Back in 1969/1970 Dr. Laurence J. Peter wrote what is obvious to anyone who has ever worked in a large company or government or military…
“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his (her) level of incompetence.”
Have you ever seen a person who was amazing when they were at previous lower level and went down hill (maybe spectacularly) when they hit their current (often managerial) level? That is called the Peter Principle from the books written by Laurence J. Peter and quite honestly is more often expected than not by anyone intelligent watching people get forced up the corporate ladder in the name of career advancement.
If you don’t get the point… Let me break it down to one simple phrase… It is a BAD thing.
This isn’t something people should aspire to. It aligns with the completely incorrect idea that anyone can do anything. While that is a nice thought it is completely untrue. I, for instance, can aspire like the dickens to conceive and gestate a child in my abdomen and I would fail miserably. It has nothing to do with my shortcomings as a person, it is due to capability. I could as likely gestate a child as I could fly off the empire state building under my own power in the nude. Should I feel bad about either of those things? No. Not as all, while I may wish I had those capabilities certainly it would be silly to feel to be a lesser person because of it. Ditto if I can’t achieve being a rocket scientist or a greatly loved and respected manager or a tremendously successful salesperson or anything else…
Different people have different strengths and you cannot correct an item that is one of your weaknesses to a point to exceed the capability of someone who has that item as one of their natural strengths. You can try all you want but you won’t get there. Certainly you can possibly get to acceptable or possibly even good but everyone is better off if someone is given that job that just naturally does it well without all of the work and pain. You are better off honing your strength areas as well because with much less work you should see far more gains and be more productive and generally be happier. People want to succeed and be known for doing well, not fail time and again or think they have to constantly improve themselves. Think about it, anything that needs to be improved is generally considered inferior to start with… that is why it needs to be improved… Do you like feeling inferior? No, then stop thinking you always need to be improved… Sure, never stop learning and never stop helping and trying to do better but don’t feel you are so bad you MUST be improved or you MUST grow or you MUST advance.
I bring this up as I was catching up with some blogs this morning and read the Mini-Microsoft entry from November 13th and it seems that Microsoft could actually be actively enforcing the Peter Principle – allegedly if someone stays at a level too long they are to be labeled in their HR profile as limited… Wow, that is brilliant. What a morale booster. Someone who has been working their ass off for you that you have invested in and built up to be a good productive member that has hit a level they like and are good at and you label them with some arbitrary label that effectively blocks forward progress and points them out as bad?
You can read the Mini-Microsoft blog for yourself here
If this is accurate, even if Microsoft paid amazing money for their normal people, something like that could very definitely prevent me from ever joining them. I am on of those people that has no care in the world for my title in the company I work for, I am not there to climb the ladder to get into even higher positions, I am there to solve problems and make issues go away and have fun and learn things doing it… I could very easily see myself attaining that “Limited” ranking. I know that for the things I do, there is no one better in the company, I am better than the CEO, I am better than the CIO, I am better than anyone. For things I don’t do, I am not better, someone else is and I acknowledge that and let them do it. Rank means little to me other than for logically organizing resources to tackle problems by putting folks in a position where their strengths will help them make a difference. This means I have no desire to climb the ranks, there is no real point in it. Salary should not be tied to how many people are above you in the hierarchy, that is silly. Salary should be handed out just like any other supply/demand scenario. Not only am I not surprised if someone makes more money than their manager or me or the CEO or the head of anything, quite honestly, in many cases I expect it.
I think policies like this “limited” rating would be far more dangerous to Microsoft’s long term stability than all of the Open Source projects in the world. Let the people who want to climb the ladder like rats climbing the rope up to a ship do so, but don’t penalize those who just want to work.
My recommendation to the MSFT folks making policy decisions… Read “Now, Discover Your Strengths” and revisit any policies that force people to rise to their level of incompetence.
joe
