{"id":16531,"date":"2016-04-12T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=16531"},"modified":"2016-04-12T07:00:52","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T11:00:52","slug":"peter-parkinson-and-adams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/peter-parkinson-and-adams\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter, Parkinson and Adams"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Parkinson'sC. Northcote Parkinson, Lawrence J. Peter, and Scott Adams<\/strong> are for me the ‘holy trinity’ of philosophers of modern bureaucracy, within both the public service and the corporate structure. As philosophers,\u00a0they are all keen observers and witty commentators on the human condition, with emphasis on the\u00a0nature of organizations, leadership and management.<\/p>\n

Not always in the lofty or strategically-focused terms of, say, Sun Tzu or Machiavelli; all three are more prosaic and more cynical. And funnier – an adjective seldom used with either classical writer.<\/p>\n

These three pundits are, of course, well-known today: every CEO, corporate leader and ambitious\u00a0manager worth their salt\u00a0knows and has read their work. All are required reading in many business courses and workshops. Even dedicated, effective\u00a0elected government officials and elected representatives have read them (Stop that guffawing, you local residents…)<\/p>\n

Parkinson’s Law<\/a>, first formulated in a magazine article in 1955<\/a>, is that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Which might explain why putting together a shared services agreement<\/a> between Collus Powerstream and the town has taken more than a year to do what most people could do in an afternoon over a beer.<\/p>\n

\"Dilbert<\/a><\/p>\n

Parkinson also created the idea of the “coefficient of inefficiency,” a parameter to describe how committees become increasingly less efficient as their size grows until they\u00a0become completely and utterly inefficient.<\/p>\n

Parkinson’s theory was based on quantity: the greater the size of the organization the lower its efficiency, pointing to trends based on English history. I, however, tend to measure quality over quantity in such situations. Five bobbleheads are, for example, more\u00a0inefficient in a committee than, say, 50 independent-thinking geniuses. While the latter might accomplish something useful given enough time, the former merely bloviate.<\/p>\n

Another contribution was Parkinson’s Law of Triviality<\/a> which states that “members of an organisation give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.” Or as Parkinson phrased it, “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved.” His example was a committee debating the development of an expensive, complex nuclear plant: it spent more time debating the construction of its bicycle shed than any major component.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has followed council budget discussions recognizes this law in practice: significantly more time is spent on small amounts than on the big ticket items. Except of course this term, when staff told council what to think during the budget discussions, and refused to answer questions. The Bobbleheads accepted this process, thus quickening the timeline\u00a0by skirting the messy business\u00a0of democracy, and\u00a0frank, open discussion.<\/p>\n

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Parkinson derived many laws about civil service<\/a> and bureaucracy from his research, such as “Delay is the deadliest form of denial,” and\u00a0“A person denied the possibility of making important decisions will regard as important those decisions he is allowed to make.”<\/p>\n

He\u00a0pointed to the historical growth\u00a0of the bloated British civil service and declared that,<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals,\u00a0and<\/li>\n
  2. Officials make work for each other.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Then there’s Parkinson’s brilliantly witty \u00a0theory about “Injelititis” – a portmanteau word cobbled together from INcomptence and JEaLousy. It is, he wrote<\/a>, a self-induced disease, the cause of bureaucratic and organizational paralysis:<\/p>\n

    WE FIND everywhere a type of organization (administrative, commercial, or academic) in which the higher officials are plodding and dull, those less senior are active only in intrigue against each other, and the junior men are frustrated or frivolous. Little is being attempted. Nothing is being achieved. And in contemplating this sorry picture, we conclude that those in control have done their best, struggled against adversity, and have finally admitted defeat.
    \n… The first sign of danger is represented by the appearance in the organization’s hierarchy of an individual who combines in himself a high concentration of incompetence and jealousy. …when these two qualities reach a certain concentration– represented at present by the formula I3J5– there is a chemical reaction. The two elements fuse, producing a new substance that we have termed “injelitance.”
    \nThe presence of this substance can be safely inferred from the actions of any individual who, having failed to make anything of his own department, tries constantly to interfere with other departments and gain control of the central administration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Parkinson adds that once in control, the injelitant manager works aggressively to cement his authority by eliminating anyone who might be more competent or smarter and avoiding visionary activities:<\/p>\n

    The next or secondary stage in the progress of the disease is reached\u00a0when the infected individual gains complete or partial control of the\u00a0central organization… The injelitant individual is easily recognizable\u00a0at this stage from the persistence with which he struggles to eject all\u00a0those abler than himself, as also from his resistance to the appointment or\u00a0promotion of anyone who might prove abler in course of time…\u00a0Judgment …\u00a0signifies in this\u00a0context the opposite of intelligence; it means, in fact, doing what was done\u00a0last time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The disease progresses until the end:<\/p>\n

    The next or tertiary stage in the onset of this disease is reached when\u00a0there is no spark of intelligence left in the whole organization from top to\u00a0bottom…\u00a0It is as if the whole institution had been sprayed with a DDT\u00a0solution guaranteed to eliminate all ability found in its way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    It’s a pretty damning satire and I’m sure you will find in it echoes of any political or bureaucratic situation you consider,\u00a0local or otherwise.<\/p>\n

    Back in 1968,\u00a0Lawrence J. Peter<\/a> proposed his law about management that said: in an organization people rise to their level of incompetence. Or in more general terms, “Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.”<\/p>\n

    People who are\u00a0good at their jobs jobs keep getting promoted until they reach the level where they can no longer function effectively or efficiently. They reach their level of incompetence. The danger to the organization is when they are allowed to continue in that role.<\/p>\n

    As Wikipedia<\/a> says, Peter also “… coined the term hierarchiology as the social science concerned with the basic principles of hierarchically organized systems in the human society.”
    \n    \"Dilbert<\/a><\/p>\n

    Peter wrote that poor or incompetent managers will help more competent subordinate staff fail, or even dismiss them when it appears they will “…violate the first commandment of hierarchical life with incompetent leadership: [namely that] the hierarchy must be preserved.”<\/p>\n

    This hearkens\u00a0back to Parkinson’s “injelititis” remarks.\u00a0When\u00a0someone wants to be the smartest person in the room, they lower the bar to a more attainable\u00a0level by removing anyone who might be smarter.<\/p>\n

    \"Dunning-Kruger<\/a>The Dunning-Kruger Effect<\/a> is closely related to the Peter Principle because it points to a certain self-delusion of competence. It hypothesizes that, “…unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority. They mistakenly rate their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to their inadequate ability to recognize their own ineptitude.” For a given skill, researchers found that incompetent people will:<\/p>\n