「彼得原理」(Peter Pinciple)是業界的一位Ａ大爺常向我提及的。每每在我問他，今年有沒有升官，他總是告訴我：「升官沒有用啦，那就是人家說的『快死𣍐老』。」然後說自己能力有限，做這個位子都應接不暇了， 再(升)上去就『快死𣍐老』，接著就會提一次「彼得原理」：在組織中，人都會被擢升到不能勝任的位子。在我們閒聊抱怨公司一些高階主管，或人員晉升時，似乎也很常提到。

畫了著名的呆伯特漫畫的史考特·亞當斯(Scott Adams)也以揶揄的方式對「彼得原理」重新詮釋：公司有系統地把工作能力最差的員工提升到管理層，因為實質上管理者沒做什麼事，所以也不會對公司造成什麼損害。這就是「呆伯特法則」(Delbert Principle)。

不論是「彼得原理」或「呆伯特法則」總會令第一次聽到的人莞爾而笑，但是仔細思量，心裡也有不小的無奈。

大爺所說的「快死𣍐老」其實我一直不太懂其真正的義涵；可能是升上去的話，工作更多，會做到死。這兩三年來，我的理解應該已經接近他想表達的意思；雖然我之前的理解也不算錯，但不精準。這應該加上組織政治層面的思考：一但成為真正的高階經理人，就成為許多人鬥爭的目標了，尤其在那樣的大公司裡；人事或派系鬥爭的結果，如果鬥輸了，通常會被調到一個小部門，然後不久就離職了。離職通常來自組織當權派的壓力，也有自身面子的考量(雖說是虛名，也會造成不小的壓力)。「快死𣍐老」－很快就陣亡了，沒辦法做得久。

「彼得原理」說的是會被升到「不能勝任的位子」，這個「能」除了意願、自律、專業技能、學習、應變、溝通、協調、團隊合作等能力之外，也要有堅忍的精神，還有一項很少被提及，卻十分重要的能力－「政治手腕」。這是大學商學院課程裡完全沒有提到的部份，企管課本裡也幾乎沒有論述。或許三國誌，或是中國拍攝的歷史電視連續劇《康熙帝國》《雍正王朝》比任何 Management 課本更適合作為「政治手腕」的教材。

這位Ａ大爺，還真是深得「彼得原理」的智慧，而且加以運用！ ---- 待續

 This column will change your life 

Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian, Saturday 10 January 2009

Forty years ago this year, a crotchety ex-schoolteacher named Laurence Peter published The Peter Principle,answering a question that millions, surely, had asked: why does theworld contain so many people who are so strikingly useless at theirjobs? Droll curmudgeon though he was, Peter's now-famous principleidentified a real problem: inhierarchical organisations, people tend to rise to their "level of incompetence". Being good at your job gets you promoted, and so on,ever upwards, until your performance isn't good enough to warrant advancement. Seen this way, it's no accident that companies and governments are filled with bunglers - they're giant machines forsorting people into precisely the jobs they can't do. The cartoonist Scott Adams offers the only marginally less depressing Dilbert Principle: modern corporations systematically promote their least talented staff to the ranks of management where, since managers don't really do anything,they're mainly harmless.


It'seasy to see why you might accept a job despite knowing it exceeded your capacities: better pay, prestige, unwillingness to admit your limits.  But the problem of incompetence goes deeper. One of the hallmarks of being terrible at something, it turns out, is not realising howterrible you are.

The key study here is called Unskilled And Unaware Of It,and assuming that the Cornell psychologists who conducted it weren't themselves unsuspectingly incompetent, its conclusions are unsettling. "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt," Bertrand Russell wrote. The Cornell study concurs: those who scored worst in various tests requiring "knowledge, wisdom or savvy" werethose who most overestimated their performance; top achievers tended to underestimate.  A special version of this problem preoccupies the business scholar Michael Gerber, whose book The E-Myth Revisited("e" stands for "entrepreneur") makes a devastatingly simple case for why most small businesses fail. People assume that having a skill -baking, say - means they'll be skilled at running a business doing that thing - opening a bakery. But there's no necessary connection; indeed,a keen baker is likely to find tasks such as book-keeping so aggravating, because they get in the way of baking, that he'll do them especially badly.


Even if you're fortunate enough to recognise your weaknesses, you may not respond wisely. According to Gallup research compiled by the marketing expert Marcus Buckingham, most people try to "plug" their weaknesses, while the really successful focus on exploiting strengths.  The weakness-plugger is the employee who goes on courses to become less awful at public speaking, when she'd be better off in a job that calls on her written skills. But you'll rarely improve a weakness beyond mediocrity, argues Buckingham, not least because it's hard to invest sustained energy in something you don't enjoy. If you truly know what you're bad at, you're already ahead of the pack.  Don't throw that away by wasting your time getting slightly less bad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/10/burkeman-work-incompetence-skills-wellbeing

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Thestory was taken from the Guardian.  The copyright remains with itsoriginal owner.  The author and the Guardian are not involved with, norendorse the production of this blog.


Photo taken in Houshan, Yangminshan National Park, Taipei  by Frank  2007.4.21