The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions [Paperback]

Scott Adams (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 24, 1997

The creator of Dilbert, the fastest-growing comic strip in the nation (syndicated in nearly 1000 newspapers), takes a look at corporate America in all its glorious lunacy. Lavishly illustrated with Dilbert strips, these hilarious essays on incompetent bosses, management fads, bewildering technological changes and so much more, will make anyone who has ever worked in an office laugh out loud in recognition.

The Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers will be systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage — management.

Since 1989, Scott Adams has been illustrating this principle each day, lampooning the corporate world through Dilbert, his enormously popular comic strip. In Dilbert, the potato-shaped, abuse-absorbing hero of the strip, Adams has given voice to the millions of Americans buffeted by the many adversities of the workplace.

Now he takes the next step, attacking corporate culture head-on in this lighthearted series of essays. Packed with more than 100 hilarious cartoons, these 25 chapters explore the zeitgeist of ever-changing management trends, overbearing egos, management incompetence, bottomless bureaucracies, petrifying performance reviews, three-hour meetings, the confusion of the information superhighway and more. With sharp eyes, and an even sharper wit, Adams exposes -- and skewers -- the bizarre absurdities of everyday corporate life. Readers will be convinced that he must be spying on their bosses, The Dilbert Principle rings so true!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

You loved the comic strip; now read the business advice.

Or should that be anti-business advice? Scott Adams provides the hapless victim of re-engineering, rightsizing and Total Quality Management some strategies for fighting back, er, coping. Forced to work long hours, with no hope of a raise? Adams offers tips on maintaining parity in compensation. Along the way, Adams explains what ISO 9000 really is and assesses the irresistibility of female engineers.

The breath-taking cynicism of the strip should prepare readers for the author's no-holds-barred attack on management fads, large organizations, pointless bureaucracy and sadistic rule-makers who glory in control of office supplies. Readers of the on-line Dilbert Newsletter are familiar with the kind of e-mail Adams receives from his readers -- and may even have sent a few of those missives themselves. Along with illustrative strips, e-mail messages provide excruciating examples of corporate behavior which compel the reader to agree with Adams when he insists that "People are idiots".

The final chapter offers a model for would-be successful businesses to follow: the OA5 model. It's introduced with little fanfare, no outrageous promises and just the right amount of self-deprecation. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Adams worked in a cubicle at Pacific Bell for nine years. From there he went on to pen the wildly popular cartoon Dilbert, which appears in over 700 newspapers. He is also the author of six Dilbert books (e.g., Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy, Andrews & McMeel, 1995) and an electronic Dilbert newsletter, has a Web site on the Internet, and is a frequent speaker at business gatherings. His latest book of humorous essays and observations elaborates on the corporate scenarios depicted in his cartoons. The "Dilbert Principle" asserts that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. Chapters include such titles as "Machiavellian Methods," "Pretending To Work," and "Engineers, Scientists, Programmers, and Other Odd People." The book is replete with such advice as "Never walk down the hall without a document in your hand" and "The worth of any project is how it will sound on your resume." He stresses the importance of using the word paradigm as often as possible, discusses the value of computers in pretending to be busy, and recommends that workers awaiting performance reviews openly display copies of Soldier of Fortune magazine on their desks. This cynical, satirical, all-too-familiar glimpse of corporate life is unabashed management bashing and is very funny. Recommended for all humor and business collections.?Alan Farber, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; Reprint edition (April 24, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887308589
• ISBN-13: 978-0887308581
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (120 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #51 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Business & Professional

More About the Author

What started as a doodle has turned Scott Adams into a superstar of the cartoon world. Dilbert debuted on the comics page in 1989 while Adams was in the tech department at Pacific Bell. Adams continued to work at Pacific Bell until he was voluntarily downsized in 1995. He has lived in the San Francisco Bay area since 1979.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad & True, Dilbert embodies life of todays' office techie! January 6, 2004

By Courtland J. Carpenter VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I've worked as an engineer or technician, both for big companies and small. Before Dilbert, in all but the most restrictive environments, a small office underground poked the same kind of fun at management. Some offices even have their own cartoonists. A mega-sized company in Texas had a talented, cartoon artist, who did satirical office cartoons, with great caricature likenesses. He signed his work "The Phantom", and because I think even management knew who he was, he stayed restrained enough to keep it funny, but not too insulting. One possible exception, was a cartoon that mimicked the classic road gang movie, "Cool Hand Luke". He depicted an office corridor which as management walked by each office, they would say "Still shaking that work order there, boss". It did not go over too well with management.

