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Title |
The Dilbert Principle : A Cubicle's Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads, & Other Workplace Afflictions
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Summary |
By Scott Adams
A no-holds-barred attack on management fads, large organizations, pointless bureaucracy and sadistic rule-makers who glory in control of office supplies. |
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Contributor |
John McTainsh
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Published |
10-Aug-2000 |
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Last updated |
10-Aug-2000 |
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What the Amazon reviewer said.
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
What I thought of the book.
This could be the best management book I have ever read. As a bottom feeding cubicle dwelling engineer,
this book was written for me. It is a sad but true reflection of corporate life in almost any size
organization. Brilliant insights into fads such as ISO9000 ( actually a practical joke played on USA
by the Europeans.)
Reading the book is like opening up a corporate executives head, scooping out the jelly, climbing
in side and riding around for a day of twisted activities to really see why they do what they do. As I
look around my office see executives using tactics detailed in the book every day and top management think
they are doing a great job for it. As an experiment I piled my desk with paper, filled up my email box,
left email for people from home at night and worked something for home for two weeks. By the middle of
the second week my boss was assigning my work to other people so I could get more done.
After reading a multitude of depressing texts on management practices, this is one of the few that has
real practical advice in it.
Conclusion.
This is an excellent read from cover to cover. I would recommend it to any engineer and steal it
from any executive you see with it.
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