fact that the person making the promotion has reached his own level of incompetence and thus doesn’t know the person he’s promoting is incompetent.
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“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. [www.sff.net/people/rothman](http://www.sff.net/people/rothman)
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### Author:  [@dp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dp)
#### Post date: [December 28, 1999, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/6 "1999-12-28T20:02:00Z")
Thanks to all of you for your answers.
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### Author:  [@torq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/torq)
#### Post date: [December 28, 1999, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/7 "1999-12-28T21:50:00Z")
I think Cooper’s point is that there may be an intermediate level where a person is competent but not excellent. For example, a given person might be an excellent Dishwasher, an adequate but mediocre Head Dishwasher, and an incompetent Director of Cleansing (Earthenware Division)
If only those who excel at their jobs are promoted, such a person would never rise above Head Dishwasher.
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### Author:  [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)
#### Post date: [December 29, 1999, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-peter-principle/5655/8 "1999-12-29T22:41:00Z")
Professor Peter provided the _Book of Lists_ with a list of people who rose to their level of incompetence:
Nero
Julius Caesar
President Ulysses S. Grant
President Warren G. Harding
Hitler
Lt. Col. (not “General”) George Armstrong Custer
(“flamboyant glory-seeker who tried to wipe out an Indian encampment at Little Bighorn.” Custer was at the bottom of his graduating class at West Point.)
Nixon
(“author of a successful book, _Six Crises,_ was later unable to communicate convincingly a simple statement such as ‘I am not a crook.’”)