This may not specifically be about compensation, but it is completely about life in organizations -- where we are all challenged to make reward and performance programs work.
The classic business bestseller The Peter Principle, first published in 1969 by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, is being re-released later this month with a wonderful new forward by Bob Sutton (here in its entiretyas part of an exclusive sneak peak by BusinessWeek online). In re-introducing the book, Sutton talks about the particular delight that his father, who ran a company that sold and installed furniture and equipment on U.S. Navy ships, took in the book:
My father loved The Peter Principle because it explained why life could be so maddening—and why everyone around you seems, or is doomed to become, incompetent. The people who ran the U.S. Navy and the shipyards didn't intend to do such lousy work. They were simply victims of Dr. Peter's immutable principle. They had been promoted inevitably, maddeningly, absurdly to their "level of incompetence." Dr. Peter also taught my father not to expect the few competent bureaucrats and managers he encountered to stick around for long, as they would soon be promoted to a job that they were unable to perform properly. Dr. Peter even showed that such incompetence had pervaded my dad's business for hundreds of years. The book quotes a report from 1684 about the British Navy: "The naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence…no estimate could be trusted…no contract was performed…no check was enforced."
Particularly delightful is the pseudoscientific jargon that Dr. Peter invented to describe the motivation and behaviors displayed by those "languishing at their level of incompetence". Check out these gems...
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Final Placement Syndrome - the condition of incompetence that forms the root of the entire book.
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Tabulatory Gigantism - an obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues.
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Teeter-Totter Syndrome - a complete inability to make decisions
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Cachinatory Inertia - the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business
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Percussive Sublimation - being kicked upstairs: a pseudo promotion
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Peter's Circumambulation - a detour around a super-incumbent, who is a person above you who, having reached his level of incompetence, blocks your path to promotion.
Gotta love it. I understand that the book shows its age with some archaic moments and even sexist examples (evident even in the definitions above); however, my copy is already on order.
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