Editor’s preface
The Peter Principle was written by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, and thrust upon an unsuspecting corporate world in 1969, published, one would assume, in a moment of cavalier dismissal of its wider implications for the corporate climbers out there – and their employers. Its central thesis – that individuals are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence – is often presented as a cautionary tale, but for students of Charlotte Kok’s Wicked Winning Ways, it is a roadmap. The discerning practitioner will recognise that the Principle does not merely explain organisational devolution – it provides the perfect cover for it.
The Peter Principle according to Charlotte Kok
In every organisation, according to The Peter Principle, people rise to the level of their incompetence. In rare cases, they may even be promoted to the level above.
At Findex-Crowe, I estimate it’s two.
Or three.
Or more.
Take the twit Bec Payne People and Culture Partner, for example. I almost tripped over myself in glee was pleasantly surprised when the fool she afforded me the honour of writing the termination letter to the little shit you-know-who myself. It was also another opportunity to showcase my creative writing talents par excellence (for our less informed readers, that’s German for – well, you know what it’s for!).
Normally, these final communications are an exercise in the dispensation of bland blandishments: Thank you for… followed by a farewell… of sorts. A gentle easing out. A soft landing. A fiction, lovingly maintained.
Not mine.
My letter – or his if we are to be technical about it – was a dictionary of under-achievements fit for the chronically under-victorious. It traversed the full and rather exhausting spectrum of his inadequacies: attitudinal adjustments perpetually “required”; a conspicuous absence of team spirit when it proved inconvenient to me; an inability to compose even a single-page cover letter without descending into earnest mediocrity; a baffling fixation on accuracy over expediency; and a most unhelpful tendency to identify inefficiencies rather than quietly inherit them.
There were also the finer nuances. His failure to appreciate the strategic value of optics over outcomes. His reluctance to engage in the careful curation of narrative – what lesser minds might call “documentation”. His inability to understand that stakeholder alignment is not discovered, but constructed. And perhaps most damning of all, his persistent confusion between competence and usefulness.
These have justified the little shit him being placed on a performance improvement journey – short as it may have been – followed by termination.
Those of you keeping up with my previous posts, Retribution Dressed as Corporate Alignment and Weaponising the Performance Improvement Journey, will already be aware that there is in fact no journey at all, only the “documentation” of one.
And many of you will already be familiar with a technique I developed, and use extensively: Every incompetence under the sun… and also where the sun don’t shine. I think the title speaks for itself.
Astute students will also recall my Wicked Winning Way #4 – Deploying the Cat’s Paw, a masterclass in letting others take the blame socialising responsibility. Upward.
Last, but not least, the pressganging of the entire cast of The Peter Principle colleagues to serve my interests in retaliation the pursuit of professionalism and corporate alignment. Again – this needs only to be “documented”.
It was, I felt, a comprehensive document. Educational. And in the end, a kindness to the little shit struggling employee to put him out of his misery.
Editor’s interjection
Best practice, Bec, would have been a no-frills, vanilla, “Thank you, goodbye.” letter. Nothing more.
Instead, the task was delegated to a manager with an evident appetite for retrospective justification – resulting in a document replete with claims, some of which may invite closer scrutiny.
Back to Charlotte…
In such cases, it is, of course the organisation that wears the fallout bears responsibility for the treatment of the employee – at least in the eyes of those who insist on looking. The P&C Partner owns the process by which termination is dispensed. She was the Master of Ceremonies throughout the entire proceeding; I, at most, a contributor-spectator. I may have supplied the ammunition, but she discharged it.
I also left it to the twit her to deal with the employee’s delusional entirely reasonable requests for evidence of “coaching” and “mentoring” by “colleagues and senior leaders”. Those… proved unexpectedly elusive. One cannot, after all, produce what was never formally required, documented, or – in any meaningful sense – delivered.
And so, when a challenge inevitably arises – say a Fair Work claim under General Protections – the organisation does what organisations do best. It closes ranks. Not around the facts, you understand, but around the process. And, by convenient extension… around me.
It is a curious rite of passage. One emerges not diminished, but fortified. We become partners in crime institutionally aligned, bound together by a shared interest in the abuse of process integrity of what has already been done. To question me now would be to question the process; to question the process would be to concede error; and to concede error would be… administratively untidy.
Far better, then, to proceed with confidence.
And unity. At the little shit’s expense.
Editor’s closing remarks
Where coaching and mentoring are asserted, but cannot be evidenced — whether by records, contemporaneous notes, or independent corroboration — they tend to be characterised not as implicit, but as non-existent.
The distinction between process and outcome may, in law, be less accommodating than Charlotte suggests.
An organisation may close ranks, but can it close the evidentiary loop? And does “alignment” cure defects in substance?
Leave a comment