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MURPHY'S LAWS
and Others Reasons Things Go Wrong
Page 7
HIERARCHIOLOGY
If you find errors on these pages... it's to be expected
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson’s Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Corollaries:
1. In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.
2. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Peter's Inversion:
Internal consistency is valued more highly than efficient service.
Peter's Hidden Postulate
According to Godin:Every employee begins at his level of competence.
Peter's Observation:
Super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.
Peter's Law of Evolution:
Competence always contains the seed of incompetence
Peter's Rule for Creative Incompetence:
Create the impression that you have already reached your level of incompetence.
Peter's Theorem:
Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills and the mountains will look after themselves.
Peter's Prognosis:
Spend sufficient time in confirming the need and the need will disappear.
Peter's Placebo:
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
Godin's Law:
Generalizedness of incompetence is directly proportional to highestness in hierarchy.
Freeman's Rule:
Circumstances can force a generalized incompetent to become competent, at least in a specialized field.
Vail's Axiom:
In any human enterprise, work seeks the lowest hierarchal level.
Imhoff's Law:
The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank-the really big chunks always rise to the top.
Parkinson's Third Law:
Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
Parkinson's Axioms:
1. An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.
2. Officials make work for each other.
Sociology's Iron Law of Oligarchy:
In every organized activity, no matter the sphere, a small number will become the oligarchical leaders and the others will follow.
Oeser's Law:
There is a tendency for the person in the most powerful position in an organization to spend all of his or her time serving on committees and signing letters.
Cornuelle's Law:
Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them.
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
Law of Communications:
The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.
Dow's Law:
In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.
Spark's Ten Rules for Project Managers:
1. Strive to look tremendously important.
2. Attempt to be seen with important people.
3. Speak with authority; however, only expound on the obvious and proven facts.
4. Don’t engage in arguments, but if cornered, ask an irrelevant question and lean back with a satisfied grin while your opponent tries to, figure out what’s going on - then quickly change the subject.
5. Listen intently while others are arguing the problem. Pounce on a trite statement and bury them with it.
6. If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.
7. Obtain a brilliant assignment, but keep out of sight and out of the limelight.
8. Walk at a fast pace when out of the office this keeps questions from subordinates and superiors at a minimum.
9. Always keep the office door closed. This puts visitors on the defensive and also makes it look as if you are always in an important conference.
10. Give all orders verbally. Never write anything down that might go into a "Pearl Harbor File."
Jay's First Law of Leadership:
Changing things is central to leadership, and changing them before anyone else is creativeness.
Worker's Dilemma:
1. No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.
2. What you don't do is always more important than what you do do,
Harris's Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
Match's Maxim:
A fool in a high station is like a man on the top of a high mountain; everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody.
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
Jones's Law:
The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on.
First Law of Socio-Economics.
In a hierarchical system, the rate of pay for a given task increases in inverse ratio to the unpleasantness and difficulty of the task.
Bunuel's Law:
Overdoing things is harmful in all cases, even when it comes to efficiency.
The Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.
H.L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can - do.
Those who cannot - teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach - administrate.
As the laws are presented on my weekly e-mail list I will add them here. Come back each week or see them first by sending an e-mail to murphy-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other Murphy type "Laws"to add please E mail me
