Kevin Kelly on principles: The Peter Principle and the Shirky Principle

Kevin Kelly coins a new term, The Shirky Principle: “complex solutions (like a company, or an industry) can become so dedicated to the problem they are the solution to, that often they inadvertently perpetuate the problem.” Sadly, though, he refers to the Peter Principle in devising the term.

The Peter Principle “says that a person in an organization will be promoted to the level of their incompetence. At which point their past achievements will prevent them from being fired, but their incompetence at this new level will prevent them from being promoted again, so they stagnate in their incompetence.” It was developed by Dr. Lawrence Peter in the 1960’s. I think it may have had alot of revelance in the 1960s and the 1970s, but when I started working in the 1980s, a new phenomena was occurring. In the 1980s, you had the notion of plateauing. With plateauing, no one was being promoted, competent or incompetent. The Peter Principle was, if not void, was severely limited. People at higher stations in the company who started work in the 1950s and 1960s may have experienced the Peter Principle, but people who started work after the baby boomers had been promoted did not. Indeed, may people who suffered from plateauing had a different outlook on work than the baby boomers, an outlook that was resigned to not getting promoted, and looked at work differently.  The same was even more true for new employees that came after that.

That leads me back to The Shirky Principle.  I wonder at what point it will no longer be true. It may be that it has no sooner been stated that it is already becoming obsolete.