The Peter's Principle

PGDM A,B,C,IB

Majority of you have responded to my questionnaire. 202 out of about 240, to be precise. Thank you all. Following graph how many sent in their online forms and when



You will notice, within first 2 days I got almost 25% responses but then it required a strong warning from the Prof. Ashok Malhotra and Prof Verma to make the remaining act in time.

We all act only when there is a deadline. People tend to wait right until the last day. There is a famous book, titled The Peter's Principle. The basic theme is that all employees get promoted to their highest level of incompetence. But the extensions of this principle are that "All projects get completed only on or after the specified target date", "Expenses are incurred to the maximum level of budget sanctioned", "Every product is used for more challenging applications until it fails" etc. etc.

Two thirds of our students did not bother to respond right until the last minute. If the warnings were not issued by Prof Malhotra and Prof Verma, then I am sure probably half the students would have come to first class with the request that they be given another day to submit the form. This is just human nature.

Your first lesson  in this course on collaboration technologies. When you are working in teams, collaboration is critical. Everyone is dependent on someone else's efforts. Therefore we need targets and deadlines for every task. The culture of "clearing up the desk" (of all pending tasks at the end of every day) has to be evolved among the team members.