Peter’s Principle

The following are my highlights from the book The Peter’s Principle. The italics are my observations. I have tried to record my observations without any prejudice to any known person to me. If someone is offended, I apologize but I request them to focus on the broader learning rather than on the incident and my remarks.

He concluded: “The morons at the top must be paid to waste as much taxpayer money as possible.”

…why everyone around you seems, or is doomed to become, incompetent.

…a report from 1684 about the British Navy: “The naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence . . . no estimate could be trusted . . . no contract was performed . . . no check was enforced.

Teeter-Totter Syndrome” (“a complete inability to make decisions”) and “Cachinatory Inertia” (“the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business”

How many times we see that at work? People try to tell silly jokes instead of getting on with business. When you meet a high ranked manager trying to be funny with you, he is evidently trying to avoid a decision.

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.

Is this why former England cricket team captain Mike Brearley flourished as a captain at Test level when he was clearly not able to hold a place as a test batsman? Skills required to lead a cricket team are entirely different from those required to enter the team as a player. But if the administration decides to induct the person purely for leadership, if that is in shorty supply, the person’s secondary skills need to be worked upon so that he can be more useful.

Jonty Rhodes was a fielder when he came in to the South African cricket team. His batting wasn’t good enough. But his skills in fielding were so jaw-dropping that the team decided to take him in. Later, he became a useful batsman as well.

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

Is that what has nearly killed my career in Singapore Shell? When I came in the company, I was told by a manager that I get things done by brute force. Now that is startling. How he deduced it was anyone’s guess. But he admitted that things get done when I’m around.

Super competent people - Their presence “disrupts and therefore violates the first commandment of hierarchical life: the hierarchy must be preserved.

“Percussive Sublimation” (“being kicked upstairs: a pseudo promotion”) and “Peter’s Circumambulation” (“a detour around a super-incumbent,” who is “a person above you who, having reached his level of incompetence, blocks your path to promotion.

Paternal Instep (promoting a family member several steps above his or her level of incompetence).

Dr. Peter provides advice for employees who strive to rise to their level of incompetence as quickly as possible. We all fail upward, though some of us do so sooner than others. Dr. Peter explains, for example, how an employee can use a “patron” to pull him up the hierarchy, along with details about how to motivate the patron, how to get around people who block the way, and ways that multiple patrons can join to pull an employee up the hierarchy.

if you give employees accurate feedback about their strengths and weaknesses, they will be motivated to eliminate the weaknesses, and thus perform better.

Anyone can make a mistake. The most competent men throughout history have had their lapses. Conversely, the habitually incompetent can, by random action, be right occasionally.

As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence.

…he must reassess the meaning of life and decide whether he will use his intellect and technology for the preservation of humans and the development of the humanistic characteristics of man, or whether he will continue to utilize his creative potential in escalating a super-colossal death-trap.

appliance manufacturers, as regular policy, establish regional service depots in the expectation—justified by experience—that many of their machines will break down during the warranty period.

In 1940s, British scientists knew that the cheap, simple addition of a little powdered aluminium would double the power of existing explosives, yet the knowledge was not applied till late in 1943.

the reason why schools do not bestow wisdom, why governments cannot maintain order, why courts do not dispense justice, why prosperity fails to produce happiness, why utopian plans never generate utopias?

The superintendent’s main concerns were that no minority group, no matter how fanatical, should ever be offended and that all official forms be submitted on time.

I saw that every organization contained several persons who could not do their jobs.

No company nor country is perfect, there will always be incompetent people around, screwing up things at a pin drop, making your life miserable.

indolent and insolent;

He would not conform to the necessary protocol. He could not turn his tongue to the conventional courtesies and flatteries. He quarrelled with all the dignitaries and took to lying for days at a time, drunk and sulking, in his trailer. The conduct of the war slipped out of his hands into those of his subordinates. He had been promoted to a position that he was incompetent to fill.

The Peter Principle: In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence

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

Peter’s Corollary states: In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. See all around you, younger engineers, who are willing to learn, do the job, while accomplished people, sit and wait for the promotion.

in every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours.

