"Benjamin Compton said: "
> I've been a fan of Dilbert. I read his comic strip. I bought "The Dilbert
> Principle." I allow employees to post Dilbert cartoons in my office. I
> laugh when I read Dilbert. Dilbert clearly reveals the absurdity and
> foolishness that are often found within organizations.
>
> BUT. . .
>
> He doesn't present solutions to the problem he identifies. He leaves his
> readers with a sense of nagging dispair. The basic message of the cartoon
> is: Managers are inept, deal with it.
>
> And so those of us who are trying to build Learning Organizations, and who
> are trying to be intelligent and deliberate about what we do are
> undermined by a pervasive, pestiferous, and ficticious cartoon character.
>
> As I push forward with my work, the one obstacle I constantly bump into is
> Dilbert -- and his mockery of management. While employees recognize my
> sincerity, and note my openness, they still think, somewhere down inside,
> I have a "stupid" half that is waiting (and wanting) to show itself.
Well, actually, they would have thought so even without Scott Adams to
articulate it. Long before Dilbert, I was convinced that adding the words
"manager" to someone's title would drop their IQ 40 points on the spot...
after all, managing software development couldn't be *that* hard after
all.
Now that I've been trying to "manage" the software process myself, I
realize that I was both right and wrong. I've certainly seen myself do
some Stupid Manager Tricks (Lemmings, ho!) and on the other hand, software
development management is a whole lot harder than it looks.
> Am I missing the boat on this one? Do others face this same problem? Is
> Scott Adams really bringing about constructive change, or is he simply
> making a whole lot of money by mocking managers without accepting (or
> recognizing) that he is also causing serious problems within many
> organizations?
If Scott Adams can really cause a serious problem by pointing out what
there is to laugh at in an organzation, then maybe Dilbert isn't the
problem in that organization. We laugh at what frightens us, or at what
we recognize in ourselves...
The Pointy-Haired One is of course a caricature of ineptitude. But while
trying to do something as unlikely as manage a chaotic, complex process,
we're bound to look foolish once in a while. Occupational hazard, I
think.
-- Rachel Silber rachel@ontos.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>