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This summary and review of the book, The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions, was prepared by Melanie Johnson while an Accounting student in the College of Business at Southeastern Louisiana University.
Executive Summary
The Dilbert Principle is a book about organizations. It explains how they work, what is wrong with them, and what one must do to get ahead in one. The book is based on one simple, self-evident premise: People are idiots. According to the author there are too many things in the world for everyone to be an idiot at least some of the time. However, very few people are idiots all of the time. The advance of technology is also to blame for inhibiting intelligence. Instead of having to create useful things and adapt to survive, we can all just sit in our air-conditioned houses, have cooked safe food delivered to us, and survive as idiots. Very few people have invented these things, but they allow everyone to survive. This is why business is doomed. People make business decisions and people are idiots.
Like people organizations would never survive in nature. In nature useless things and animals die off so that the species can progress. In organizations useless things and people are shuffled around because we refuse to accept that anything is useless. Some of the most inept people are given some of the most influential jobs. People are promoted to management not because they would make good managers, but because we have no use for them anywhere else and we need to get them out of the way. In the past managers were inept at managing, but they had a history of being good at their original jobs. This was better because while these managers hadn’t the slightest clue how to manage a company, they understood one of the things that the company did, and that’s something. Managers today never were good at anything. So instead of managing the company they employ various control techniques against their employees.
There is an alternative: OA5, or “Out at 5.” The underlying idea is that “Companies with effective employees and good products usually do well.” Keep everything fundamental. Companies should focus on fundamental or core functions. Excessive resources should not be spent on secondary activities. Everyone gets to go home at five pm. They are still expected to get all their work done, but if you let your employees know that if their work is done they will be able to leave then work will get done because people don’t want to be there. Again focusing on the fundamentals, managers should only manage things that affect the company. Dress codes, reasonable memo fonts, and decorations should not be managed. Unless there is a reason for a rule to exist it shouldn’t exist. Manage things that have an effect on the company and productivity. Eliminate artificial programs that have the form of openness and creativity.
The Ten Things Managers Need to Know from The Dilbert Principle
1. People are idiots, or at least learn from some of your employees that may have specific skills that you do not.
2. Substance is more important than form.
3. Do not award that which is undesirable.
4. The world will not end if someone wears tennis shoes to work. Just make sure they are doing their work.
5. It is not necessary to be physically “doing something” all the time. It can do more harm than good.
6. Don’t make false promises. If you are trustworthy people will respect you.
7. People will be effective if you let them. If they won’t get rid of them.
8. Question everything. Don’t continue a practice just because “Everyone does it.”
9. You do not need to have regular meetings.
10. Employees are at a company to work. It is OK if they are not all friends, as long as they are civil.
Full Summary of The Dilbert Principle
The Dilbert Principle is a book about organizations. It explains how they work, what is wrong with them, and what one must do to get ahead in one. The book is based on one simple, self-evident premise: People are idiots. According to the author there are too many things in the world for everyone to be an idiot at least some of the time. However, very few people are idiots all of the time. The advance of technology is also to blame for inhibiting intelligence. Instead of having to create useful things and adapt to survive, we can all just sit in our air-conditioned houses, have cooked safe food delivered to us, and survive as idiots. Very few people have invented these things, but they allow everyone to survive. This is why business is doomed. People make business decisions and people are idiots.
Like people organizations would never survive in nature. In nature useless things and animals die off so that the species can progress. In organizations useless things and people are shuffled around because we refuse to accept that anything is useless. Some of the most inept people are given some of the most influential jobs. People are promoted to management not because they would make good managers, but because we have no use for them anywhere else and we need to get them out of the way. In the past managers were inept at managing, but they had a history of being good at their original jobs. This was better because while these managers hadn’t the slightest clue how to manage a company, they understood one of the things that the company did, and that’s something. Managers today never were good at anything. So instead of managing the company they employ various control techniques against their employees.
Happy people work. People with self-esteem want to be paid. Therefore companies try to keep you happy but with as low self-esteem as possible. Companies will do ridicules and, sometimes-counterproductive things to humiliate their employees. But the payout is worth it because employees that lack self-esteem will not ask for raises. Cubicles are small, movable, and have little monetary value-just like the employees in them. Hoteling is the practice of assigning cubicles daily. It wastes time having everyone move their things all the time, but it makes it clear that just because you are here today does not mean that you will be here tomorrow. furniture is also a manipulative tool. Important people get good furniture and unimportant people get cheap furniture. How much desk space is needed or how much a chair cost are not examples of things that should be taken into consideration when buying furniture. The purpose of office furniture is to establish employee worth. The author cites one company that paid to have walls torn down so that lower employees would not have offices that rightfully only go to senior management. Requiring dress clothes is another control technique. They serve no practical purpose, but it is something you can force people to do. Employee recognition awards offer a way to make fun of people and make them happy at the same time, just not too happy.
Managers should always undervalue employees. If they don’t the employees might want more money. Undervaluing employees can be accomplished by not using things you ask for, ignoring people, and making people wait for no reason. We have not bothered with the possibility that employees with self-esteem will work even harder and therefore offset the cost of raises.
