02/26/2018

Your Hotshot Coworker Would be a Terrible Boss

Research proves it

In the classic 1969 business book parody The Peter Principle, the Canadian educator Laurence J. Peter took aim at an “ever-present, pestiferous nuisance” found in industries of all sorts: managerial incompetence. The explanation for it, Peter wrote, was his titular principle—that any employee in a hierarchy will rise to the level of his or her own incompetence. (“This Means You!” the book noted cheerily in a subhead.)

Organizations, Peter and his co-author Raymond Hull argued, tend to reward good performance at the rank-and-file level with promotion to management, even when the roles demand utterly different skills. Great teachers don’t necessarily make great principals. Star athletes often flop as team executives. A person good at selling widgets may be hopeless at managing a team of widget salespersons.

The observation about sales organizations is the basis for a new research paper (not yet peer reviewed) from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. Researchers Alan Benson from the Carlson School of Management, Danielle Li of MIT Sloan and Kelly Shue from the Yale School of Management looked at the career paths of more than 53,000 salespeople at 214 U.S. companies between 2005 and 2011.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Quartz.