The Peter Principle

The abridged version of this principle states, people are promoted to their level of incompetency.

What is incompetency? It is the quality or condition of being incompetent, a lack of ability.

You will find many scenarios like this:
A salesperson is out in the field of sales and is doing very well at that level.
Individuals in charge decide this quality of performing well in sales makes them suited for a promotion to a higher level.
The salesperson’s performance at the new higher position stalls or flattens and they do not move up any further.

Here can be seen the salesperson is excellent at sales but not the higher position at the company.
Why?
An oversimplification would be the individual here does not have the ability to perform as well at the higher level.
Their best performance is what they were doing previously.
However, others believed excellent performance at the lower level would translate into similar performance at higher levels.

Companies and careers have been ruined by this line of thinking.

The truth is, performance at one level does not mean that performance will be maintained at another level.

Often, outstanding performers move up to mediocrity. Sounds like that shouldn’t be the case. Who would want to be mediocre?

But if you think about it, there may be explanations for the stall.

The number of “what if’s” would be too great to number here. However, think about it for a bit and think “Why someone might stay at that level?”