Companies would like for employees to communicate in order to transfer information. Because employees don’t get promoted for this they don’t do it. Business communication consists of meaningless jargon. This is because people, who are idiots, will assume that if they don’t understand something it must be intelligent. Use lots of acronyms and don’t explain what they mean. Make everything look good and use lots of graphics that serve no substantive purpose. Confusing people will help you get promoted. This is why companies have long, meaningless mission and vision statements. Announcements are always used to convey the same message. The message is: If you were important you would already know this. You should give lots of presentations. Actually doing work gets you nowhere. Taking time away from doing work to show how much work you are doing will get you noticed.
In addition to just not saying anything some managers lie. To sort the truth from the lies the author likes to use a method called “What is More Likely?” Because companies are so dysfunctional, employees must react in order to preserve and further their careers. Employees need to eliminate competition and cling to superiors. One method of eliminating competition is by giving morally sound advice. You get to convince people to do stupid things, like confront their bosses. But it will make you look good because you were encouraging someone to do the “right thing.” It is of no consequence that the “right thing” happens to be advantageous to you. You want to mislead people, but you don’t want to lie. Therefore you should make statements that are technically accurate but deliberately misleading. Often important is what you don’t say. For example, tell someone “I’m a team player” and just fail to specify for which team.
There is a limited amount of people with whom you should be seen in public. These people are superiors, your boss’ secretary, your own secretary during national secretaries week, and terminally ill people. These people either have access to power or make you look like a caring person. And if you are ever caught with a person of lower power you can always make a technically true but deliberately misleading statement-causing people to believe to believe that the person is terminally ill. After all, they will die someday. Knowledge is power, so employees should accumulate and maintain control of information.
Retribution is a tool. But it is like nuclear weapons, don’t actually use it, just make sure people fear that one day you might use it. That way people will get out of your way and do what you want. Make fun of something that most people hate and will obviously fail, for example a morale building effort. When it does fail you will be popular and appear to be a visionary. A great way to eliminate competition is to talk bad about other employees to your boss’ secretary. Your boss will hear about it after it is further exaggerated, you will remain blameless as you did not tell your boss anything, and the other employees will not be able to see the boss because his secretary believes anything you tell her and also the things that she added.
An important thing to remember is that form is important and substance is not. People notice form. They are either too lazy or too stupid to evaluate substance. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what is in a report, as long as it “looks like” a good professional report. Employees should strive to “look like” management.
There are many divisions to the typical company and they all serve a purpose. Whether some of them serve a useful purpose is debatable. It is the function of marketing to spend millions of dollars to prove common sense assertions through surveys. If your product is horrible and costs too much to produce that is ok. Marketing will aim at a segment. The market segment you should aim for is the “Stupid Rich.”
You can sell cheap useless things to the “Stupid Poor.” Don’t try to sell to the “Smart Rich” or the “Smart Poor.” Since everyone is an idiot you shouldn’t have to worry about that anyway. You can confuse the “Stupid” segment with complex pricing plans and obscure quality features.
Engineers, scientists, and programmers design and produce products. They don’t interact well with people because engineers, scientists, and programmers have more rational goals than regular people. This is good for regular people because without ESPs regular people would not be able to survive in their air-conditioned houses and use phones to have pizza delivered to them in cars. Budgeting is a power-trip tool. You can exercise power by being in charge of budgets and by spending your entire budget in order to get more next year- so that you can spend it all again. The job of sales is to trick people into buying things. Sales people tend to be amoral. Sales utilizes business communication by deliberately misleading people with technically true statements.
Businesses engage in many non-essential activities. They would be better off using their resources to generate revenue. But if you want people to believe that you are smart and therefore worthy of promotion and raises you must confuse them with complex ideas- with no regard to whether the ideas are valid. Companies will hire outside management consultants. The idea is that outside people are unbiased. But in reality outside people will just have different biases. An inside person would look for a way to keep his job and better his individual position, and possibly the positions of people he liked or planned on exploiting. And outside person will look for ways to extend the consulting contract and gain repeat business without caring much if your company does well.
Meetings are one of those forms that win over substance. Meetings are plays were everyone has parts. The theme of the production is “We have lots to do.” You will act one of the parts instead of either actually doing something or going home. You may work on a project. Some projects have substantive purposes. Don’t worry about that. Focus on form, that’s what you get paid for. Come up with a good name. Use meaningless jargon and acronyms. Then convince everyone that the fate of the world rests on your project and that you need more funding.
Create vague immeasurable goals.
If you are an idiot, and if you are a person you are an idiot, you may think that team-building exercises are a good idea. Team building exercises are done by taking all your employees, when they are supposed to be off of work, and pretending like they are friends. You expect them to be friends and trust each other because they all work for your company and therefore should have a lot in common. The intended result is greater trust and teamwork among co-workers. The actual result is increased disdain for having to spend time with co-workers, resentment for having to do something without extra pay, and nothing being added to the value of your company.
