The Peter Principle: Can Incompetence Be Conquered?

This is the tent location I chose at Scout camp several years ago. It was a perfect location. Then it rained. After that, my front door became the entrance to Lake Crume. This photo reminds me of an important leadership question in the spirit of KWH*. How do we respond to our goofs, mistakes and “uh-oh” moments?

One way to explore an answer to this question is found in the classic book The Peter Principle by Laurence J. Peter.  The basic premise in Peter’s work** is that in a hierarchical organization, every person will eventually rise to her or his level of incompetence. The book is cleverly written, and it includes countless humorous observations including the following.

“A multitude of different explanations is as bad as no explanation at all.”

“You will see that in every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours.”

“Such employees lead only in the sense that the carved wooden figure-head leads the ship.”

Ouch! And pretty funny stuff.

The reason I believe The Peter Principle is accurate is because we are in hierarchicies every day of our our lives. We call them organizations.  Families are organizations with hierarchies.  Businesses, regardless of how flattened the org chart is, are hierarchies.  Nonprofits have a distinct hierarchy.  Since we are in organizations constantly then the most important question becomes, “How do we effectively lead within these contexts?”. I recommend embracing the “ouch” comments above.

Now, back to the photo. Every tent on a platform looks like a good location to camp before it rains! We all have moments of incompetence. What’s important in the spirit of KWH is The Peter Principle kicks in when we no longer care about learning from these moments in order to become a better leader.

Leadership Point: All leaders will face challenging situations. All leaders will make mistakes. The only challenges or mistakes that define us are the ones that prove The Peter Principle correct, which means we have risen to our level of incompetence.

 

* KWH stands for Know What Happened Before What Happened Happened – see previous posts for more about KWH!

**The book The Peter Principle was written by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. Peter is considered the creator of the Principle, and he wrote two additional books on the subject called The Peter Prescription and The Peter Pyramid.

Charlie Brown Leadership: Culture, Communication and Language

This image is me as a Peanuts character, cleverly imagined by the marketing folks of The Peanuts Movie.

Over 50 years ago, Charles Schulz developed one of the world’s most popular artistic expressions.  I’m a cartoonist at heart so Peanuts, featuring Charlie Brown, has shaped my thinking in many ways to include various aspects related to leadership. The culture Schulz created through Peanuts included its own communication style and language.

It has been quite some time since my last post so here’s a refresher as to what this is all about. I believe there are three important aspects to effective leadership.

• Know what happened before what happened, happened (KWH)
• Trust freely given, rather than trust earned (TFG)
• I don’t care what you believe, I care that you care what you believe (CWYB)

This post is part three of the five leadership aspects of KWH.  The previous two were organization and processes. This post is about the importance of organizational culture, communication and language. Now, back to Charlie Brown!

Schulz created an amazing connection with audiences through printed media, television specials and movies. His world of Peanuts clearly had its own culture. This includes a musical connection thanks to the gifted composer and musician named Vince Guaraldi. The opening musical notes of “Linus and Lucy” . . . duh-da-da-duh-da-da-duh-da (it doesn’t matter how I type it, you are already humming it) . . . immediately connects us to Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, Woodstock, Sally and all of their Peanuts friends.

Guaraldi perfectly captured the culture of Peanuts through music. It is as distinct as the communication and language Schulz used for his characters, and his characters had their own own language that reflected their personalities and how they communicated. Charlie Brown is the loveable loser. Lucy is the bossy one. Sally is the daydreamer. Linus is the insecure thinker. They each have unique styles of communicating. We can match their communication style with their language.

• Charlie Brown: “Good grief” or “AAUGH!”
• Lucy: “YOU NEVER LISTEN!” or “Do you know what your trouble is . . .”
• Sally: “My sweet babboo!” or “Kiss her you blockhead!”
• Linus: “There’s a lesson to be learned here . . .” or “The only thing that keeps me going is this blanket”

Then we have Snoopy. Snoopy and his pal Woodstock never used words. Well, Snoopy is a dog and Woodstock is a bird so there’s that point. However, both Snoopy and Woodstock clearly communicated the culture and character of the organization we know as Peanuts.

The Leadership Point: The leadership of an organization shapes the culture of the organization.  The culture of the organization shapes the language used in the organization. The language of the organization shapes how the organization communicates. If you want to understand the leadership of an organization, follow the communication structures and style and listen closely to the language. When you do, you’ll see the leadership style of the Charlie Brown’s and Lucy’s and Sally’s and Linus’s and the entire Peanuts culture.

I’m probably going to start my next blog post with, “It was a dark and stormy night . . .”!

 

Trust: Part 1 – Freely Given!

 

Trust is a tricky issue. Mainly because people have such different perspectives on it. As Inigo Montoya shows in the movie “The Princess Bride” even adversaries can develop some level of trust. And this proves my point. Trust is something we freely share. It is not something anyone can earn.

In American culture we generally consider trust as something one earns. You can’t earn trust. If so, then no matter what someone does to earn that trust, they will let you down at some point and time. And then what? Do they have to “earn it” all over again?

No. We freely give trust. We give it because we want to believe we can trust each other. It is in our godly nature. And we should believe in trust because we know we are flawed. And we will make mistakes. And we will more often than not we will meet expectations. We will also exceed expectations, which presents a joyful surprise.

So, like love . . . like grace . . . like forgiveness . . . like all good things in life, trust is something we freely give.