Percussive Sublimation. By vibrating, to move into a position which is socially or culturally more acceptable.

The percussive sublimation is a pseudo-promotion.

My earlier boss was given this type of promotion.

…every thriving organization will be characterized by this accumulation of deadwood at the executive level, consisting of percussive sublimatees and potential candidates for percussive sublimation.

Indian oil (Top public sector oil company in India) had at one point of time, six chief managers in project department; Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited, or BHEL, had general managers everywhere and of all types, assistant, deputy, regional, sub-divisional manager, etc.

The lateral arabesque is another pseudo-promotion. Without being raised in rank—sometimes without even a pay raise—the incompetent employee is given a new and longer title and is moved to an office in a remote part of the building.

Without being raised in rank—sometimes without even a pay raise—the incompetent employee is given a new and longer title and is moved to an office in a remote part of the building.

You may have read of the Irishman, Michael Patrick O’Brien, who was kept for eleven months on a ferryboat plying between Hong Kong and Macao. He did not have the correct papers to get off at either end of the trip, and nobody would issue them to him.

The competence of an employee is determined not by outsiders but by his superior in the hierarchy.

And I for most of my life worked hard to keep myself up to the world standards! A supervisor that is still growing, will evaluate the employees based on providing services his/her department is meant to. On the other hand, if the supervisor has reached the level of incompetence, he/she will focus more on fulfilling rituals - like filled up forms, history logs, attendance in meetings etc.

If the liquor-store clerk had promptly explained the Customs regulations, the traveller would have thought, “How courteous!” But his superior would have marked the clerk down for breaking a rule of the department.

The Peter’s Invert or professional automaton has, as we have seen, little capacity for independent judgment. He always obeys, never decides. This, from the viewpoint of the hierarchy, is competence, so the Peter’s Invert is eligible for promotion.

My ex-boss, as per the manager who hired him, meets most of the qualities of following rules, obeys, never contradicts and most importantly, never decides. Years ago, my brother, decided when he wrote in my copy a note informing her that my parents were away, so I could not get my test paper signed by them. A silly rule that gave the kids so much headache throughout our lives. The teacher read it with scorn and brushed it aside. How dare a school boy write in a student’s notebook!

Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

…the most puzzling of all: the case of the brilliant, productive worker who not only wins no promotion, but is even dismissed from his post.

Probationer-teacher C. Cleary’s first teaching assignment was to a special class of retarded children. Although he had been warned that these children would not accomplish very much, he proceeded to teach them all he could. Nikumbh!

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

Ordinary incompetence, as we have seen, is no cause for dismissal: it is simply a bar to promotion. People like RS, HB, Kth and SC are ordinary incompetents.

three classes of employees:

·         the incompetent,

·         the moderately competent and

·         the competent.

Sloughing off extremes is called Hierarchal Exfoliation. It simply means removing both people who are extremely talented and those who are utterly useless to the organization.

Director Purefoy exceeded his budget and was successful in obtaining a larger budget for the following year. So sometimes when we see someone appointed as an independent position, it may be to spend the money.

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

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.

You may think that your promotion rate depends on the good or bad reports written about you by your immediate superior.

It doesn’t. My supervisor RS was already at his level of incompetence, so it didn't matter what he wrote about me in the year-end appraisal.

…the Patron has something to gain by assisting you, or something to lose by not assisting you, to rise in the hierarchy.

I recall how I thought of explaining my one supervisor Mr. Hum how he was going to benefit by promoting me. It was like motivating the patron(yuck!).

…in an occupational hierarchy, neither your own efforts, nor the Pull of your Patron, can help you if the next step above you is blocked by someone at his level of incompetence

Let us return mentally to the swimming pool. To reach the top of the diving board, you would get off the ladder that is blocked, cross over to the ladder on the other side, and climb without hindrance to the top. What I had to do in 2019. My path was blocked and I had to move aside to climb up.

Peter’s Circumambulation.

Obtain Multiple Patronage “The combined Pull of several Patrons is the sum of their separate Pulls multiplied by the number of Patrons.” (Hull’s Theorem).

