The Peter Principle and Rolling Out Software

The well-known Peter Principle for the corporate world holds that the reason so many corporations are so inefficient is that people get promoted to their level of incompetence. That is, someone does a job well, they get promoted, they do that job well, they get promoted. This cycle recurs until they do not do the job well, so they no longer get promoted. They have reached their level of incompetence.

I sometimes see clients who want to “dumb down” software on the grounds that users won’t be able to adapt to the new system, won’t like it and thus won’t use it. The underlying assumption behind this argument (even if it is almost never articulated)  is that users are too stupid to see the benefits of a new system or just plain too ornery and obstreperous to use it. Aside from the fact that this argument is insulting to users, based on close to 30 years in working with law firms and consulting, I do not believe it is true.  Some people take more hand holding than others, but when a new system has manifest and demonstrable benefits, people generally are smart enough to realize it. The classic case of the 55 year old secretary who fought tooth and nail against giving up her WordPerfect for Dos and moving to Windows, and then couldn’t understand how she could have lived without it proves the point.

A second problem with this approach is that, even assuming an adversarial relation between management and staff,  it violates the basic business principle that you never start a negotiation from your fall-back position. That is a recipe for disaster.

A third problem is that when people learn the minimum then need to use a system, there is a real danger that the minimum they need turns into the maximum they know.

The solution is to implement and roll out a system configured the way it should be. If you have to backtrack, so be it. Two keys to success are (1) good preparation and setting appropriate expectations and (2) adequate training. A system will never be fully 100 percent when it is rolled out. But if it is 90%, users generally accept that it needs some tweaks (and may even appreciate being involved in final adjustments). If it is only 50%, everyone is annoyed because every time they try to do something, it has to be fixed – the perception becomes that the system “does not work.”

Comments

[Tom Caffrey]

makes me think of ...
'you only have one chance to do it right the first time'
and 'doing it right the first time is the most cost efficient way to do anything'