The Dilbert Principle is loosely based on the long discussed phenomena, called the "Peter Principle". Which I always thought means the biggest "prick" rises the highest. Usually it's the most unqualified as well. In this age we pay CEO's millions in salary, and then give them massive stock options. In return, they bankrupt the company with shady accounting practices, and sometimes, outright theft. You have to wonder if the term "business ethics" is an oxymoron. It's good that most offices have people like Dilbert, and we all have artists like Scott Adams. The humor allows many of us to survive the droll, office existence day after day. The unrewarding existence, of working in a system where incompetents profit, often on our good works.

Prior to Dilbert, I may have considered myself unique, or just unlucky to be employed by some of these bozo's in suit and tie. I've been through the improvement meetings, sensitivity, and those focus groups.... The "one on one" carpet sessions with my boss, which accomplished nothing, except to try my patience, and then waste my time. Still, management needs to feel they do something, and if it can't make a new report to show their own boss this week, it may be time to try out the latest management fad. Adams collection of cartoons, groups these into common categories of management tactics. If you look hard enough, you may even find a cartoon, that help you avoid experiencing the same Hell in your own office. It's too bad the managers don't seem to read these books, or if they do, they don't seem to be telling.

Perhaps the most important thing found in The Dilbert Principle, is that it gives some of us a better understanding of what's really going on. Unless you're fairly astute, you will occasionally find yourself buying into a lot of management disinformation. Information, that could clue you into a "downsizing", a company sale, management change, or other "issues", that may give you reason to brush up the old resume. At the very least, if gives you a chance to know what's probably going on behind the scenes, and decide how to best keep your own house.

Another thing that is uncanny about Scott Adams, is his depiction of the characters. It seemed like, the company I worked for in Texas, was chock full of those little balding management guys. Middle managers with overly short wide ties, and always carrying a cup of coffee in their right hand, as they walked about. They'd ask us about what we were doing, and when we told them they'd look confused, say something cleverly non-committal, and move on. It used to be a competition to see who could confuse them first, and move them on to the next persons office or cubicle. Read more ›

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A much needed parody with some decent advice hidden inside September 4, 2002

By Glen Engel Cox VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

If there's a mascot for Internet users, it's the nerdy engineer Dilbert from Scott Adams' comic strip of the same name. No other character in the mass media combines the feelings of technological superiority and wage-slave hopelessness present in the lives of most computer users. But the play of computer users versus management is only part of Adams' comic ouevre; his hilarious take on everyday blue-collar workers touches not only on computer use in companies, but the combined forces of Total Quality Management, endless meetings, doughnuts, cubicles, business plans, and all the other aspects of working in a modern office. Although most of Adams' strips play on the plight of the nameless cubicle worker against an uncaring and oblivious management, he also covers the flip side of work where managers are unable to motivate employees beyond using the office LAN for Doom and the fine art of making sleep look like work. Given all of this familiarity with business, and the increasing popularity of business books, it makes sense that Adams' most recent book, The Dilbert Principle isn't a collection of Dilbert strips but a incisive look at the frailty and foibles of self-help management books under the guise of being one itself.

Business books were overdue to move from the bestseller list to the parody shelf. What was once simply just a few "feel-good"self-help psychology books for managers like Stephen R.Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Kenneth Blanchard's The One Minute Manager is now a plague, including books like The Management Secrets of Attila the Hun and The Star Trek Guide to Management.... What these books spend so many words doing that Adams deconstructs so brilliantly is to take what is common sense to anybody else and grafting the buzz words of business schools and management training on it. Take, for example, this wonderful bit of normal business communication that might have come straight from Management 101:

"Perform world-class product development, financial analysis, and feet services using empowered team dynamics in a Total Quality paradigm until we become the industry leader.

