88Pro Thinking

Whilst on a mission to help my friend set up a weblog amidst loads of bugging about the quotes used in my blogs, he came up with a very interesting quote by Jaon Wooden which says:

"Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there."

Immediately I was reminded of an interesting weblog by James Gosling about the book The Peter Principle and here is the summery of the book in Gosling words:

[Gosling]
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. Why this should be is pretty obvious: if someone is good at what they do, they get a promotion. Eventually they get to where they're not good enough to get the next promotion, so they stay there: at their level of incompetence.
[/Gosling]

Putting these together it feel it could also be stated that:

"Ability may get you to the top, but it takes inability to keep you there." - Senthoor

Sadly it neither takes ability nor character to take you to the top these days ... probably inability takes you a long way :-)

For those who only believe mathematical proofs you can find the proof here for Peter Principle.

There ends the fun part.

Here is a PDF "The Peter Principle: A Theory of Decline" from "Journal of Political Economy". Moreover, if you think the whole thing is a joke get serious now.

See also Inverse Promotions


posted by 88Pro / Thursday, December 18, 2003