Laurence J. Peter Quotes

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up until he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they lay him to rest.

At the bare minimum, you need to be in your position for a year before you ask for a raise or title change.

My first day as a manager was at Digital Equipment in Atlanta. I was a sales rep. I was promoted from among my peers, so one day I was a peer, and the next day I was their boss.

We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.

No one wants to lose their job, or cede the power they've acquired.

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

Every time a new CEO came, I got a promotion till I was made CEO myself.

I think they are grooming me as another Gary Cooper.

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The tendency in lots of large organizations is to try and find a comfortable place where you think you can get measured rewards for measured work.

I have no talent. I have nothing to offer.

You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same ballgame.

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

Up or out" greatly magnified the careerist emphasis on holding a position rather than doing a job.

There is not a man in power at our Bethlehem steel works today who did not begin at the bottom and work his way up.

Keeping your head down and doing the best job you can in the beginning gives you the opportunity to be evaluated on the basis of the contributions you are making. [Then], when you feel strongly about your work or about a position, you'll be given more attention [than] if you hadn't done that constantly.

Whatever job you take on, make yourself valuable, then indispensable.

The myth that the CEO is going to discover you and nurture you and ask you to join her for lunch is just that, a Hollywood myth.

The higher you go up in rank, usually the longer you can dance.

The machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies riddled through and through with incompetence.

It is easier for a man to be thought fit for an employment that he has not, than for one he stands already possessed of, and is exercising.

I got the breaks. Starting from nowhere in the corn belt, I helped edit a country weekly, then was jack-of-all-departments on an obscure daily, so that when I arrived in a big city everything I tackled in the line of column conducting and syndicate peddling and playwriting had to bring promotion, because I had no social standing which could be endangered, no reputation to toss away and no pride which might suffer a setback. Everything I acquired had to be velvet. You cannot lose your silver spoon if you are brought up on pewter.

The fundamental reality for every worker, from sweeper to executive vice-president, is the eight hours or so that he spends on the job. In our society of organizations, it is the job through which the great majority has access to achievement, to fulfillment, and to community.

Corporate men and women, once divided by striking differences in opportunity for career growth, have come to share career chaos.