Not many people realise that the expression ‘the peter principle’ actually came from a whole book written about the concept.
“Every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence.” (Peter and Hull, 1969) - you can buy the updated version HERE
You come across it in the corporate world, where frustrated staff see people promoted for doing well, until - they don’t do well. It’s used in the sense of “see, I knew they weren’t that good!!!”
The thing is that it’s not that simple. Failure at a new role does not mean someone was faking it until they got there. It just means that one or more of their skills is now not strong enough to be able to adequately perform in that role. No different from the value stream in a business.
You can find the binding constraint in your business AND the constraint in your skills - the same principle applies. This is the ‘dirty little secret’ to getting amazing results using little effort. STOP working harder on what you’re pretty good at. Face the fear and address your flaws. [Credit to Brian Tracy for pointing this out in his book GOALS]
You grow your business and something will ‘break’ (or exceed capacity). Your coffee shop needs to be bigger, you will need more man-hours spent on admin. You’ve invested in great machinery but now your sales need a boost to keep the machines busy. There will always be a ‘binding constraint’ in the system of your business.
The same goes for someone’s skill set. Agreeing on payment terms for the sale of one product is different to a long-term contract with a government department. Hiring your first employee is different to negotiating with a union rep. Running a food stall at the weekend markets is different to signing a lease for a restaurant.
As your business grows, you need to grow. There will be a binding constraint in your business systems AND there will be a binding constraint in your skillset.
Please don’t wait to see if I’m right. Expect this to happen and get on the front foot and identify where YOU need to improve YOU.
Find and fix your personal binding constraint. That way you will never reach a “level of incompetence”.
