If you’re in HR, you’ve likely heard of the ‘Peter Principle’. For those who don’t know, put simply it states that in a hierarchy “every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence”. This means that eventually even the best employee will, by virtue of their own limitations, be promoted into a position where they can no longer succeed in their responsibilities.
Anecdotally the ‘Peter Principle’ often goes hand-in-hand with the concept of ‘managing up’, whereby subordinates have to find creative ways to accommodate for the shortcomings of their superiors who have been promoted to the point of incompetence. Purportedly this concept of how hierarchies inevitably work has been around for ages, but the current business environment may be undergoing a change to this stayed hierarchical model.
Two factors are contributing to this imminent reorganization and as an HR Manager you’ll need to be on top of these developments, not only for your sake but for the sake of your employees and your organization.
The first factor is the economic recession and the mildly anemic recovery world markets are experiencing as a consequence. Individuals, organizations and companies are still open for business, but pressure to perform and the costs of mistakes have rarely been higher. With such a narrow margin for error, organizations can ill afford to have incompetent or inefficient employees in key positions.
This situation is further complicated by the imminent wave of Baby Boomers about to join the ranks of retirement communities around the world. Those poised to fill their shoes, coined Generation X, leave a substantial footprint behind; notably, one that the oncoming generation of Millennials does not number enough to fill.
The addition of Millenials to the mix further compounds the situation; the newest generation of employees will be filling the entry-level and middle-management positions left behind by advancing Generation X-ers. This is significant because the Millennial’s Generational Profile highlights technological aptitude, collaborative work environments, high expectations and mutual accountability as some of the key qualities of the latest generation. This creates a situation where positions filled with inefficient and incompetent employees will be starkly contrasted against the rest of the staff roster; ‘managing up’ will no longer be sufficient.
Millennials expect to have access to their superiors in a fashion that is not often seen in pyramidal hierarchical organizations. This impending culture shock between Generation X and the Millenials is not a foregone conclusion and much can be done to offset the impact ripples within a company.
Take a lesson from organization-savvy car manufacturers like Toyota who broke down the Henry Ford production line in favour of small teams of interchangeable engineers who were fully trained on all aspects of manufacturing a vehicle. This dispersal of knowledge creates a network of employees capable of bridging any gap and fosters the collaborative environment that Millennials are purported to favour.
By shifting the structure away from a pyramid to one that increases the possibility of lateral movement within a company, and most importantly presents that as a positive shift, employees can acquire new skills, improve their existing ones and leave behind tasks that they are ill-suited to perform.
Certainly, the idea of a lateral promotion is neither new nor revolutionary, but in light of the current business environment and the imminent arrival of a new generation of employees, ‘sideways’ may have to be the new ‘up’.
