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Thu, 05 Feb 2004
Avoiding the Peter Principle
In post titled "Stop Promoting People" on the Fast Company blog, Linda Kaplan Thalder proposes that rewarding people by promoting them can be counterproductive (The Peter Principle is what results when people are promoted willy nilly)

She proposes that corporate America take a lesson from the arts:

Picasso wasn't interested in becoming a curator. Meryl Streep is an extraordinary actress, but that doesn't mean she wants to or would be any good at running a studio. Why does corporate America insist on taking your job away from you if you're good at it and serve it up as a promotion?
...
It's no wonder those people look so happy on the red carpet. Actors and actresses are rewarded with higher salaries and juicier roles not new positions. Moving up the ladder can easily lead to a place where one's greatest gifts are never used.

You see this in sports as well as the arts. You don't promote a start running back to quarterback, much less to coach.

I think that people are born to tasks, and that many of us are in search of the task or kind of work that we were made for. How will we find it? How will we know whether we are getting closer or farther away? Are our minds clear enough to tell? Are we brave enough to find out?

[00:19] | [misc] | # | TB | F | G | 3 Comments | Other blogs commenting on this post
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I work at the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF).
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