Beginning a disquisition on the vagaries of upward mobility through the ranks of your fellow workers in today's R&D community - how to do it and what to do when you get there
Years of study of the sociology of organizations dealing with modern technology have convinced me that such organizations are quite different from those in other fields. Thus the excellent "P-literature," by Parkinson, Peter and Potter, which describes so clearly most social hierarchies, is inadequate and misleading when applied to the fields of technology.
The Peter Principle, for example, states that "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." We are all familiar with the workings of this principle in typical hierarchies that do not deal primarily with sophisticated technology.
Upon reflection, the Peter Principle seems to be self-evident. One may ponder why it took so long to be recognized. The corollary to it is that "In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties." This explains why even simple things are so often bungled in large organizations.
Avoiding reaching one's level of incompetence in a hierarchy is virtually impossible. Once a promotion has been offered, a person's ego conspires with social pressure to force its acceptance. The hapless engineer who turns down a job as Corporate Vice President because he prefers working as an engineer can only expect problems. How can he explain this to his family and how can his wife explain his lack of ambition to her parents or to her friends? He may refuse the first offer of a promotion, but he is unlikely to refuse the next. Thus begins his inexorable rise to his level of incompetence.
The only satisfactory way to avoid reaching one's level of incompetence, according to Peter is through creative incompetence. This is achieved by developing a high level of incompetence in some area that does not affect one's present performance, but does assure there will be no further offers of promotion. This is a very uncommon tactic for persons in most hierarchies.
It may readily be observed, however, that creative incompetence is the rule rather than the exception in hierarchies in science and technology. Consider, for example, the case of Mr. Bottomly, who had been employed in the development laboratory of a large electronics firm for several years. He learned that his superior was to be promoted and that he was the most likely candidate for the vacated position. The next day he took off his shirt in the laboratory and continued to work in his undershirt, complaining loudly about the heat. When his superior was promoted, it was another member of the group who was chosen to fill the vacancy. Mr. Bottomly soon returned to wearing a shirt, except on the rare occasions when he felt promotions might be under consideration.
Then there is the case of Dr. Schwartz, whose phenomenal grasp of the literature in physical chemistry made him a great asset in the central research laboratory of a major corporation. He was able to carry hundreds of references to the literature in his head and had perhaps 10,000 or more carefully filed away in his office. A query to him about almost any subject in this broad field would invariably produce more information in a few minutes than could be obtained from a library after weeks of searching.
Dr. Schwartz was under consideration to become the manager of the chemistry group until it was learned that he continually misplaced time cards and other administrative records. Even more annoying to the administrative group was the fact that he frequently forgot to cash his own pay checks for weeks at a time, thus making it hard to close out the books at the end of each month. Such traits were unacceptable in a manager, and thus Dr. Schwartz continued for years doing his own research and keeping his well-organized file of the chemical literature as a service to himself and the other chemists in the laboratory.
Editor's Note: We consider ourselves fortunate indeed to be able to present to the R&D world the original work of Archibald Putt, leading (and possibly sole) analyst of the hierarchical intricacies of that world. This is the first in a series of articles in which Putt will describe laws and corollaries he has developed to explain the Sociological structure within which all R&D workers must live.
Perhaps the best known case is that of Albert Einstein, the preeminent scientist of this century. In a time when long hair was not common, his was not only long but bushy. He typically wore an open-collared shirt, old sweater and baggy trousers, and was never known to wear socks under his shoes. Thus he never had to contemplate major administrative jobs and spent his life at positions in university hierarchies where he could concentrate on theoretical physics.
Such examples of creative incompetence are so numerous in science and technology that many low-level positions remain staffed by competent persons who never reach their level of incompetence. Many of these persons find their satisfaction in technical work itself and would be bored and frustrated by administrative responsibility.
However, successful technocrats are not found among the ranks of such plodders of limited vision and ambition. Instead, they are found among those who aspire to eminence through their position in the technical hierarchy. Such men will find their climb upward made easier by the large numbers who choose to remain behind by practicing creative incompetence.
If the large number of persons practicing creative incompetence were the only anomaly in technological hierarchies, we might conclude that individuals aspiring to higher placement would be promoted to their level of incompetence as in any other system. However, there is another anomaly with most interesting consequences; namely, there frequently is no way to judge whether an individual is competent or incompetent to hold a given position. Stated another way, there is no adequate competence criterion for technical managers.
Consider, for example, the manager of a small group of chemists. He asked his group to develop a nonfading system of dyes, using complex organic compounds that they had been studying for some time. Eighteen months later, they reported little success with dyes but had discovered a new substance that was rather effective as an insect repellent.
Should the manager be chastised for failing to accomplish anything toward his original objective, or should he be praised for resourcefulness in finding something useful in the new chemical system? Was 18 months a long time or a short time for this accomplishment? Because no one had ever worked in this chemical system before, how could one judge if the results of the group demonstrated competence or incompetence?
When the first US space laboratory was placed into orbit in May, 1973, its meteroid and thermal shielding and one of its solar cell wings were torn away. A third solar cell wing was jammed closed so that only two of the wings deployed properly. This threatened the mission with failure. Should the project leader have been fired for failure to prevent this problem, or should he have been given a citation for subsequently getting a makeshift parasol erected to shield the laboratory from the sun and getting the jammed wing deployed during a space walk by the astronauts?
In an advanced research or development project, success or failure is largely determined when the goals or objectives are set and before a manager is chosen. While a hard-working and diligent manager can increase the chances of success, the outcome of the project is most strongly affected by preexisting but unknown technological factors over which the project manager has no control. The success or failure of the project should not, therefore, be used as the sole measure or even the primary measure of the manager's competence.
Without an adequate competence criterion for technical managers, there is no way to determine when a person has reached his level of incompetence. Thus a clever and ambitious individual may be promoted from one level of in- competence to another. He will ultimately perform incompetently in the highest level of the hierarchy just as he did in numerous lower levels.
The lack of an adequate competence criterion combined with the frequent practice of creative incompetence in technical hierarchies results in a competence inversion, with the most competent people remaining near the bottom while persons of lesser talent rise to the top. It also provides the basis for Putt's Law, which can be stated in an intuitive and nonmathematical form as follows:
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
As in any other hierarchy, the majority of persons in technology neither understand nor manage much of anything. This, however, does not create an exception to Putt's Law, because such persons clearly do not dominate the hierarchy. While this was not previously stated as a basic law, it is clear that the success of every technocrat depends on his ability to deal with and benefit from the consequences of Putt's Law.
Archibald Putt is the pseudonym (for obvious reasons) of a person with long experience in observing and analyzing the always intricate - and often paradoxical - interplay of personalities in the R&D hierarchy.