Laurence J Peter Quotes

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Aristotle's axiom: The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.

You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.

In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

You can always tell a real friend; when you've made a fool of yourself, he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.

The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.

Two things reduce prejudice: education and laughter.

You don't need to take a persons advice to make him feel good, just ask him for it.

America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.

Good followers do not become good leaders.

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.

A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.

Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are.

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.

The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.

An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.

Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.

Given enough time—and assuming the existence of enough ranks in the hierarchy—each employee rises to, and remains at, his level of incompetence.

As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence. We behave as though up is better and more is better, and yet all around us we see the tragic victims of this mindless escalation.

If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity.

My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying.

He must examine his objectives and see that true progress is achieved through moving forward to a better way of life, rather than upward to total life incompetence.

Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push and you push alone.

in most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.” He warned that extremely skilled and productive employees often face criticism, and are fired if they don’t start performing worse. Their presence “disrupts and therefore violates the first commandment of hierarchical life: the hierarchy must be preserved.

a staff increase may produce a temporary improvement, but the promotion process eventually produces its effect on the newcomers and they, too, rise to their levels of incompetence.

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them.

In any economic or political crisis, one thing is certain. Many learned experts will prescribe many different remedies

Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.

In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. Laurence J. Peter (Peter’s Almanac, entry for 24 September 1982)

Know, all the good that individuals find, Or God and Nature meant to mere Mankind, Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense, Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence.    (Ibid., 11. 77–80)

The efficiency of a hierarchy is inversely proportional to its Maturity Quotient, M.Q.    MQ = No. of employees at level of incompetence × 100 Total no. of employees in hierarchy    Obviously, when MQ reaches 100, no useful work will be accomplished at all.

Employees in a hierarchy do not really object to incompetence (Peter’s Paradox): they merely gossip about incompetence to mask their envy of employees who have Pull.

Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.

the main function of a pseudo-promotion is to deceive people outside the hierarchy. When this is achieved, the maneuver is counted a success.

Seorang yang kompeten dalam level tertentu belum tentu kompeten pada level berikutnya

Incompetence,” he argued, “knows no barrier of time or place.

Nobody understands how the incessant pressure from above and the incurable incompetence below make it utterly impossible for me to do an adequate job and keep a clean desk.

Many a man, under the old and the new systems, has made the upward step from candidate to legislator, only to achieve his level of incompetence.

The more conceited members of the race think in terms of an endless ascent—or promotion ad infinitum. I would point out that, sooner or later, man must reach his level of life-incompetence.

All, from police forces to armed forces, are rigid hierarchies of salaried employees, and all are necessarily cumbered with incompetents who cannot do their existing work, cannot be promoted, yet cannot be removed.

Three Observations        1) The computer may be incompetent in itself—that is, unable to do regularly and accurately the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.        2) Even when competent in itself, the computer vastly magnifies the results of incompetence in its owners or operators.        3) The computer, like a human employee, is subject to the Peter Principle. If it does good work at first, there is a strong tendency to promote it to more responsible tasks, until it reaches its level of incompetence.

The computer may be incompetent in itself--that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.

Dr. Peter observed that one reason so many employees are incompetent is that the skills required to get a job often have nothing to do with what is required to do the job itself. The skills required to run a great political campaign have little to do with the skills required to govern.

One challenge is the Peter Principle. Coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book of that name, the Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain being unable to earn further promotions.

La supercompetencia conduce a menudo al despido, porque transtorna la jerarquía y viola con ello el primer mandamiento de la vida jerárquica, según el cual la jerarquía debe ser preservada.

Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place.

It is true that work can expand to fill the time allotted but it can expand far beyond that. It can expand beyond the life of the organization and the company can go bankrupt, a government can fall, a civilization can crumble into barbarism, while the incompetents work on.

A political party now exists primarily as an apparatus for selecting candidates and getting them elected to office.

IT SHOULD BE clear by now that when an employee reaches his level of incompetence, he can no longer do any useful work. Incompetent, Yes! Idle, No! This in no way suggests that the ultimate promotion suddenly changes the former worker into an idler. Not at all! In most cases he still wants to work; he still makes a great show of activity; he sometimes thinks he is working. Yet actually little that is useful is accomplished

the ability to charm, to amuse, to inflame a crowd of ten thousand voters with voice and gesture did not necessarily carry with it the ability to think sensibly, to debate soberly and to vote wisely on the nation’s business.

one reason so many employees are incompetent is that the skills required to get a job often have nothing to do with what is required to do the job itself.

true progress is achieved through moving forward to a better way of life, rather than upward to total life incompetence.

Man must realize that improvement of the quality of experience is more important than the acquisition of useless artifacts and material possessions.

Wellington, examining the roster of officers assigned to him for the 1810 campaign in Portugal, said, “I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.

In most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.

The popular 1977 collection Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time by Laurence J. Peter, which happens to be the source of a great many misattributed quotations, it turns out,

Si un escritorio desordenado es signo de una mente desordenada, ¿qué significa un escritorio ordenado? LAURENCE J. PETER

Such an extreme policy will not be generally tolerated. So, to avoid the accumulation of incompetents, administrators have evolved the plan of promoting everyone, the incompetent as well as the competent. They find psychological justification for this policy by saying that it spares students the painful experience of failure.

an employee’s relationship—by blood, marriage or acquaintance—with a person above him in the hierarchy.

Man’s First Mistake: The Wheel

In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence

La competencia de un empleado no es determinada por los extraños, sino por su superior en la jerarquía.

You will see that in every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours.

If man is going to rescue himself from a future intolerable existence, he must first see where his unmindful escalation is leading him. He must examine his objectives and see that true progress is achieved through moving forward to a better way of life, rather than upward to total life incompetence

W. Irving points out that "Your true dull minds are generally preferred for public employ, and especially promoted to city honors." He did not realize that a mind may well be bright enough for a subordinate position, yet appear dull when promoted to prominence, just as a candle is all very well to light a dinner table, but proves inadequate if placed on a lamppost to illuminate a street corner.

W. Irving points out that "Your true dull minds are generally preferred for public employ, and especially promoted to city honors." He did not realize that a mind may well be bright enough for a subordinate position, yet appear full when promoted to prominence, just as a candle is all very well to light a dinner table, but proves inadequate if placed on a lamppost to illuminate a street corner.

tis the curse of service, Preferment goes by letter and affection, And not by old gradation, where each second Stood heir to the first.

In time I saw that all such cases had a common feature. The employee had been promoted from a position of competence to a position of incompetence. I saw that, sooner or later, this could happen to every employee in every hierarchy.

For each individual, for you, for me, the final promotion is from a level of competence to a level of incompetence.

The obsessive feeling that a person who pushes harder than average deserves to advance farther and faster than average. This feeling, of course, has no scientific basis: it is simply a moralistic delusion

Another familiar saying, this one variously attributed to Laurence J. Peter of The Peter Principle and to Yogi Berra, tells us that if we don’t know where we’re going we’ll probably wind up somewhere else. If you don’t know how to contribute to profitability, you’re unlikely to do so effectively.

super-incumbent,” who is “a person above you who, having reached his level of incompetence, blocks your path to promotion”).

The satirical “Peter Principle,” articulated in the 1960s by education professor Laurence J. Peter, states that “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” The idea is that in a hierarchical organization, anyone doing a job proficiently will be rewarded with a promotion into a new job that may involve more complex and/or different challenges. When the employee finally reaches a role in which they don’t perform well, their march up the ranks will stall, and they will remain in that role for the rest of their

The Peter Principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence.

RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.