The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

by Laurence J. Peter

extremely skilled and productive employees often face criticism, and are fired if they don’t start performing worse.

Several fantastic teachers that I know at prestigious universities have been pressured by peers and leaders to do a worse job of teaching because “you are making everyone else look bad.”

“Strategic incompetence isn’t about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds.

in every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours.

in most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.

secrecy is the soul of Push.

Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.

The employee who proves himself good at obeying orders will get promotion to the rank where his job is to give orders.

might say that competence always contains the seed of incompetence.