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72 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2023 the success of every technocrat depends on his ability to deal with, and benefit from, the con- sequences of Putt's Law. Chapter 2: Three Laws of Crises "Our expert on the hierarchical intricacies of the R&D world discusses the hazards of excessive perfection and promulgates a trio of governing conditions for building your own crises." e First Law of Crises addresses the impor- tance of "rocking the boat," or having some imperfections or crises on the projects of a technical hierarchy. e First Law of Crises fol- lows rather logically from these observations and may be stated formally as follows: "Tech- nological hierarchies abhor perfection." e Second Law of Crises addresses how to fix the incompetence level. What is the right amount of incompetence, or the right number of crises, to introduce into a given job? A par- tial answer: "e maximum rate of promotion is achieved at a level of crises only slightly less than that which will result in dismissal." us, the best strategy to begin a new assign- ment is with a level of crises as low as possible. e level should then be increased gradually until the desired promotion occurs. e opti- e Peter Principle 2 states that without an adequate competence criterion for technical managers, there is no way to determine when a person has reached his level of incompetence. us, a clever and ambitious individual may be promoted from one level of incompetence to another. He will ultimately perform incompe- tently in the highest level of the hierarchy, just as he did in numerous lower levels. e lack of an adequate competence crite- rion, combined with the frequent practice of creative incompetence in technical hierar- chies, results in a competence inversion with the most competent people remaining near the bottom, while persons of lesser talent rise to the top. It also provides the basis for Putt's Law, which can be stated in an intuitive and non-mathe- matical form as follows: "Two types of people dominate technology: those who understand what they do not manage and those who man- age what they do not understand." As in any hierarchy, most people in technol- ogy neither understand nor manage much of anything. is, however, does not create an exception to Putt's Law, because such persons clearly do not dominate the hierarchy. While this was not previously stated as a basic law, Figure 1: The Third Law of Crises.