Take out the double-speak, and what you have is a mission statement that says:

"Do the best work to provide the best product with the best people until we become the best in our field."

Unfortunately, the first statement probably took ten people who get paid in the high five figures (if not more) at least three days at an exclusive resort in Florida to write. Even more than mission statements such as this, business double-speak of the nineties has centered around terms such as "downsizing" and "re-engineering". By putting a different spin on the timeless tradition of firing and re-organization, today's companies act more like politicians than producers.

Ninety-five percent of Adams book is examples such as this, cartoons illustrating the examples, and email from Dilbert readers telling how their companies have fallen into the Dilbert Zone. All of this is great reading, although sometimes disconcerting when you see your own company being portrayed. The last five percent of The Dilbert Principle is Scott Adams' own philosophy for managers. He says, in the introduction to unveiling his company model OA5 (standing for "Out at Five O'Clock"), that:

"In this chapter you will find a variety of untested suggestions from an author who has never successfully managed anything but his cats. (And now that I think of it, I haven't seen the grey one for two days.) ... I doubt that anything you read here will improve your life, but I'm fairly confident that it won't hurt you either, and that's better than a lot of things you're doing now."

Although humble, his suggestions have much merit because they return the business of work to common sense. When a company remembers, as Adams suggests, that it has three main reasons for being (its customers, its employees, and its stockholders), and treats all three fairly, then the rest will fall into place. If all the management consultants and business book authors condensed their theories into brief summaries such as this, it would be tough to charge [amt]an hour and [amt] per book for it. Which means that there will always be consultants and treatises for the clueless, and an endless supply of material for Adams' cartoon. Read more ›

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Excels at Pointing Out Organizational Stalls January 28, 1999

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

My work involves helping company leaders identify the causes of "stalled" thinking in the organization. What impresses me about this book is how many of the causes Scott Adams has identified. The man is clearly a great observer of organizations. His crusade against "stalled" thinking (especially by the leaders) also means that others with keen insights send him their observations, as well. Future historians of the American corporation would do better to start with Scott Adams than most of the organizational theory and practice business books that have been written. His humor is excellent, because he is unerring in picking the right balloon to prick. As a management consultant, I regularly reread his chapter on management consultants to be sure that I am not behaving like the ones he describes. Keep these wonderful books and comic strips coming! Be sure to post the strips where they will get the most attention. Maybe you will help someone wake up in your leadership!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best and truest workplace book EVER! September 17, 2007

By Matt Tinaglia

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

subject says it all- just get it and you will laugh your hiney off. Plently of Dilbert cartoon panels disbursed throughout. Published in 1996 but absolutely timeless and just as applicable today as ever; probably always will be.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget about organisational theories December 6, 2005

By H. Gumeta

Format:Paperback

I used to work for my native country's Tax Collection Authority and thought that all the management antics and sheer madness I witnessed -and many times I participated in- were exclusive to my organisation because it was a) a government office, and b) in a developing country. After three years I just couldn't take any more and left to do my PhD in the UK studying Information Technologies in bureaucratic organisations. I started reading Max Weber's classic writings on bureaucracy and some other scholarly works on the same topic, that drew from a number of theories ranging from rationality to institutional theory and Foucault on power and authority, which I found quite unconvincing. Then I came across "the Dilbert principle" in a second hand shop, bought it and couldn't put it down for three consecutive days. When I was done I realised that the management follies I experienced in my country were in fact the rule in most companies in the USA -and perhaps in the western world. I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or to cry, because this supposedly humorous book questions the very underlying assumptions of mainstream organisational theories (e.g., rational choice theory) using empirical evidence that is practically impossible to neglect, as most of us people who have worked can confirm. I'm delighted I found this book early in my PhD.