The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

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

This dangerously simple maxim of organisational dysfunction, first spelt out more than thirty-three years ago, has wormed its way into everyday management vocabulary.

The Peter Principle is rife wherever hierarchies exist—multinational companies, local government, the Civil Service, hospital management, the groves of academe and public transport. There is no escape: promotion, like the paths of glory, leads but to the grave of over-promotion.

The Peter Principle is required reading for all those now setting their feet on the first rung of the promotional ladder, their starry-eyed gaze fixed on the heights above them. Do they really want to scale a peak from which their fate can only be a dismal shunting into oblivion?

But all is not lost. Those who shrink from the horror of the Final Placement may seek salvation in a deviously cunning strategy. It will demand diligence and a talent for dissembling, but it may just avert the unwanted, ultimate promotion.

A classic masterpiece of management humour, written by a man who spent most of his working life teaching in universities, The Peter Principle is a massive international best-seller, and its message has never been more relevant than it is today. The wickedly barbed cartoons which adorn its pages add graphic comment to truths that our colleagues—but not, of course, ourselves—would do well to digest.

‘For anybody who has ever worked in or (God rest his soul) been head of a big public or private organization this devlish little book will provide unending material for uneasy reflection.’—Hugh Greene, The Sunday Times