Book Review: Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook

It's another rerun...I returned to my e-books-to-read list, and the book I read today was another Sunday book. I should come to something thoroughly secular soon. I already have a few reviews scheduled for October (Halloween) and December (Christmas) too.

Book Title: Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook

Author: Scott Adams

Date: 1996

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0-88730-788-4

Illustrations: cartoons by the author

Quote: "If you are not a manager, put this book down right now."

The comedy of the Dilbert cartoon series depended on two basic premises: (1) The managers of the offices you know are human beings, not dogs, cats, rats, or lunatics whose few remaining hairs form little devil horns. (2) If the decisions of the managers you know seem arbitrary, egotistical, and silly, you have a constitutional right to warn them that they're going wrong by showing them a Dilbert cartoon.

Therefore, everybody liked Dilbert cartoons.

While most cartoonists settled for reprinting last year's cartoon strips as a book, Scott Adams pieced his books together with fresh new text in which he explained the thoughts that inspired the cartoons. The use of text seemed to inspire him to fresh satirical blasts. Every page or two still contained a cartoon.

It's all very funny, and while humor-challenged socialists griped because the strip never recommended nationalizing the industry, I occasionally asked myself why Dilbert, Wally, and Alice didn't just start their own business. Big business secret #1: small, efficient businesses are to big, bloated businesses as Jerry Rice is to Rush Limbaugh. Big business secret #2: big, bloated businesses have lobbied for years to create illogical laws that function to keep small, efficient businesses from running circles around big, bloated businesses. You can blame protectionist laws on capitalism and Big Business, or on socialism and Big Government, or (like Lincoln Steffens) simply on "corruption." More than the need to keep the comic strip's appeal to its audience, protectionist laws were what kept Dilbert, Wally, and Alice chained to their cubicles.

Now you know. Knowledge is power. Now you can cut through some of the bloat and necrosis in whatever business you're in. You can be ethical, 99% stress-free while you work, efficient, and creatively fulfilled in self-employment...works for me, when I get work. Or you can join the crowd who just try to be grateful that their wage-slave job isn't quite as ridiculous as Dilbert's.

If you decide to be independent, I think you may need Dilbert more than the wage slaves do. From time to time we need reminders of what we're missing. It's tempting to listen to those who say "Just give up your silly idea and get a real job." 

As if tedium, stupidity, and backstabbing were what made a job "real"?

Book Review: El Principio de Dilbert

Book Title: El Principio de Dilbert

Original Title: The Dilbert Principle

Author: Scott Adams

Translator: J.M. Pomares

Publisher: Granica

Date: 1997 (Spanish), 1996 (English)

Length: 338 pages

Illustrations: cartoons by the author

ISBN: 8475777821

Quote: "Los trabajadores mas ineficientes son trasladados sistematicamente alli donde pueden causar menos dano: la direccion de la empresa."

In theory the Spanish edition ought to be reviewed in Spanish, as on Amazon it is, but out of respect to the Spanish language, as well as the English-speaking readers, I'm writing this blog in English. Readers whose first language is Spanish are, however, invited to advertise their translation skills by translating any blog posts they consider worth the trouble.

The Peter Principle stated that workers are promoted to their level of incompetence. The Dilbert Principle (in English) stated that incompetent workers are promoted to the place where they can do most harm: management.

The statement was made, of course, by what a Granica employee describes on Amazon as "the classic American story of an introvert engineer and his megalomaniac dog." (Actually, in the bizarre reality of the cartoon series, Dogbert does own the company; that's why the pointy-haired jerk can't fire Wally, Alice, and Dilbert.)

Beyond the middle-aged-boy-and-his-dog motif, the popularity of the Dilbert series comes from its interactive element: the cartoons illustrate complaints real office workers e-mailed to Scott Adams about real office policies and politics. The book isn't just a collection of cartoons, although most pages include one or more cartoons. The book also includes lots of e-mails, edited for brevity and privacy, but more or less in the correspondents' own words.

Drawings and e-mails are connected by Adams' philosophical reflections, which are as snarky and funny in Spanish as they were in English. All people are stupid--some times, about some things. This stupidity is a source of wealth for satirists. At the end of the book Adams does, however, offer the "F5 conceptual model" for businesses that want to minimize corporate stupidity; F5 stands for "fuera a las 5" (out of the office by 5 p.m.). Toward this goal, the first heading is "APARTARSE DEL CAMINO" (get out of the way--don't bother with policies that dictate conformity, and don't try to organize creativity). So what can the manager do? Fire jerks, teach efficiency by example, and try to ensure that everybody learns something every day.

Introverts have to love the Dilbert series...it shows how annoying the "people persons" (extroverts) some companies have tried to promote really are, to the people who are worth their salaries. For this reason alone, El Principio de Dilbert would be warmly recommended even if it weren't also (a) instructive and (b) hilarious.

Whether your first language is English or Spanish, this book is easy to read without continual reference to the other copy or to the dictionary. Business vocabulary words in both languages are almost identical...and reading this book bilingually is a painless way to learn them. Try to find a place where chortling won't distract others. This book might not be considered ideal for reading in an actual cubicle.