Why Design-by-Committee Should Die
Speider Schneider
No matter where you go in the known universe, there is design-by-
committee. It has become a pecking order of disaster for the society that
used to pride itself on being a mover and shaker and that allowed its
mavericks and dreamers to innovate their way to success. In a business
climate fueled by fear and the “Peter Principle,” as it is today, a decision not
made is a tragedy averted. So, decision by committee provides a safe and
often anonymous process for finger-pointing down the line... inevitably
leading to the creative, of course.
Why It Happens
Wikipedia describes it thus: The Peter Principle is the principle that “in a
hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” It was
formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book
The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the “salutary
science of Hierarchiology”, “inadvertently founded” by Peter. It holds that in
a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently.
Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer
competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being
unable to earn further promotions. This principle can be modeled and has
theoretical validity. Peter’s Corollary states that “in time, every post tends to
be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties”
and adds that “work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet
reached their level of incompetence.