The Retep Principle ■ John Wood
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he Retep Principle? Well, at least it caught your attention. The Retep Principle is a play on words around the well-known Peter Principle, presented by Lawrence Peter and Raymond Hull in their book of that title [1]. The Peter Principle is commonly stated as “people in any organization will rise to the level of their incompetence.” How does this happen? In scientific and engineering organizations, most people start out their careers as doers: in other words, they are good at doing something, sometimes more than one thing, and over time they gain experience and get better at doing. In recognition that an individual has gained some experience, achieved some success, demonstrated some merit, management will generally reward their activity with a promotion. To continue on this trajectory, all one has to do is continue to work competently, achieve one’s goals, deliver the goods. The promotions should keep coming. This is all very well in the early stages of a career, where the promotion often is just in John Wood (
[email protected]) is with Maxim Integrated, San Jose, California. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2012.2216110 Date of publication: 14 November 2012
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title or rank (and hopefully pay, too), “Hey, this person is a great designer, but the job description and day-to-day they’re bound to be a good manager?” activity remain largely the same. So Probably not, exactly. Or probably, not exactly. The person or team in people get promoted as long as higher management probably they are competent at their thought that the designer job. Eventually, though, was doing a good job, people get promoted to had continually excelled a position where they at every level so far, can no longer deliver and so the next step is the goods and they obviously the manageare unable to get ment ladder and more another promotion: responsibility. They got they have arrived at promoted because they their level of incomwere great at doing. Do petence. great doers make great manThis is not good for © fotosearch agers? Sometimes they do, and the organization. It means sometimes they don’t. We’ve all had that many of the people in the company are working at a level where experience of both. So what is the Retep Principle and they cannot deliver their best, and so the productivity and performance of how does it help? It is also called the Reverse Peter the company as a whole is suboptimal. Of course, there are also a bunch Principle (hence Retep), and it means, of others who are continuing to excel in principle (sorry), that you identify the at their particular level and are on the best doers in your organization and get way up, but you get the feeling that, on them to manage less and do more. That is, do more of what they are good at. In average, things could be better. And what often happens in an this way you create a team of excellent organization is that someone who has achievers who can out-do larger organidemonstrated good, even outstanding zations of incompetent workers, or even skills as, say, a designer, is promoted merely competent ones. There are beninto the management team. Some- efits all round. The key doers or achievers times you have to sit back and won- in the organization keep doing what they der how this happens. Did someone at a higher management level think, (continued on page 102)
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Microwave Bytes Back (continued from page 104) are good at, and so the knowledge, experience, capability, and commitment are exactly where they are needed to make the best design, the best product. These people can often achieve much more than a team of several less experienced, or less motivated, or mismanaged engineers. These key doers can be rewarded at high levels, commensurate with their abilities and achievements, comparable with upper management levels, because they get things done. And the organization is dynamic and, as noted above, can often out-execute the larger rival. The Retep Principle will also probably lead to a flatter organization. You need fewer people, and these key achievers are operating at a higher level than in a typical hierarchically driven organization that has many sublevels. They also need less management as they can identify for themselves what is needed to make the next better product, and keep
the organization moving forward. The Retep Principle is also a means of fostering innovation. The environment is more like a start-up than a grand hierarchy, with each individual shouldering some responsibility for what they are doing. Can you run a whole company along the lines of the Retep Principle? I don’t see why not. Why shouldn’t everyone in the organization be given the opportunity to give of their best and be rewarded for doing exactly that, rather than be rewarded with a promotion to do something that they are less good at, and may not even enjoy? But it is probably unrealistic to expect to staff your organization with people who excel at every level in your hierarchy. There will be limited opportunity for advancement and reward, and then you would end up with an organization that was over-qualified at every level. Though probably not for long.
So, realistically, you probably can’t apply the Retep Principle across the board in a large organization, but to achieve mission-critical goals and strategies, finding a way to pull the known excellent achievers together into a team, away from day-to-day management, for example, so that they can focus again on doing, which is probably what they were promoted for in the first place. (This article was inspired by the “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, an interview of Tracy Dolgin, president and CEO of YES Cable Sports Network [2])
References [1] L. J. Peter, and R. Hull, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1969. [2] A. Bryant, “Corner office: Tracy Dolgin,” New York Times, Mar. 2012.
A Tale of Two Archers ■ Mack Javelly
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here were once two archers—Sir MOSalot and Sir GaAsahad that were participating in a contest of skill to see who the best was. The challenge was to see who could get an arrow in the center of the target first— there was a time limit since they each wanted to be crowned as champion before the annual apple picking festival. Sir MOSalot had won many other competitions across the land, while Sir GaAsahad only concentrated on entering very specific contests. As a result, many of the spectators were cheering for Sir MOSalot and many people placed bets on him to win, while only a few supported Sir GaAsahad. The rules for the contest were that after each miss, you could move closer to the target and shoot again. SirMOSalot had to wait at least a month between each shot since he was using Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2012.2216109 Date of publication: 14 November 2012
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12-in arrows that took quite some time to fabricate, while Sir GaAsahad only had to wait only one week since he used 6-in arrows of a special material that could be fabricated much faster. The arrows Sir MOSalot used were also very expensive to fabricate at first and only got cheaper as you used more of them (you also needed more material to get the same size arrow). Sir GaAsahad’s arrows were extremely cheap to design in the first place and, while further arrows could be more expensive; this was offset by using less material. Sir MOSalot took his first shot and missed the bullseye, his expensive arrow rapidly snapped up by a frantic spectator. He then proceeded to wait. Woefully, he had to endure Sir GaAshad firing off a shot per week—while he awaited his time in between, each one closer to the target than the previous thanks to being able to move closer (his swift approach to the target—using those crappy arrows was infuriating Sir
MOSalot). His next turn finally came, but while Sir MOSalotwas meticulously lining up his shot, the King stepped in and moved the target. Sir MOSalot missed and had to wait again—he was infuriated. Sir GaAsahad simply stepped aside and stabbed one of his arrows into the bullseye, winning the contest, becoming the apple-picking contest Prize Archer of the year, and receiving a magic tablet. Sir MOSalot still insisted on shooting his last arrow at the target while the crowd waited and finally hit it. Sir MOSalot was so infuriated that he hurled his bow like a javelin into the nearby black sand. Astonishingly, his supporters, who had just lost all their money on him, picked him up on their shoulders and carried him to the next contest with Sir GaAsahad. However, Sir GaAsahad had already moved on to the better, more lucrative contest and had already fired four shots before Sir MOSalot arrived.
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