“The Peter Principle is a belief that in an organization where promotion is based on success, that organization’s members will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability.”
At its essence this Principle is really based on another principle, which is that “You don’t know, what you don’t know.”
Basically, we are blind to what we don’t know, resulting in the fact that if we are unaware of this fact, we end up taking action based on faulty or partial information.
It is only once we make a mistake, which bring this lack of information front and center, that we realize what we didn’t know.
So while we can’t ever really know what we don’t know, the acknowledgement of the fact can at least better prepare us, and perhaps even help us fend off this typical human error in our daily lives.