The Reverse Peter Principle

The Reverse Peter Principle states that organizations should strive to stay as flat as possible and every manager should stay as close to the front line and do as much as possible. The best people understand their jobs, the meaning and underlying purpose of their tasks and only need to be pointed in the right direction, apprised of available resources, given guidelines, goals, targets, deadlines, and intermediate check in points. People who are doing what they love and understand need relatively little management. When an organization’s best people spend too much time managing and not enough time doing, then it may be time to spend more effort on raising the performance bar in other ways: recruiting at a higher level and providing better, more-focused training.