Rex Miller

Its the 40th anniversary of the book The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong.

The premise goes something like this:

Employees who do well get promoted until they finally reach a level outside their competency. Once reached – they stay put. That leaves companies filled with people who have reached their level of incompetency.

Over the last few years we have plenty of examples of failed plans, policy, corporations and our entire financial system. The Peter Principle offers an easy explanation. However, something more profound may be taking place.

When the mindshift consortium looked at the frequency of late construction projects they ran into a brick wall with this line of assessment. As hard as they tried to find a clear culprit – architect, contractor, sub-trade or owner – it was never that simple.

Then the light bulb turned on – the system for design and construction has reached ITS level of incompetency. They took a system that was clearly successful 50+ years ago (the design-bid-build approach) and kept promoting it to more complex challenges. Eventually the complexity of the challenges outstripped the system’s ability to cope.

One member said, “The current system causes good people to do bad things.”

It is time to revise The Peter Principle so that it addresses the deeper source of incompetency – systemic dysfunction.

Unfortunately, we’re trained like heat seeking missiles to find culprits.

Does the same principle apply to churches? Growth can be a two-edged sword.

Pastor Robert Morris, Senior Pastor of Gateway Church, recently shared that as churches (or individuals) grow or expand they must be careful of how they mix with the world. If leaders are not careful their growth becomes a nesting place for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. This is a common biblical reference to an infestation of worldly and pernicious influences and powers.

It’s a subtle but real shift. In the book The Millennium Matrix, I talk about how our strategies and tools can grow from effective servants to demanding masters. In other words, the tail wags the dog.

Size and complexity can lead to the same unfortunate end. We come to rely on these tools, specialists and strategies instead of relationships and sense of the spirit. The unfortunate part is that it sneaks up on any organization and by the time it is obvious – its too late. Business writers recognize the same tension and warning exhorting to “think big but act small.”

In business this dysfunction is captured in the Peter Principle. Perhaps it should be called the Peter Principality.

Warning signs include:

1. Tight budgets
2. Tired staff
3. Little time for building relationships with the congregation or with other staff
4. Pressure to keep elevating weekly performance
5. Lack of leadership development
6. Passive or unengaged congregations
7. Greater reliance on experts and specialists (professionals) to develop and perform ministry
8. A shrinking percentage of the budget going directly to ministry (buildings projects and staff budgets don’t count)

One way to check and realign is to make sure that the organization does not outgrow the natural gifting and calling of the people carrying out ministry.

Tools, like glasses or a microscope, can also help us see underneath the complexity and find the disconnects. When people are forced to function outside their gifting or calling they eventually lose sight of where and how they fit into the larger purpose of an organization.

The Gallup organization has measured just how easy this disconnection becomes for corporations. Their statistics show that 54% of employees are not engaged in the organization’s purpose and 29% that are actively disengaged. That leaves 17% who are really making a difference for the organization.

How would you break down your organization? Churches also have an additional layer of complexity. The congregation should also be factored into this equation.

If your organization falls into this 20/80 ratio or worse then ask two questions:

1. Do our people know their talents and giftings and how to apply them in their role?
2. Does our structure make it easy or difficult for people to take initiative and engage?

I worked with an organization a few weeks ago dealing with both issues. Two years ago they went through their near-death experience and consequently brought in a new leader. After stabilizing the church has been able to get back on track with most of the same leadership core. With 33% growth and a major expansion planned for 2010 the senior and executive pastors were feeling the stress of an organization bogging down but without insight as to why.

Over two days we looked at the talent configuration of each leader, their current role, the logic of that role and the aggregate talent configuration of the team. We then plotted these against the anticipated needs of a larger and more complex organization. For our purposes we used the book Living Your Strengths to uncover the natural talents/giftings of the leadership core. It is an easy book to work with and does not require a high level of expertise to ask if current responsibilities play off one’s natural talents or if one has to function outside one’s natural talents.

For this team we also used a tool developed by CoreClarity.  This allowed us to see clearly that the organization’s growth had moved into a new phase requiring greater Strategic and Execution capacity. The current leadership core had been performing at a very high level of ministry but would need to increase their strategic capacities and ability to execute and coordinate among themselves.

The additional stress on the two lead pastors was manifesting in the form of lack of follow through, details overlooked, coordination issues and missed deadlines. It became clear that the core leadership had talents well suited for what they were currently doing but not for these new needs.

Relief – The senior pastor could clearly see that the source of frustration was not his team but a qualitative structural shift. He was able to avoid going down the typical path of adding more demands, expectations and even corrective action and look at his challenge and opportunity differently. It was liberating.

In simple terms – he had a football team with a strong offensive line but no wide receivers. Instead of forcing one or more of his team to play a wide receiver he could now look for the talent set he needed to fill the gap.

If you would like to find out more about this alignment process let me know and I’ll send a sample executive summary adapted from one of the organizations I’ve recently worked with.

Tags: calling, dysfunction, gift, ministry, outgrow, principality, principle, stress, talent