BUSINESS: The Ultimate Resource

May 2003 Upgrade #8

MANAGEMENT LIBRARY
The Dilbert Principle
By Scott Adams Why Read It?
A comic book as a source of advice for companies? Well, more a source of anti-advice. Scott Adams offers the employee who has been the victim of restructuring, relayering, or Total Quality Management, a few strategies for self-defense. And he shows management how not to do it!

Getting Started
Writing with a well-sharpened pen and plenty of irony, Adams analyzes the stuff of everyday office life: meetings, downsizing, teamwork, management pronouncements, budgeting, project management, marketing, and ISO 9000. His satirical observations are enlivened cartoons featuring Dilbert, who personally suffers the consequences of modern management methods, and the dog, Dogbert. Adams rounds off all 26 chapters with letters from long-suffering employees recounting their own real-life experiences.

Contribution
1. The Dilbert Principle We systematically promote the people with the least ability, says Adams. If nature went about organizing things the way modern businesses do, a group of mountain gorillas would have an alpha squirrel as their leader. 2. Humiliation The frame of mind most conducive to employee productivity can be described, according to Adams, as happy, but with low self-esteem. The annual performance review is a particularly humiliating experience, he says elsewhere. Your bosss strategy is to get you to admit your inadequacies. Your mistakes are then documented and for the rest of your life they serve as a justification for giving you measly salary increases. 3. Business Communication The true object of communication is furthering your own career. An unambiguous communication, Adams suggests, can get you into trouble, because its only when you tie yourself down to something that you can turn out to be wrong.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2003

BUSINESS: The Ultimate Resource

May 2003 Upgrade #8

4. Great Lies of Management These include The employees are our greatest asset, People who take risks, get rewarded, and Your contribution is very important to us. The following equation, says Adams, applies to management: Employee suggestions = more work = bad! 5. Machiavellian Methods Give bad advice, says devils advocate Adams. Thats your opportunity to push people who ask you for advice off the career track youre both running on. 6. Marketing and Communications Good advertising will induce people to buy your product even if it is unsuitable for them. A dollar spent on brainwashing, says Adams, is more cost-effective than a dollar spent on improving your product. 7. Business Consultants Think hard, advises Adams, about signing up a consultant who will take your money, get on your employees nerves, and think tirelessly about ways of extending his or her consultancy contract. 8. The Business Plan In Adams world, the business plan lies somewhere in between the bosss hallucinations and the reality of the market. Its made in two stages. First, you collect data. Second, you ignore them. 9. Changes First, says Adams, you need consultants who tell you how to make changes. Then you need consultants who tell you that the environmental conditions have altered and that you ought to make more changes. 10. Financial Planning If you change the budget often enough, Adams points out, the employees become frightened of making any moves that might draw attention to themselves. Where fear rules, outgoings are low. Where outgoing are low, there are stock options for management, followed by the collapse of the business. 11. Selling If your firms products are overpriced and faulty, do not worry, says Adams. This can be compensated for by buyer motivation. Emphasize the intangible economic benefits offered by your company. In selling, confusion is your friend. 12. Conferences The secret of success at conferences, according to Adams, is a combination of arrogance and honesty. Your audience has to believe that you are giving serious thought to the problems of other people.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2003

BUSINESS: The Ultimate Resource

May 2003 Upgrade #8

13. Projects The success of a project depends mainly on two things: first, luck; second, a fantastic name for the project. 14. ISO 9000 Adams explains it like this. A group of bored Europeans had drunk too much beer and decided to play a trick on the worlds companies. They understood that any crazy management method can become an international mania. 15. Downsizing The most intelligent people are the ones who are the first to turn their backs on a shrinking organization, because they take compensation packages with them. The stupid ones, who stay on, offset that by working longer hours. 16. How to Tell If Your Company Is Doomed Ominous signs of approaching disaster are such things as open-plan offices, teamworking, presentations by management, reorganization, and process management. 17. Reengineering Reengineering was invented, Adams suggests, by a bacteriologist as an antidote to quality programs. In reengineering all of the natural incompetence stored in the firm is unleashed on a monumental scale. 18. Team-building Exercises Exercises designed to strengthen team spirit, says Adams, can take many forms. A typical team-building exercise exposes the employees to unpleasant situations for so long that they end up either as sworn brothers and sisters or a bunch of car thieves. 19. Managers A manager is someone who prevails on people to do something for his or her benefit. The most important ability of a manager is to be able to claim the credit for something that happens of its own accord. 20. New Company Model: OA5 This chapter contains a serious suggestion, says Adams. The only problem with it is that in todays business world an employee who leaves at five oclock gets little respect. The most important task of an OA5 firm is to acknowledge that the employees have done valuable work.

Context
This work is one of the best-selling business books of all time and has attained cult status. Satire and humor are a means here of dispelling employee anxiety in the face of management decisions. Adams attacks management eccentricity, useless bureaucracy, and sadistic supervisors, and makes them look ridiculous in words and pictures.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2003

BUSINESS: The Ultimate Resource

May 2003 Upgrade #8

For More Information

Adams, Scott. The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicles Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads, and Other Workplace Afflictions. New York: HarperBusiness, 1997.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2003