Inspired By the Peter Principle: the Peter Pinnacle

bfwebster writes "Michael Swaine — long-time, well-known and very prolific author/editor in the programming and personal computing worlds — has just devised a new twist on the Peter Principle: the Peter Pinnacle, 'meaning to get promoted so high and to be so unqualified for your job that the company tells you that you can name your price just to go away.' I'm sure the timing of the neologism is just a coincidence."

Regarding Kings

[AliasMarlowe]

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "when you strike at a king, you must kill him" [wikiquote.org]. Merely spilling his blood nonfatally can leave you getting unwanted attention from an irate king and his cohorts of stooges.

This is Self-Preventing

[tutufan]

I've certainly seen cases where an organization could realize a substantial likely profit by paying someone millions of dollars to go away (or to just sit quietly in a room and stop working mischief). But any organization smart enough to realize this would not find itself in such a lopsided position to begin with. So mostly this state is just an observable marker of a poorly functioning organization.

HP went nuts

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I was on the phone with HP Premier Support when the Fiorina departure news hit their office. I almost couldn't finish the call because of the chaos that erupted on the other end. The entire office was cheering, crying with joy, shouting in celebration...and someone in the background started singing at the top of his voice "Ding, dong, the witch is dead!"

I am not kidding.

Relentless self promotion

[EmperorOfCanada]

A simple to detect symptom of this is the relentless self promotion that many of these people do. If you look at many of the CEOs that have been given the heave ho; most were becoming household names. A great example of this is the "Curse of Forbes" which basically states that if you make it onto the cover of Forbes magazine that you or your company is going to be in huge trouble in the not too distant future.

But there are many awesome CEOs who are not a household name and avoid publicity as a waste of time. They focus their energies on running their companies. Whereas the people who relentlessly self promote have to do two seriously broken things. One is to neglect what they are supposed to be doing, and the second is that they often have to take credit for others' work. Technically there is a third quasi-valid reason to self promote and that is your products suck and you try to sell them through pure con-artistry.

Even years ago I knew a bunch of pilots in training. Oddly enough it is difficult to tell a great pilot; it is only easy to detect the bad ones through their misfortunes. Thus being a blow-hard was a fairly effective method to having people hire you. Most of the better blowhards had shocking levels of success as compared to the more diligent pilots who just focused on their training and hours.

Where these blowhards succeed is that they are quite capable of launching their careers far beyond what a critical look at their skills and experience would normally justify. Then reality will kick in as they start to make a mess of things. At that point the "Peter Pinnacle" definitely kicks in.

So where I would say the Peter Principle and the Peter Pinnacle differ is that under the Peter Principle people get promoted (typically one level above competence) until they fail. Whereas under the Peter Pinnacle people get promoted until they run out of hot air (which could be dozens of levels beyond competence).

The worst part is that people who will reach the highest heights of the Peter Pinnacle were probably terrible from day one and realized that bluster, scheming, and politicking were the only ways they would survive at any level. Programmers who couldn't program, then couldn't manage, then couldn't run a department, then couldn't run a company. But at each level they made sure that things were structured so that they could take credit for successes that were about to happen, and make sure others were put in place to take the blame for their messes. "I'm glad that I took over from Bob when I did. I was able to turn defeat into victory." and six months later "I left that department a well oiled machine, I misplaced my trust in Sue to be able to step into my shoes."

Anti-Peter Principle

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a phenomenon that's similar but opposite to the Peter Principle. Rather than a person gradually being promoted to the level at which he's incompetent, someone can also – through layoffs during recession, the occasional arbitrary dismissal without cause, and/or bad career moves – find himself moved down the corporate org chart to the point that he finds himself no longer competent, either because he's changed or the job has. For example, imagine an executive chef working as a line cook at Chili's, a former sysadmin answering the help-desk line, a university research scientist lecturing at a community college, or anyone over 40 trying to start over at an "entry level" position.