Peter Principle And Murphy's Law Still Plagues Many

Almost everyone has heard of, and, at least in a general sense, understands the concepts of both the Peter Principle, and Murphy's Law, yet these two concepts, and organizations lack of understanding how they negatively impact, continue to plague many organizations. The Peter Principle says that, in many organizations, the mere fact that someone is somewhat competent in one position often gets them promoted to a higher one, and at some point, they are promoted to their own personal position of incompetence. Murphy's Law includes the idea that whatever might go wrong, generally will. Only organizations that understand these concepts, and plan accordingly, will maintain suitable and prepared leadership. What is amazing, however, is in organizations that have fallen into these traps over a significant period of time, the situation becomes exacerbated because there are already somewhat incompetent or untrained and unprepared leaders who are judging the talents of future leadership.

1. Because so many organizations have neglected true leadership training, they often end up in a situation where they end up believing the use of rhetoric and techno jargon is the same as preparation, understanding and training. When you hear someone in a leadership position continuously using terms like metrics, or referring to generational differences (where they lump all people in a certain age bracket into certain characteristics), or proclaim that changing items like governance will be some sort of magic elixir, it indicates that there is a situation that I refer to as rhetorical leadership, which means that often a little knowledge is more dangerous than none. These individuals often believe that because they have attended seminars, or read books, etc., that they automatically are knowledgable and prepared. When organizations fall into this trap, they tend to promote outwardly nice individuals that they falsely believe are prepared (remarkedly, even when they often have been somewhat incompetent in their present positions), and eventually inherently unprepared individuals attain essential leadership positions.

2. Murphy's Law has an impact because things often do not go as one would ideally wish for. When this happens to an unprepared leader, it often results in crisis decisions, which is often both costly and dangerous. True leaders emphasize preparation and planning, and thus not only design primary plans and courses of action, but also backups and contingency plans. In all positions of leadership or planning, those individuals who check the details, analyze what might go wrong and alternatives available if they do, and proceed in a positive, forward thinking manner, are invariably the ones that do not panic, and proceed in an organized, seamless manner, when situations dictate.

Don't let Peter and Murphy control you and your organization! If everyone and every organization followed the Boy Scout motto of "Be prepaid," the difficulties that organizations with a dearth of leadership would be dramatically reduced.