Using the Circumambulation without the aid of Pull

In 2019, I applied the circumambulation but also used a pull. In fact, multiple pulls.

To summarize, pull is when someone or many persons at the top try to pull an employee while push is when the employee tries to push himself by using methods like trying too hard to get noticed. She may work harder than others, stay late, come early, undergo training or use improvement courses. This seems logical and acceptable to most minds or, remains the only choice with many employees who have no godfathers. But, essentially, remains futile in hierarchies. I have experienced it in Shell Singapore. In the end I was told by a favoured manager of the company that I use “brute force” to improve performance.

Push is sometimes manifested by an abnormal interest in study, vocational training and self-improvement courses.

In my judgment, the positive and negative effects of study and training tend to cancel each other.

The same applies to other manifestations of Push such as starting work early and staying late. The admiration inspired in some colleagues by these semi-Machiavellian ploys will ultimately be balanced by the detestation it elicits from others.

There are two reasons why the power of Push is so often overestimated. First is 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 that I call The Alger Complex.

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

hierarchiology clearly shows that nothing fails like success,

“You have to be a good follower to be a good leader.”

How can the ability to lead depend on the ability to follow? You might as well say that the ability to float depends on the ability to sink.

He was promoted to the rank of major, and now had to work largely on his own initiative.

Therefore, I feel I can become a good leader because I always do what I like to do. I never waited for the supervisor to give orders. But usually, the leaders will not like if I take decisions on my own volition.

Chatters also spent much time loitering around the office of his colonel. Incompetent middle level leaders always hang around their bosses. For instructions to run their own department.

In most hierarchies, as a matter of fact, employees with the greatest leadership potential cannot become leaders.

He was promoted only because the normal system of ranks and seniority had been disrupted and the hierarchy destroyed or temporarily suspended. In a way, Narendra Modi was also promoted because his party, the BJP hierarchy was destroyed or had become dysfunctional. In a normal scenario, Modi with his unorthodox methods, would not have risen to Prime Ministerial candidate.

…even high ranked employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees lead only in the sense that the carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.

The Marxists have proved as wrong in their analysis as have the capitalist theoreticians.

the machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies, riddled through and through with incompetence.

mountain of dross he has sifted to win one nugget of truth.

scarcely an employee is content to remain at his level of competence: he insists upon rising to a level that is beyond his powers.

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.

Lasting happiness is obtainable only by avoiding the ultimate promotion, by choosing, at a certain point in one’s progress, to abandon one-upmanship, and to practice instead what he might have called Staticmanship.

there is no direct relationship between the size of the staff and the amount of useful work done. Staff accumulation cannot be explained by Parkinson’s conspiracy theory: it results from a sincere, though futile, quest for efficiency by upper-level members of the hierarchy.

Random placement often puts an employee into a position that he is barely competent to fill. His mediocre work is blamed on a vicious character, flabby will-power or plain laziness. He is exhorted to work harder. He is edified with such adages as “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” and “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

The only recommendation that produces an increase of output is “Hire more employees.” In some instances, new recruits will do work which is not being done by the old employees who have reached their level.

…summit competents are often not satisfied to remain in their position of competence.

Say a very successful actor sidesteps into directing films or moves into politics. There are two ways though, one is Rakesh Roshan way, you failed in acting and moved into directing, the other is Aamir Khan way. Another challenge exists for too great people like Viv Richards, the great West Indian Batsman or Sachin Tendulkar, the iconic Indian cricketer awarded with Bharat Ratna, the highest sports honour of India, who must start a new life after dominating the sport. What can they do in which they will reach the summit? Sportspersons who fail to achieve much in their active sporting life, try their hand in coaching – to achieve something out of the sport.

Compulsive Incompetence File, Selected Cases Macbeth, a successful military commander, became an incompetent king. A. Hitler, a consummate politician, found his level of incompetence as a generalissimo.

He had to please the stockholders and board by making money. He had to please the customers by maintaining a high-quality product. He had to please the employees by paying good wages and by providing comfortable, secure working conditions. He had to please his community by fulfilling certain social and family responsibilities.

