Resumo de Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook

Introduction
Dilbert is one of the most recognizable cartoon characters across the world. The beauty of the Dilbert lies in the applicability of the cartoons to all offices around the world. It is more true in today's world of global organizations, so that the policies and processes used by the employers world over to inhumanize the employees are becoming more and more alike.

Book Description
The cover cartoon delivers the message, no matter what your background is, no matter where you work, no matter what your ideals are, once you become a manager all that is left is a pointy haired manager who is good for nothing.

The book contains a lot of Dogbert strips which have appeared over a period of time. The book does a good job of classifying them into various chapters. The chapters are as follows:
I: Acting like a manager: How to walk the walk and talk the talk to make sure that everyone is depressed at your very sight.

II: Motivating Employees: How to motivate the employees to work unpaid extra hours and squeeze the minimal amount of personal life which they have.

III: Communicating: How to be a incoherent communicator such that you deliver the message and still no one understands a damn thing. This chapter gives you nuggets of wisdom like Don't encourage the employees to be relevant, interesting or brief.

IV: Success Strategies: Top strategies to help make the life of employees miserable. This is all about an higher plane of management where you need to devise strategies for rejecting employee ideas & blundering your way to top of the organization.

V: Compensation: How to keep niggling at reducing the compensation till finally your employee works for free. Check out a sample conversation to guage the power of this chapter:

Employee Says: My performance was exceptional. Give me a raise.
Manager Says: But your pay is comparable to the industry. Go away.

Employee Says: My pay is below the industry standards. Give me a raise.
Manager Says: But your performance was bad. Go away.

Employee Says: My performance was exceptional and I'm paid less than the industry average. Give me a raise.
Manager Says: But it has been a difficult year for the company. Go away.

Employee Says: My performance was exceptional, I'm paid less than the industry average and the company had record profits. Give me a raise.
Manager Says: How would you like to be a team leader?

VI: Getting rid of employees: This chapter is about that joyful activity of kicking people out of the company. The chapter begins with the quote: Employees are company's most valuable assets and with a good reason - every time you get rid of one, earnings increase and also your stock options and bonus.

VII: How to be a happy manager: This chapter is about establishing your identity in the organization and increasing your fame. The chapter concentrates on a two pronged strategy:
1. Grab more loot for yourself, thus increasing your status.
2. Humiliate your employees, thus lowering their status.

Critic's Viewpoint
One thing for sure with Scott Adams cartoons are their remarkable resemblance to real life situation. While going through this book, I could visualize a hundred situation where in my manager/s have acted like the Pointy Haired Boss. Each chapter leaves an indelible mark in your mind and all you can do is sympathize with yourselves. On the other hand, if you are a manager it does give you a good picture into all the tools you have to exploit people around you.

Jokes apart, Dogbert's management handbook does give you some real insights into work environments of today. The excessive stress, the excessive professionalism of it all and managers do get into an habit of being ruthless and inconsiderate. This book allows them to see how the other side real feel when they make incoherent decisions or simply fail to communicate it properly. Though this is more of sarcastic handbook a guide to management, I think every manager should have a copy of this.

Scott Adams uses both collection of strips as well as narrative to get some of the points through. So it is not just a collection of cartoon strips, but also some valuable management theories being weaved around them. Some of the strips seem to be pretty old based on the fact that the boss hair is still a lot less pointed and some of these are quite new ones with the bosses hair reaching a dangerous levels of pointedness.

About Scott Adams
Scott Adams has done an MBA from UC Berkley. He started using Dilbert strips during presentations and found them to be a success. He then went on to syndicate the Dilbert strips in 1989. Today, Dilbert is syndicated in around 1400 publications world-wide making it one of the most syndicated strips of all time.

He decided to organize his strips into a book and came up with his first book The Dilbert Principle which was a bestseller in both US and UK. Dogbert's Management Handbook is his second book.

Summary
Dogbert's Management Handbook presents all the idiosyncracies of today's management in a humourous way.

You cannot but laugh and give this book a 5 star rating.

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