Sometimes, especially when your company behaves in the way described because it is run by idiots, your company does not perform so well and you have to downsize. Some of the jobs serve no substantial purpose to the company and some did at one time but no longer do because of the sales lost by idiots. This is a tricky situation. You have to fire people and keep the remaining employees working. Remaining employees tend to get upset when they have more work and of course you are not giving out raises at the same time you are firing people. Then all of your good employees will start to leave because they know that the company is having problems and they can find jobs elsewhere. The people who can’t stay continue to run the company further into the ground.
Another thing you can do is reengineer the company. This is when you take all the bad elements of your company and put them in different places. Again this will cause good employees to leave because they fear the state of the company and thus their jobs. Bad employees will just hate you and become disagreeable.
All of the preceding in nonsensical but happens anyway. There is an alternative: OA5, or “Out at 5.” The underlying idea is that “Companies with effective employees and good products usually do well.” Keep everything fundamental. Companies should focus on fundamental or core functions. Excessive resources should not be spent on secondary activities. No resources should be spent on useless or “form only” activities. Reengineering is sometimes necessary. But it should only be used in those cases, and never to make minor adjustments or as an excuse to fire people. Everyone gets to go home at five pm. They are still expected to get all their work done, but if you let your employees know that if their work is done they will be able to leave then work will get done because people don’t want to be there. If people wanted to be at work, companies would not have to pay employees. Again focusing on the fundamentals, managers should only manage things that affect the company. Dress codes, reasonable memo fonts, and decorations should not be managed. Unless there is a reason for a rule to exist it shouldn’t exist. Manage things that have an effect on the company and productivity. Eliminate artificial programs that have the form of openness and creativity. If you operate with sanity instead of like an idiot, things like suggestions will happen on their own without needing boxes nailed to walls or monthly surveys.
Managers have a role in an OA5 company. They eliminate the employees who do not act cooperatively and effectively, teach employees relevant skills and let them learn even if it is not job related, reward information sharing, teach instead of punishing, and teach efficiency through example. Keep employees on the right track. This does not mean saying, “yes” to every request. Do what you can and what is best for the company. If you can’t do something explain why directly and with respect. Meetings, when absolutely necessary should be short. Their purpose is to convey information. Do that then go home. If you act with sanity your company will attract sane working people. This will become ingrained into the company culture. We are all idiots. That is why a company should have training and learning. Allow creativity. Some ideas will be idiotic. But some will be good. Keep the good ones.
Personal Insights
Why I think:
· The author is one of the most brilliant people around because:
Adams has not tolerance for putting on a show. He refuses to take things at face value and sees the real story. He will play by the rules of the game if that is what it takes, but points out that the rules are stupid detrimental to the rule-makers. He admits that he is not perfect when it comes to thinking and suggests making allowances for this but demanding deliberate thought and intelligence. He has the uncommon trait of common sense.
· If I were the author of the book, I would have done these three things differently:
1. I would have used less sexual innuendos. In fact, I wouldn’t have used any at all.
2. I would have organized the book better. Each chapter itself is organized, but the chapters are spread throughout the book in no particular order.
3. I would not have named my method “OA5.” It makes the company sound idiotic like the others even though in fact it is not.
· Reading this book made me think differently about the topic in these ways:
1. Sometimes people feel like doing something, anything is better than doing nothing. Sometimes nothing is the best thing you can do.
2. Following the rules is always a good idea. Just make sure to follow the implicit rules instead of the explicit rules.
3. Unproductive people aren’t necessarily lazy or stupid people. They are often doing what is in their best interest.
· I’ll apply what I’ve learned in this book in my career by:
1. I will look for a company that encourages success and discourages bureaucracy.
2. I will always be sure to reward desirable behaviors and discourage undesirable behaviors.
3. I will look harder for what is actually happening as opposed to what is reported to be happening.
· Here is a sampling of what others have said about the book and its author:
“What others (scholarly and magazine reviews – along with on-line reviews – not simply reviews off the back of the book) have said about the book and its author?” Kristi Bohn says that the book may be useful for bringing executives back to reality. She says the book tells of reality, and hints that because it is unconventional it may not get as much attention as “real management books.” The Professional Engineer says the book is funny and gives us a look at reality.
Bibliography
Adams, Scott.(1996).The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions.New York, NY: HarperCollins
Bohn, K. (2006). Book Review: The Dilbert Principle: A cubicle’s eye view of bosses, meetings, management fads & other workplace afflictions [Electronic version]. The Stepping Stone, 6.
TheProfessionalEngineer.com (2007). Retrieved April 29, 2010, from http://TheProfessionalEngineer.com/book-reviews/the-Dilbert-principle/
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Contact Info: To contact the author of this “Summary and Review of The Dilbert Principle please email Melanie.Johnson-2@selu.edu.
David C. Wyld (dwyld@selu.edu) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/.
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Originally published:
Summary and Review of Scott Adams’ The Dilbert Principle
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