Smugly reached his level of incompetence through social inadequacy.

Roly achieved his level of incompetence through emotional inadequacy.

Billy has reached his level of incompetence through mental inadequacy.

even a sincere attempt to relieve high-level incompetence may only produce multi-level incompetence.

Final Placement Syndrome.

Good advice is equally ineffective. “Take it easy.” “Don’t work so hard.” “Learn to relax.” Such soothing suggestions are useless.

Advice given to patients suffering from Final Placement Syndrome

The F.P.S. patient is already depressed because he can take no pleasure in his work. Why should he give up the few pleasures he has outside of work? The people who enjoy life besides their work are in certain way, hypocrites. They have no enjoyment at their work, so they are forced to seek joy in other activities. But, they will not accept. Instead, they will harp about work-life balance or active extracurricular life. Have you seen a famous singer or painter doing extracurricular?

Physicians who give this sort of advice do seem to understand, even though dimly, the pathogenic role of incompetence; they try to give the patient a feeling of competence in some non-occupational field.

The competent employee normally keeps on his desk just the books, papers and apparatus that he needs for his work. After final placement, an employee is likely to adopt some unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk. Recall how some people keep statuettes, or create a small garden, patterns with rocks or similar stuff. The more densely populated the desk, the more it indicates that the incumbent does not need promotion. 

Probably every such piece of paper is a reminder to him of the work that he is not able to do: no wonder he hates the sight of it!

Consciously or unconsciously, he thus tries to mask his incompetence by giving the impression that he has too much to do—more than any human being could accomplish.

One teeter-totter victim in government service resolved his problem in an original manner. When he got a case that he could not decide, he would simply remove the file from the office at night and throw it away.

Cachinatory Inertia: A sure mark of final placement is the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business!

They see so much incompetence in the professions that they decide to invest in buildings rather than people and programs. Not only the kings in ancient world, but in modern era too, powerful and rich indulge in monument creation.

The Edifice Complex tends to afflict philanthropists wishing to improve education, health services or religious instruction.

They consult experts in these fields and discover so many at their respective levels of incompetence that formulation of a positive program is impossible.

a note on consultation: we shall find people at their levels of incompetence. so, what is the point of doing it anyway? If you can find a real expert, who is yet to reach his final placement, then it makes sense, otherwise, no point consulting.

…declining church attendance.

When local municipality senses that people aren’t attending church or a temple, which clearly means declining faith or lack of interest, they indulge in building a new church or a temple, or if not possible, putting up new statues, louder music or wilder “jagraata” nights or in some ridiculous manner, enhancing the grandiose of the temple or mosque to attract more people. Therefore, every decade or so, somewhere someone decides to build a church. The do not debate why the faith is dwindling, instead pour in money in construction and bring people back. Some jobless people join the “temple construction committees” and take up arbitrary role. When a local bigwig comes to see the how far the construction works have progressed, they join them to provide a devoted overview.

Jagraata : a religious gathering, especially popular in north India, where people assemble near a temple or at a temporary location and sing religious songs for the entire night, often loud enough to keep the entire neighbourhood awake.

The old minister was retained at his low salary.

a recipe for disaster; if people have reached their level of incompetence, just replace them or ask them to move on. A person in Shell Singapore, who was the site maintenance manager for some years, when proven incompetent, was retained at a lower position. Foolish decision by the Company.

…structurophilia victim has a pathological need to have a building or monument named in his honour, whereas the Edifice Complex afflicts those who are trying to improve the quality of some human endeavour but end up by only producing another building. Now it looks positive, but a higher education school or a medical college started in a town where people are traditionally craftsmen or in businesses is not a useful effort. Instead, means to improve trade facilities to bring in more customers can be more helpful.

Tics and Odd Habits of people in final placement syndrome, F.P.S.

... under this head such habits as nail biting, drumming with fingers or tapping with pencils on desks, cracking knuckles, twiddling pens, pencils and paper clips, the purposeless stretching and snapping of rubber bands, and heavy sighing with no apparent cause for grief. Often F.P.S. goes unnoticed because the sufferer adopts the pose of staring off into the middle distance for indefinite lengths of time. Untrained observers are inclined to think he is absorbed in the awesome responsibility of high office. Hierarchiologists know otherwise.

