A non-DO-178B post after a long time.
Among the winners of Ignobel prize this time are three Italians who have "demonstrated mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random."
Yeah you go that right - random, not merit based, promotion.
The three Italians are Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy.
Here is their conclusion extracted from their paper, The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study
... we obtained the counterintuitive result that the best strategies for improving, or at least for not diminishing, the efficiency of an organization, when one ignores the actual mechanism of competence transmission, are those of promoting an agent at random or of randomly alternating the promotion of the best and the worst members.
By the way, Peter's Principle States:
"Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he/she reaches his/her level of maximum incompetence."
I can imagine the management gurus squirming after this mathematical confirmation of Peter's Principle.
But then you always knew this, didn't you? Promoting an excellent software engineer to a managerial post is a sort of double whammy: You lose an excellent technical chap and get a lousy manager.
But before you go on to implement the new promotion policy, please have another good look at the conclusion. The words "when one ignores the actual mecahmism of competence transmission" hold the key to merit based promotion. Think about it!
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