00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to the show. Everyone joining me today is the great state of California no, ah, it's it feels like that. But we've got Andrew in California heather in California. 00:06.34 succinctbill Her. 00:09.35 Andrew Kinkella Hey what's up. 00:13.44 Heather Hi everyone Thanks for listening. 00:16.55 archpodnet And Bill in Northern California I'm going to call that one out. 00:22.50 succinctbill It's still part of the same Golden state. 00:23.20 archpodnet It still is it still is and then finally Doug in Scotland. 00:28.10 Doug I can't believe I'm representing the rest of the us like four thousand miles away actually you know we do have sun today. it's yeah It's rare it's nice 00:33.93 succinctbill Ah, in Sunny Scotland oh cool 00:37.33 archpodnet It's no pressure. No pressure hey nice well hey for the for the first time in a few months I'm not in California I'm actually up in Oregon so I'm I'm with you there Doug I'm not and I'm not 1 of the california mafia so okay well as we've mentioned in the past we are taking turns on organizing show topics for this show and this week. It's Doug's turn so doug why don't you introduce our topic today. 01:06.92 Doug Yeah, so the topic is the Peter principle or Peter's law depends who you talk to um and originally it was meant to be satire. So it's ah it's a bit sometimes it can sound a bit over the top. Um. When they say things like you you rise to your your level of incompetence. But ah since it came out. Um there's been a lot of studies that've actually basically backed it up and like all good satire you know it's based on fact or real life. Um, and essentially what the peer principle is. Is that as you go up in a hierarchy in an organization chances. Are you have you're going to be not as good at the next level just because whatever made you good at your previous skills is probably not going to be as applicable or applicable at all um to your next level. And so um, you may have got a promotion because let's say you are a really really good field tech and then you get promoted to say um project manager and of course project management is a completely different set of skills and so um with the satire it was all about how like you rise to the. Point where you're actually pretty incompetent at your work and then you no no longer get any more promotions but I thought it was an interesting topic to discuss just because yeah archeology is really hierarchical in how we move up ah in positions especially in Crm and. I saw a lot of similarities in that like as I said you know your field tax skills are are completely different than say a pi skill I can't actually think of like I'm sure you guys can probably think of one but like I can't think of almost a shared skill like if it was a Venn diagram. There might be like those tiny little bit of a overlap there. But essentially it's 2 different skills but because oury crm is our hierarchy. You basically have to start off with one skill set and then move your wake to a completely different one. Um so I'll leave it at that I hope that explanation made sense. And I'll toss it over to everyone else. It looks like Bill has his hand up and has some thoughts on this. 03:24.90 succinctbill Oh Yeah I Can't wait to talk about this? Um, so like you know first I Want to say my good thing which is you know if you move to those next levels and you learn and adapt. You have a chance to be great and to move to the next level. That's all I Have to say that's good because this explains my entire life I'd never heard of this and I mentioned it to my wife and in-laws and they were like oh yeah, you never heard of that and I'm just like no because for my whole life I've just actually thought everybody else was an idiot but the reality is they're not idiots. They're just put in positions where they're just inept. 03:57.84 archpodnet O. 04:04.10 succinctbill And I mean whether this is satire or not I see this on every single corner in our political offices. You can This is like vividly displayed in politics at your own employment at your own Job. You will also see this vividly displayed and as a professor. It's almost like I'm blinded by how. How many? ah you know, ah examples of this I see right? So You know if you've ever been at a job and you've realized that your boss is pretty incompetent and not very good at their job but they like stay there forever. This is exactly why it's happening because they're not good enough to move up to the next level. And they're just competent enough to stay at the level where they're at, but they're actually not. They've reached the the peak level and if they don't learn and adjust then they just stay there and and ham things Up. You know for a long time but then also it's a double-edged sword because the better they get at their job. They're just going to get promoted to the next level until they finally get to the level where they are incompetent. 05:03.99 archpodnet Another. 05:04.56 Doug So it's called Peter's plateau 05:09.61 Heather Yeah I think um I totally agree with I totally agree with Bill. Um I think though and we've talked about this in the past is that the people that are promoting people. Um I think a lot of times it's based on a reward system. It's based on ah people that are real go-geters that perceive a validation of who they are and what they've done so far as being promoted. That's the validation is promotion if they're not promoted that means that they're somehow lacking or somehow not being. Um, appreciated their skill sets not appreciated or respected and the only way to do that because that's the way the system is unfortunately the only way in some people's minds is promotion and I don't I think there's 2 things that. Ah, companies should do so specifically in Crm I try to do that and I think we have some mechanisms at our company that does that um, the 1 thing is celebrating. People's skill sets in the environment they're in um. Understanding that it's not just about moving up the ladder. It's about a mastery of where you are right now and people acknowledging that mastery and then the second thing is when you do promote people that you have to set them up for success with training you as a manager. 