The Gervais Principle : have you heard of it?

B

Bond James

Not sure it's the right thread, I'll just post it here.

It's an increasingly popular view on the organization of the modern corporation. Basically it's a pyramid-shaped hierarchy with executives at the top, middle managers at the, well, middle and grunts at the base. The interesting part is attributing 'funny names' to these archetypes: the bottom ones are called 'losers', mid level are the 'clueless' and at the top are the 'sociopats'.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
 
You won't see much discussion about the Gervais principle because it's a catch-22.

The companies that would benefit (on an aggregate level) from discussing this principle are the companies where this principle cannot be discussed and the organizations where the concepts of this principle can be discussed do not need a discussion about it's concepts.
 
That's a mirror of any hierarchical societal structure, which by default they all are. If you want to understand corps better look into the Peter Principle. It better defines corporate reality.
 
There are alternative theories. Michael O Church has some interesting interpretations: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.co...ods-hierarchy-the-technocrat-and-vc-startups/

I'm gonna quote from his post:

The “Peter Principle” is the claim that people are promoted up to their first level of incompetence, and stay there.

Scott Adams has proposed an alternative theory of low-merit promotion: the Dilbert Principle. According to it, managers are often incompetent line workers who were promoted “out of harm’s way”.

Finally, there’s the Gervais Principle, developed by Venkatesh Rao, which asserts that organizations respond both to performance and talent, but sometimes in surprising ways. Low-talent high-performers (“eager beavers” or “Clueless”) get middle management roles where they carry the banner for their superiors, and high-talent low-performers (“Sociopaths”) either get groomed for upper-management or get fired. High-talent high-performers aren’t really addressed by the theory, and there’s a sound reason why. In this case, the talent that matters most is strategy: not working hard necessarily, but knowing what is worth working on.
 
Peter Principle: “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence”.

The right interpretation of the Peter Principle (borrowing Gervais insight): companies tend to tap people for leadership roles based on their success as subordinates, while good leaders make shitty subordinates and good subordinates make ineffective leaders, because the ones who subordinate well are the people who just don’t care about doing things right.

(from https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/the-software-career-and-the-second-design-paradox/ )
 
Note I used the word "reality". If you want to encounter the truth get a job working with a major consulting team and forget the book sellers, comic strip writers.
The most recent example of the Peter Principle at work was Steve Ballmer @ MSFT. The word on him was "never has someone done so little with so much". A current example in play now is Marissa Mayer with YHOO. She won't last much longer.
Books full of other peoples ideas are no match for experience.
 
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