When infected individuals gain control of an organization, the disease advances to the secondary stage. At this stage, Parkinson says, "Higher officials are plodding and dull, those less senior are active only in intrigue against each other, and the junior men are frustrated or frivolous. Little is being attempted. Nothing is being achieved."
In the tertiary stage of the disease, a mean-spirited, self-centered, ignorant and insecure top management team has gained control. Parkinson describes its behavior thus: "We rather distrust brilliance here. These clever people can be a dreadful nuisance, upsetting established routine and proposing all sorts of schemes that we have never seen tried." At this stage, smugness and apathy are the only remaining cultural anchors and the organization is essentially terminal.