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The Peter Principle: how lazy leadership can stifle your design career
This outdated, satirical concept has remained surprisingly pervasive, winding up an easy tool for leaders to mute career growth and skirt accountability.
A 1969 book has been sabotaging your personal career growth and has silently strangled wide-reaching career progress for decades. This concept — the Peter Principle — gave a name to an old but vague notion in traditional American hierarchical organizations, and it’s been influencing promotion strategies ever since. It’s almost understandable why dated organizations would rely on this 50+-year-old idea, but I’ve watched it seep into the strategies of numerous tech companies — the supposed darlings of innovation and disruption. Tragically, this old-school thinking is being applied to the detriment of your own career alongside countless others.
Together, let’s explore the basis for the Peter Principle, why it’s so frequently applied, what you can do about it, and how it’s a hallmark of lazy leadership.
The Peter Principle, summarized
In “The Peter Principle,” authors Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull introduced a striking observation: in any hierarchy, people tend to rise to “their level of incompetence.” In other words, employees are promoted based on success and apparent talent in their current roles until they’re placed into a position where they can no longer perform well. These promotions, intended as rewards, often bring titles, pay increases, and new responsibilities — all things we typically want from our careers. But eventually, this approach often results in a dead end, leaving people stuck in roles beyond their skill set.
The most commonly-cited example is a sales rep who is remarkably good at selling, and who thusly is promoted ever-upwards until they become the Head of Sales—a role they are bad at. The company believed in their sales acumen and didn’t want to lose their talent, so made the choice to continuously promote them in order to retain them. But…being a good salesman is not the same as being a good manager. The Peter Principle is apparently proven.
