Millennium Marketing Research®
Tom Schori DBA Millennium Marketing Research®, 808 Ironwood, Normal IL 61761, 309-532-8466

The 'Dilbert® phenomenon:' an accurate assessment of business?

By Thomas R. Schori, Ph.D., and Michael L. Garee, Principals,  Millennium Marketing Research, 808 E. Ironwood, Normal, IL 61761-5239. 

OK, we admit it: Dilbert is one of our favorite cartoons. It’s always humorous and sometimes it’s even hilarious! Almost always it has a ring of truth in it, too, exaggerated though that truth may sometimes be.

The other day we were rehashing a number of business issues we’ve faced during our long careers in the corporate world and talk turned to Scott Adams’s persona, Dilbert. Hadn’t we known (and even sometimes worked for!) people like the dense, pointy-haired boss? Hadn’t we also from time to time had to suffer through some of the same inanities featured in the cartoon strip? Gosh! were we anti-business?

The answers to those questions, we decided, were "yes," "yes," and "definitely not," respectively. (Whew!)

Parody and satire are of course among the oldest and most effective methods used in social commentary. Scott Adams has proved in just a few years that he is a master at the method. All of that said, then, is Dilbert really an accurate assessment of American business, or is it simply parody and nothing more? Following are some of the thoughts we came up with. First, the bad news:

Unfortunately, there are a number of "pointy-haired" bosses in American business. If there weren’t we wouldn’t be seeing some once great companies going the way of the dinosaurs because of the greed, outright ignorance, pettiness, and out-of-touch with reality behaviors of those who make key decisions for these companies.

Unfortunately, in some companies there are way, way too many pointless, mind-numbing meetings going on and reports and memos circulating that detract from the companies making any headway at all toward becoming world-class competitors. In an attempt to deal with such an environment, the employees in these companies quite often resort to the very behaviors parodied in Dilbert, i.e., deception, "brown-nosing" (we could have used the more familiar term here but decided to keep these columns "G" rated), "back-stabbing," obfuscation, etc.

Now, for the good news.

Fortunately, most "pointy-haired" bosses don’t last for long in the genuine world-class companies. Oh, they may make short-term (and even sometimes longterm) gains that seem to reward their behavior, but once that behavior starts affecting "the bottom line," they can quickly become history. Or, if they happen to be at the CEO level, they risk getting the "honor" of having their names, pictures and sundry embarrassing personality quirks splashed across the national business press until they are left with virtually no place to hide. Many times, once they are found out, careers sometimes spanning decades can be unalterably tattered or even left in ruins.

Fortunately, in the genuine world-class companies (those companies, by the way, that make American business envied¾ and emulated¾ throughout the world), the number of pointless, mind-numbing meetings, memos, reports and counterproductive employee behaviors seem to be kept to an absolute minimum, if they exist at all.

And, finally, be assured that we definitely are pro-business! After all, we’ve spent the majority of our adult lives in it. To be sure, we consider ourselves quite dedicated to business. What gets our "dander" up, and we suspect what gets most people’s "dander" up, is experiencing any negative behavior that serves to give the business world we love such a "black eye."

But, on the brighter side, if it weren’t for such occurrences and negative behavior, Scott Adams would perhaps still be mindlessly cranking away at some mundane task in some anonymous cubicle, Dilbert wouldn’t be a name immediately recognize in contemporary business culture, and finally, millions of daily newspaper readers would have far less to laugh at each day.

Long live Dilbert!