Alderisi's letter reminded us of Murphy's laws and in particular the "Peter's principle", but also of other corollaries that we report.
We recall, thirty years after the publication of his book (Bompiani publisher, Garzanti collection), the Canadian psychologist Laurence Peter who, together with Raymond Hull, satirically formulated the mechanism of a corporate career.
In fact, Peter's principle postulated that "in every hierarchy an employee tends to rise up to his level of incompetence, therefore every worker will stabilize at the minimum degree of efficiency": this for large private and public companies.
Heller's law
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's corollary
No one really ever knows what's going on anywhere in the organization.
Peter's principle In a hierarchy each member tends to reach his own level of incompetence.
Corollaries
1. Over time, every position tends to be filled by a member who is incompetent to perform that Work.
2. The work is done by those members who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Godin's law
The generalization of incompetence is directly proportional to the height in the hierarchy.
Imhoff's law
The organization of any bureaucracy is much like a sewer: the biggest hitters always emerge.
Cornuelle's law
The authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to carry them out.
Worker's dilemmas
1. No matter how much one does, one can never do enough.
2. What you don't do is always more important than what you do.
Carlo Anibaldi (doctor, scholar of Jung's work) thus comments [Editor's note]:
An individual inserted in a hierarchical scale starts the activity with a precise role, carrying out precise tasks.
If he performs his duties well, he is "promoted", moving on to different tasks. After a certain time, if these new tasks are performed well, a new promotion is triggered. Such promotions lead to said positions apical which, by definition, must be occupied by people with a strong problem solving aptitude.
In any hierarchy, an employee tends to rise to their highest level of incompetence. From this principle it follows that every key post potentially tends to be occupied by an incompetent, i.e. a subject capable of creating more problems than it can solve. Which explains a lot about how many companies and institutions work.
If, on the one hand, it is undoubtedly rewarding to promote a good Machinist Station Master, or a good Chief Medical Officer, on the other, as we have seen, it is not always said that this