06:35.95 archpodnet M. 06:39.68 Heather Ah, hiring men or you know just a manager in general or a company have a responsibility to promote people not for the pride issue or the ego issue or just to keep them. You know quiet so that you can retain them because retention in companies is really difficult but it's. Really important. You have a moral responsibility and a professional responsibility to train them and set them up for success and I just don't think that happens enough. Some of it's because we're so busy and um, especially in this market right now people are being. 07:11.16 archpodnet Yeah. 07:16.97 Heather Ah, poached all the time and retention is really difficult and so one of the ways that people retain let's say somebody has been poached and they give their notice and a company wants to counter is promotion without even thought it's just promotion for the sake of promotion and. 07:31.41 archpodnet M. 07:36.60 Heather You know I understand that as long as ah, you the training goes along with it. So that's my take to start with. 07:40.88 Andrew Kinkella No yeah, ah I totally agree Heather and I think it's it's ah the mentorship thing which is so huge in this, you know? and so if you have good mentors and if they note your skill set. You know you can successfully move forward. It's like if we take Peter's principle too far. It's like well every single person on earth is incompetent. You know and the truth is obviously much more gray where it depends. You know if you've been set up for success. You might succeed if you've been set up for failure and all you care about is promotion for promotion's sake. Yeah, Peter's principles in full effect. Yeah. 08:20.81 Doug I'm not sure like if so I understand certain organizations is promotion from a promotions sake but like I mean just think about like ah pretty much all of archeology whether you're in academia or crm you have to move up to be able to like. Live like you know a tech you you can detect for so long and eventually you know your body is going to give out or you just have no money and no retirement and so um, you pretty much have to sort of move up even though you might be in the most amazing field tech there ever was. Or lab tech or anything. Um, but you basically if you want to stay in archeology. You have to and of course in academia you know with tenure you you either have to make it to associate professor or they kick you out after what 6 years or something like that. It's basically um I think it might slightly differ. Between universities and then also covid push stuff back. But basically you have to move up up or you have to move out I mean our entire system is basically built on you have to promote. Um and it's been like that for I guess you could pretty much say forever. So. That's always been academia and archaeology originally started with you know the diggers were not well ok, no, they actually were slaves in and in the case of Jefferson um, but like you know, basically that they were never treated with ah respect and there's never been a lot of respect for this. 09:42.39 succinctbill I yeah. 09:52.61 Doug Skills needed there and I say respect I mean in terms of like money and pay. Um we we don't really value. Um the the very entry level and that's actually it I mean they're all entry levels like you can't ah so I do know a couple of companies that will like hire. Um, horizontally bring in someone who's not an archeologist to maybe be a manager or do something else. Um or like sometimes in specialism specialisms you might get like a geologist coming in to do some geomorphology stuff or things like that. So you do get some sort of sideways stuff. But for the most part. Hundred percent designed to go up or out. Yeah. 10:29.60 Andrew Kinkella Yeah, but you know what I would say in the academic world specifically though the peters principle only works if you're like a professor and then you're trying to be a Dean It's that. 10:29.47 Heather I see. 10:40.28 Andrew Kinkella Skill shift where it really works like because if you're going like associate professor to full professor. You're still doing your same thing. So I don't think it works there. So. 10:45.12 succinctbill Yeah, well and also the whole the tenure system insulates academia from a lot of the impacts of this thing right? because you don't actually have to perform and you can you can literally look and see you know what happens when someone is trying to get tenure versus after they get tenure right. 