The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.
Applied to humans, the selection of a candidate for a position is based on their performance in their current role rather than on their abilities relevant to the intended role.
The Peter Principle is an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence.
According to the Peter Principle, every position in a given hierarchy will eventually be filled by employees who are incompetent to fulfill the job duties of their respective positions.
A possible solution to the problem posed by the Peter Principle is for companies to provide adequate skill training for employees receiving a promotion, and to ensure the training is appropriate for the position to which they have been promoted.
In the Golden Age of Hollywood (1930-1959), a 10:1 shooting ratio was the norm—a 90-minute film meant about 15 hours of footage. Directors like Alfred Hitchcock famously kept it tight with a 3:1 ratio, giving studios little wiggle room in the edit.
Fast forward to today: the digital era has sent shooting ratios skyrocketing. Affordable cameras roll endlessly, capturing multiple takes, resets, and everything in between. Gone are the disciplined “Action to Cut” days of film.
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