CHAPTER 1
The Peter Principle at Work
A problem cannot be solved if you don’t know what it is! Even if it was already solved, you’d still have the problem because you wouldn’t recognize that it has been solved. Who can see that a problem has been solved if he thinks the problem is something else?
—Lesson 79from A Course in Miracles, The Foundation for Inner Peace
Chief executive officers differentiate themselves from their peers by their capability to disprove Dr. Laurence J. Peter’s Principle, which states, “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”1 In other words, the Peter Principle suggests there is a cause-and-effect relationship between promotion and occupational incompetence.
Business leaders seem obsessed ...
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