The Peter Principle
Why your best employees become your worst managers
Time: 3.30 Minutes
Some time ago I visited a good friend and we had a talk about mangers in big corps.
He looked exhausted to me. "My best colleagues most of the time just became the worst leaders I know," he said. "For long I don't understood why, then I discovered the Peter Principle."
The Peter Principle is hitting hard and destroys billions of GDP worldwide. Therefore you should understand this trap...
So what exactly is the Peter Principle?
It says, the people get always promoted until they reach incompetence.
Means your star salesperson becomes a terrible sales manager because selling and managing require completely different skills.
So easy to understand, but yet often the wrong people get promoted.
Everyone eventually hits their ceiling.
That’s normal. But then they stay there, struggling and making everyone miserable.
Therefore, too many organizations are filled up with incompetent leaders.
Too many people who should be doing the work are stuck managing poorly instead.
But how do you fight this promotion death spiral?
Here are some directions to get you going:
Create dual career tracks.
Senior individual contributor roles with equal pay and status to management positions.
Test management skills before promoting.
Give people small team projects first. See if they can actually lead.
Make demotion acceptable.
Remove the shame from moving back to roles where people excel.
Pay for expertise, not just hierarchy.
Your best engineer might be worth more than some VPs.
Yet most companies still promote top performers automatically. Why?
We equate career growth with climbing ladders. Management feels like the only way up.
European cultures especially struggle with non-hierarchical thinking.
The brutal reality destroys teams and whole comapnies.
But be careful, otherwise you're promoting great doers into mediocre managers, competitors keep their talent doing what they do best.
Your friend's workers should still be doing their magic, and not drowning in meetings.
So keep people in their zones of genius, and stay curious.
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