Scientific Definition
Incompetent employees are promoted to management to limit their workflow damage.
Plain-English Definition
Incompetent employees are promoted to management to limit their workflow damage.
Feynman Explanation
The least capable person is moved where they can do the least harm.
Core Principle
Incompetent employees are promoted to management to limit their workflow damage.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Incompetent employees are promoted to management to limit their workflow damage.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Promotions often follow Peter's cousin.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The least capable person is moved where they can do the least harm.
Examples
- A bad engineer becomes a manager and becomes a worse manager.
- Promotions often follow Peter's cousin.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Separate management track from technical track and reward both.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Separate management track from technical track and reward both.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
People are promoted until they reach a position where they are incompetent.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Disagreement grows more extreme as the parties think more about the issue.
Systematic errors in explaining the causes of behavior — yours or others'.
We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.
Adding the word 'because' (with any reason) increases compliance dramatically.
Behaviors spread through groups via observation and imitation.