How well can I agree with such observations? I too have been into final placement for now. I tap fingers on the table, fiddle for clips, needlessly, untangle them and try to put back - a sure sign of lack of challenge. I too investigate nowhere for indefinite lengths of time. People must be thinking that I am lost in a problem I am trying to solve, but what I am doing is passing the time.

Some employees, on final placement, stop thinking, or at least sharply cut down on their thinking.

To mask this, they (FPS people) develop lines of General-Purpose Conversation or, in the case of public figures, General Purpose Speeches. These consist of remarks that sound impressive, yet which are vague enough to apply to all situations, with perhaps a few words changed each time to suit the particular audience.

Spend sufficient time in confirming the need, and the need will disappear.

For example, in organizing famine relief, study the need long enough, and you will eventually find that there no longer is any need for relief!

on the principle that since he so well understood the mighty, he should be highly competent to help the weak.

Side-Issue Specialization

Side-Issue Specialists is to look after the molehills and the mountains will look after themselves.

…Tredwell spent much time prowling the building looking for violations of his system; he wrote many articles about it for professional journals; he escorted visiting groups of Side-Issue-Specialist educators on tours of the building; he is at present engaged in writing a book on the subject, illustrated with many plans and photographs. He is active and contented, and enjoys perfect health, with not the slightest sign of the Final Placement Syndrome.

Reminds me of a certain operations’ manager in Shell Singapore- an obvious failure with the more important issues of operations management but happy with writing emails to all in which he introduces references to the movies or notable sports/social personalities. He uses glitzy graphics to display unit performance, which can be easily given by plain facts and figures. He seems to be happy with this. At times, he invites people to write for him a  paragraph, paragraph which he includes in his write up. This impresses others and makes him a people's man. He never displayed enough patience while understanding the deeper issues; always seemed eager to end such meetings early.

Mrs. Vender, an Excelsior City high-school mathematics teacher, spends a great deal of class time telling her pupils how interesting and important mathematics is. She lectures on the history, present state and probable future development of mathematics. The actual work of learning mathematics she assigns to the students as home study.

The rule is: for achieving personal satisfaction, an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Peter’s Placebo is well understood by politicians at all levels. They will talk about the importance, the sacredness, the fascinating history of the democratic system (or the monarchic system, or the communist system or the tribal system as the case may be) but will do little or nothing toward carrying out the real duties of their position.

A lot of people in corporate do that. An Engineering Manager would state the importance of engineering in every engagement but do little to strengthen it.

…the technique is much used, too, in the arts. A. Fresco, a painter in Excelsior City, produced a few successful canvases and then appeared to run out of artistic inspiration.

Karan Johar – the Indian film maker of Kuch-Kuch Hota hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham is such an example in cinema. He did a few successful movies and then apparently has ran out of ideas. He now runs a career by interviewing people, gossips and regurgitating his past success.

Perpetual Preparer, the Side-Issue Specialist and the Image Promoter,

Many a woman who has reached her level of incompetence as wife and/or mother achieves a happy, successful Substitution by devoting her time and energy to Utter Irrelevance and leaving husband and children to look after themselves.

Finding himself incompetent to carry out all the duties of his position, the Convergent Specialist simply ignores most of them and concentrates his attention and efforts on one small task. If he is competent to do this, he will continue with it; if not, he will specialize still more narrowly.

How many such people have we seen! I recall (not in too much esteem) one of my supervisors, who obviously could not have done justice to large set of duties he was given, so he concentrated on making spreadsheets.  He would create utter irrelevant mathematical indices to represent manufacturing unit’s performance, indices that were clearly a micro-specialization.

Several physicians have made reputations by studying some disease of which there are only three or four known cases, while others have become specialists who deal only in one small area of the body.

The blunt refusal of an offered promotion is known as Peter’s Parry.

deliberate incompetence,

Eureka! This is an infallible way to avoid the ultimate promotion; this is the key to health and happiness at work and in private life; this is Creative Incompetence.

