Dilbert stuff - and the bad boss syndrome
- Attendees
- meter@bmerhbfc
- Colin Kemp 7K76 BNR
- Author
- Colin Kemp 7K76 BNR
- Summary
For your information:
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Jul 06 07:36:00 1995
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From: Paul (P.J.) Demers (BNR) Dept 7X85-M SKY
Subject: fw:FWD>Dilbert stuff
Thought you might appreciate this.
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Paul Demers Dept 7X85 -- GSF Global Metering
esn 393 3956 Skyline Tower 3, 3rd Floor, Pillar B2
Mail Stop 102 [email protected]
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Wed Jul 5 23:43:00 1995
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From: Patrick (P.D.) Bradd (BNR) Dept 7X14 SKY
Subject: fw:FWD>Dilbert stuff
Sound familiar?
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Patrick Bradd Bell Northern Research, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 613 765-4211
[email protected] GSF Global Lines XPM Architect ESN 395-4211
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Jul 05 20:00:00 1995
To: Patrick (P.D.) Bradd (BNR) Dept 7X14 SKY
Todd (T.A.) Horsman (BNR) Dept 7X14 SKY
From: Peter (P.) Trobridge (BNR) Dept 7X14 SKY
Subject: fw:FWD>Dilbert stuff
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Wed Jul 5 16:25:00 1995
To: Peter (P.) Trobridge (BNR) Dept 7X14 SKY
From: Beth (E.E.) Trobridge (BNR) Dept 7W11 CAR
Subject: fw:FWD>Dilbert stuff
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1995 Jul 5 at 15:33 EDT
to: Marc Belgrave (BNR) Dept 7W11 CAR
Vijuna Benedict (BNR) Dept 7W12 CAR
Mohamed Boraie (BNR) Dept 7W12 CAR
Fay Broten (BNR) Dept 7W11 CAR
Jeff Cavill (BNR) Dept 7W11 CAR
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Merja Tammi (BNR) Dept 7W10-S CAR
Beth Trobridge (BNR) Dept 7W11 CAR
from: Lynn Marshall (BNR) Dept 7W12 CAR
subject: fw:FWD>Dilbert stuff
For your amusement.
Lynn
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Jul 05 13:32:00 1995
To: '[email protected]' (INTERNET)
'[email protected]' (INTERNET)
Lynn (L.S.) Marshall (BNR) Dept 7W12 CAR
Mike (M.J.) Rider (BNR) Dept 7T01 CAR
From: Spencer (S.C.) Cheng (BNR) Dept 7T10 CAR
Subject: fw:FWD>Dilbert stuff
This must remind you of someone you know :)
Spencer Cheng [email protected] Bell-Northern Research, 613-763-4046
P.O. Box 3511, Station C, Ottawa, Canada K1Y 4H7
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MONDAY, MAY 22, 1995
Manager's Journal: The Dilbert Principle ---- By Scott Adams
I use a lot of "bad boss" themes in my syndicated cartoon strip,
"Dilbert." I'll never run out of material. I get a hundred e-mail
messages a day, mostly from people who are complaining about their
own clueless managers. Here are some of my favorite stories, all
allegedly true:
-- A vice president insists that the company's new battery-powered
product be equipped with a light that comes on to tell you when the
power is off.
-- An employee suggests setting priorities so they'll know how to
apply their limited resources. The manager's response: "Why can't
we concentrate our resources across the board?"
-- A manager wants to find and fix software bugs more quickly. He
offers an incentive plan: $20 for each bug the Quality Assurance
people find and $20 for each bug the programmers fix. (These are the
same programmers who create the bugs.) Result: An underground
economy in "bugs" springs up instantly. The plan is rethought after
one employee nets $1,700 the first week.
Stories like these prompted me to do the first annual Dilbert Survey
to find out what management practices were most annoying to
employees. The choices included the usual suspects: Quality,
Empowerment, Re-engineering and the like. But the number-one
vote-getter on this highly unscientific survey was "Idiots Promoted
to Management."
This seemed like a subtle change from the old concept where capable
workers were promoted until they reached their level of incompetence
-- the Peter Principle. Now, apparently, the incompetent workers are
promoted directly to management without ever passing through the
temporary competence stage.
When I entered the workforce in 1979, the Peter Principle described
management pretty well. Now I think we'd all like to return to those
Golden Years when you had a boss who was once good at something. I
get all nostalgic when I think about it. Back then, we all had hopes
of being promoted beyond our levels of competence. Every worker had
a shot at someday personally navigating the company into the tar pits
while reaping large bonuses and stock options. It was a time when
inflation meant everybody got an annual raise; a time when we freely
admitted that the customer didn't matter. It was a time of joy.
We didn't appreciate it then, but the Peter Principle always provided
us with a boss who understood what we did for a living. Granted, he
made consistently bad decisions -- after all, he had no management
skills. But at least they were the informed decisions of a seasoned
veteran from the trenches.
Example:
Boss: "When I had your job I could drive a three-inch rod through a
metal casing with one motion. If you're late again I'll do the same
thing to your head."
Lately, however, the Peter Principle has given way to the Dilbert
Principle. The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the
most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where
they can do the least damage: management. This has not proved to be
the winning strategy that you might think.
Maybe we should learn something from nature. In the wild, the
weakest moose is hunted down and killed by Dingo dogs, thus ensuring
survival of the fittest. This is a harsh system -- especially for
the Dingo dogs that have to fly all the way from Australia. But
nature's process is a good one; everybody agrees, except perhaps for
the Dingo dogs and the moose in question . . . and the flight
attendants. But the point is that we'd all be better off if the
least competent managers were being eaten by Dingo dogs instead of
writing mission statements.
It seems as if we've turned nature's rules upside down. We
systematically identify and promote the people who have the least
skills. The usual business rationalization for promoting idiots (the
Dilbert Principle in a nutshell) is something along the lines of
"Well, he can't write code, he can't design a network, and he doesn't
have any sales skill. But he has very good hair . . ."
If nature started organizing itself like a modern business, you'd
see, for example, a band of mountain gorillas led by an "alpha"
squirrel. And it wouldn't be the most skilled squirrel; it would be
the squirrel nobody wanted to hang around with.
I can see the other squirrels gathered around an old stump saying
stuff like "If I hear him say `I like nuts' one more time, I'm going
to kill him." The gorillas, overhearing this conversation, lumber
down from the mist and promote the unpopular squirrel. The remaining
squirrels are assigned to Quality Teams as punishment.
You may be wondering if you fit the description of a Dilbert
Principle manager. Here's a little test:
1. Do you believe that anything you don't understand must be easy to
do?
2. Do you feel the need to explain in great detail why "profit" is
the difference between income and expense?
3. Do you think employees should schedule funerals only during
holidays?
4. Are the following words a form of communication or gibberish:
"The Business Services Leadership Team will enhance the organization
in order to continue on the journey toward a Market Facing
Organization (MFO) model. To that end, we are consolidating the
Object Management for Business Services into a cross strata team."
5. When people stare at you in disbelief, do you repeat what you
just said, only louder and slower?
Now give yourself one point for each question you answered with the
letter "B." If your score is greater than zero, congratulations --
there are stock options in your future.
(The language in number 4 is from an actual company memo.)
---
Mr. Adams is the creator of Dilbert, which appears in 450 newspapers.
He still works his day job at Pacific Bell.
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Note: "He still works his day job at Pacific Bell." Not! He quit
last week under pressure from Pac Bell management types who were
uncomfortable with the so-called negative publicity generated by his
association with their fine BOC.