Peter Principle and rise of incompetence

Corruption or incompetence, which one you cannot live with? Public thinks it is corruption, the experts want to focus on incompetence. The real question is not choosing between the two but to locate both. Corruption is easier to understand and place, though still harder to control. Incompetence is the toughest; to comprehend, to locate and to address. If it is about the state, the onus is on elected representatives but who is responsible for the advice, assistance and implementation of the legislature’s policies — the bureaucracy. If we are trying to locate incompetence in the government, we better look at what goes in the mazes of complex called Secretariat, and in the plethora of agencies, authorities and departments. Those managers, who are supposed to give sound advice, assist in the task of governance and ensure implementation are apparently failing, and failing pretty badly. This brings us to the fabled Peter Principle, “Managers rise to their level of incompetence”, a satire which in our system becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Next question is to locate the source of incompetence i.e. the incapacity to deliver and perform. The capacity to perform has eroded over time and the analysis will not be complete without going back to the drawing board. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the competence of civil servant used to vest in the acquisition of certain skills i.e. communication, administration, office management and law. I will call these first generation skills. Language was most important. To communicate, orally and in writing, in lucid English was considered necessary for critical thinking as well as for appearing aristocratic. The ‘officer’ was someone who could run an office consisting of paper and people. The paper or record was most crucial for ‘administration’ which essentially meant reactive decision-making on the issues presenting themselves before the officer. The people were employees whose utility arose from their local connections instead of any skillset. The semi-modern tools like ‘Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management’ had come out as early as 1911 but were still foreign to our administration.

The first generation skills could not meet the requirement of new state and new times. In the fifties and sixties, the civil servants had to do licensing, budgeting, audit (elementary), public finance, planning and procurement i.e. the second generation skills. There were mega projects to be made, urban settlements to be carved, quotas and licences to be issued and services to be provided. The ‘office’ now was an active secretariat with twin arms of implementation and monitoring. The implementation was done through directorates and the monitoring through the inspectorates. The strategic planning part was mostly outsourced to World Bank and universities like Harvard, Cornell and Syracuse but there was still implementation to be done on part of machinery. The erstwhile two Ls — law and language — still topped the core skillset despite the changing needs. The pressures of revenue generation and service provision were, however, limited due to society being largely agrarian. The skill and organisational development in our bureaucracy was not influenced by the emerging trends like distinct nature of ‘administrative behaviour’ and critiques by the likes of Niskanen (1975) about the bureaucracy being inherently budget maximising, overspending and inefficient. The allure of past blinded the policymakers to the challenges of the future. The reforms debate is mostly centred on distribution of power instead of distribution of skills.

The nineties came with speed and shock and ushered the era of third generation skills. The licensing now became regulation, procurement became contract management and audit became accountability. The record keeping was now management of information systems and secrecy gave way to transparency. The strategic tasks of budgeting, planning and revenue generation now had to be performed by service providers even at the local level. New public management arrived as management for all seasons (Hood, 1991) with globalisation, mediatisation and marketisation. Modern bureaucrat has to negotiate trade deals, draft laws for regulating markets, manage public-private partnerships and develop smart cities. We have missed this train as well. The laws and rules which were considered bed-rock of administration have now become anachronistic and a liability — a shield to hide instead of being driver of progress. Communication has become sophistry, administration has given way to politics and resource management is another name of patronage.

Our crisis of incompetence is rooted in the mismatch of skillset. We are hell bent on matching third generation challenges with first generation skills. The mismatch starts from the bottom and becomes more pronounced as one rises above the ladder of hierarchy. Lawrence Peter was no less prophetic in predicting that a competent teacher might prove as an incompetent principal as both jobs require different skillsets. In our case, the Peter Principle is spread over generations. Those steeped in first and second generation skills invariably also acquire the power to thwart or discourage emergence of job-sets which threaten their existence. The solutions thus become unworkable and even disastrous. The failure of companies in Punjab is not failure of the otherwise-accepted ‘model’ but failure to acquire necessary skills to run these companies. The billions of penalties in settlements with foreign companies are a result of lack of contract management, circular debt is failure of regulation and the rising crime is due to inability to learn modern crime prevention than the failure of society. It is about time for us to recognise incompetence as absence of latest skills, and with that we might also realise that corruption is not distinct but an effect of that incompetence. 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2019.

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