Stand Out from the Crowd, refusal to pay one’s share of the firm’s or department’s Social Fund; refraining from drinking coffee at the official coffee break; bringing one’s own lunch to a job where everyone else eats out; persistent turning off of radiators and opening of windows; refusing contributions to collections for wedding and retirement gifts; a mosaic of stand-offish eccentricity (the Diogenes Complex) will create just the modicum of suspicion and distrust which disqualifies you for promotion.

One highly successful department manager avoided promotion by occasionally parking his car in the space reserved for the company president.

A different explanation of the same: How I never knew that bringing our own food would be a reason for standing out in the crowd and a reason for becoming ineligible for promotion? One may laugh over it and argue, but I sense now that coming to Exxon Mobil office with that black polythene bag was a costly mistake. The constant noise of that bag when I moved around with it killed my prospects.  And no one told me that. I should have purchased a popular office bag (just copied what my manager used), purchased a car, went out for drinks and eaten in the canteen.  Of course, I was ignorant.

Creative Incompetence.

concealing the fact that you want to avoid promotion!

Man has achieved many promotions in the life-hierarchy. Each promotion thus far—from tree dweller to caveman, to fire lighter, to flint knapper, to stone polisher, to bronze smelter, to iron founder and so on—has increased his prospects of survival as a species.

man must reach his level of life-incompetence.

competence always contains the seed of incompetence.

A pupil was promoted,

grade by grade, until he reached his level of incompetence. Then he was said to have “failed” Grade 5 or 8 or 11, etc. He would have to “repeat the grade”; that is, he would have to remain at his level of incompetence.

Remember how a student failed in class 3rd, joined me, then passed 4th, then failed again. He was reaching his level of incompetence.

School officials do not like this system: they think that the accumulation of incompetent students lowers the standard within the school.

This hoarding of dull students lowers the standard by reducing the average achievement.

Educational certificates, diplomas and degrees are losing their value as measures of competence.

The modern certificate proves only that the pupil was competent to endure a certain number of years’ schooling.

This is the reason why degrees, certificates and ranks are losing value. Anyone can be a high school graduate, or a senior engineer, because promotion IS to be given. Companies can hold people ta lower ranks, but schools cannot, since they worry about their reputation more than a company. If one school promotes all worse students, sooner most schools would do that.

 We used to hear about shifting to a lower school; no school likes to be called that so that avenue is also closed for students.

Then it was found that there was an increasing number of literate fools,

Now there are even more, with internet access and information overflow.

You can apply the power of negative thinking. Ask yourself, “How would I like to work for my boss’s boss?”

Man would be better off without the promotion to space traveller. But, as we have seen, it is no easy thing to refuse a promotion. The safe, pleasant, effective way is to seem not to deserve it: this is creative incompetence.

At present, a student who “fails” Grade 8 is sublimated to Grade 9. Under my plan, he would be arabesqued from Grade 8 to a year, say, of Freshman Academic Depth Study.

Means move students aside, as is done in the companies. Instead of failing them, thereby forcing to repeat the grade, which lowers school's reputation, or promoting them, which ultimately reduces worth of degrees. So, the system in Singapore is best, where weaker students are set aside as in lateral arabesque. Those prevented from studying with smarter students, are prepared for diploma or technical institutions. Therefore, this way in Singapore, neither the school's reputation is not diluted, nor is the value of university degree.

The technique has proved successful with individuals at work.

Incompetent workers, instead of striving for promotion, would lecture eloquently on the dignity of labor.

Incompetent educators would give up teaching and spend their time extolling the value of education.

Incompetent space travellers would write science fiction.

Peter’s Palliatives and Placebos would ensure that those who had achieved their levels of incompetence were kept harmlessly busy, happy and healthy.

This is what is practices in Exxon Mobil. When a leader is past his shelf life, make him a mentor. Say, an Electrical Manager has been around for many years, blocking the way for brighter engineers. Move him to a mentoring role, so that leadership can be handed to a deserving one.

Space permits no further elaboration.

Improving the quality of life, in other words, through avoiding life-incompetence.