10:46.56 Heather Yeah I think for. 11:04.99 succinctbill There's very few professors who are continuing to crank on articles who are still coming up with new proposals and new stuff. They're not always looking for grant money because they got benefits and a you know income come in and then also they're put into other stuff that's like supposed to try to get them promoted. But. You know the the other thing too with this is like the job hopping thing kind of has to happen because if you look at any organization you know there's only a few people at those higher levels if you were ever going to have a chance to move to the higher level in crm or anywhere you must leave and then once again, ah academia is somewhat insulated. Because it's so hard to find another tenure track job somewhere else that it's you have way fewer places to job hop from associate to straight up. You know, ah full professor or to go from assistant up to associate without having to go through all the ranks. So. Um, in academia it is more of kind of like a ladder where they make you go through these different levels until you jump into the admin side when you do that then you have the freedom to job hop and move all over the place right? So you know I think that academia the way you know once again after thinking about this it is the way it is. Because it's insulated from the actual thing that the Peter Principal ah um um, ah talks about when it comes to moving to other jobs. But then also it's fully a victim of the Peter principle because the people who are in it. They reach a level where they're just they can't make it any higher. You start to see all kinds of stuff happen in academia that doesn't happen in larger businesses. So. 12:36.15 Andrew Kinkella But I'm a ah full professor and I'm totally awesome. Okay, so just so everyone knows so. 12:37.73 Heather Yeah. 12:41.70 succinctbill And I also wanted to say that I still have a chance to move up to my next level regardless of whether I'm awesome or not. 12:48.10 Heather And I I I think for cerm. Um, yeah, obviously these are very different. You guys made some really good points for on a serm. You know for corm it is I think the problem with serum is that yes it is very hierarchical and people. Had this assumption that the field is lower than the management and I think that you know there needs to be a shift wholesale shift of understanding that first of all, there's the field and there is I don't know if you want to even call it management because there's management in the field too. So there's complexities in the field and you need managers in the field as well and I don't think that there's anything wrong with people stepping having a step and ah and a goals and having um, a trajectory to improve themselves like when you come straight out of college. You're not going to have the skills that you have. 15 years down the road but there I really think that the one of the biggest wholesale changes that would help crm would be to understand that. Um, if people want to be field focused. They should be able to build a career in field and. The company I work for. We have started to do that. We have a very separate. We have a separate career path. We have a career path for field and we have a career path for project management. So we don't call it management of everyone but it's very specific project management and so. I think that that's where cmberly needs to go if we're going to start growing people and not having this you know, ah the the field people are less than because they're not In fact, if you have really strong skilled field people your project's going to go smoother, you're going to have that. Better cost efficiencies. it's all and it's going to be people are going to be more accurate. The data is going to be more accurate. We have to we can't just have like the field is the training ground for the eventual success of project management that's baloney you have and there are people that don't want to do project management. They want to be the best in the field that they can possibly be and people should and and and professionals should have the ability to have that track but unfortunately across the board for the most part. It's not like that. 15:12.11 Doug So just a ah quick question to Andrew there are you telling us that you've reached Peter's plateau um then that you you can't go any higher. 15:22.29 Andrew Kinkella No I've reached Peter's awesomeness which is a lesser known. Ah place. It's just a huge mountain that keeps going up um Peters ah Peter's emptiness 15:22.76 succinctbill Ah, ah, ah, but ah I think and Andrew's saying that just like. 15:30.15 archpodnet Um, he's he's reached Peter's Peter's enlightenment 15:33.67 Doug Ah. 15:38.85 succinctbill Andrew's saying that just like in interstellar. There's a tesser act with thousands of multiple parallel awesome lands like so that's that's what Peter didn't know about there's a tester act inside the black hole where when you get there then you then you get to relive all the important parts of your life again. 15:42.64 Andrew Kinkella That's exactly right. Yeah, totally so true. Peter what an idiot. Ah yeah, no I am attacked I am shocked and appalled of. 15:57.40 Doug Sorry Andrew you probably feel personally attacked by this entire episode. Ah. 16:06.34 Andrew Kinkella Though I love i. Love this topic though because it's just fun to think about you know, um I really agree with what Heather was saying for for Crm and so much of it's about that skill set you know and and in the ah academic world too that like I said before it set. Which of skill set is so bad because I have seen professors become deans and they were terrible deans like I have totally seen Peter's principle in full effect when that happened. 16:31.23 archpodnet All right everybody? Well before we go into any more discussion on this and Andrew starts chanting Peter's transcendental enlightenment we are going to take a break so before we do that before we do that. 16:40.30 Heather Yes. 16:42.19 succinctbill Her her her. 16:46.63 archpodnet Please look down at your devices that you're listening to this on check out our affiliate links. It's a great way to support the network and to see some cool things we're doing. We've got a new one for motion which is a task manager built on an Ai that is changing my life and I got an affiliate link with them and you guys all needed to check it out. So. 17:02.65 Heather And ill. 17:06.56 archpodnet Take a look at that and we'll be back on the other side.