Dilbert’s creator on business management
Monday, December 22nd, 2003The Times ran a first-person essay by Dilbert creator Scott Adams yesterday, with the surprise revelation that Adams makes fun of incompetent managers because he’s a manager, too. “I was a manager at 19,” he says. Adams developed the Dilbert Principle - by which people are promoted into positions where they can’t do real harm - on the job at a campus eatery, where he helped move a hapless bartender into a successful supervisory role.
Fans know Adams created Dilbert while entrenched in PacBell’s corporate culture in San Francisco, but it’s a mistake to presume he’s a diehard techie - he obtained an M.B.A. from Berkeley by night, and is now CEO of Scott Adams Foods. “Dilbert succeeded because of my business experience, not my cartooning talent,” he says. Go figure: The Pointy Haired Boss in Dilbert wasn’t created by a resentful underling, but by a successful manager with no patience for the bumbling, unaccountable behavior of others. Adams’ advice to aspiring business leaders: “The world rewards action. It doesn’t reward much of anything else.”
