Management Training and the Dilbert Principle

I got a call yesterday from a buddy of mine working at a Fortune 50 company. He was complaining about a few of the managers they have over there and it got us talking about some of the winners we’ve worked for and with over the years.

There was the manager who, when told by an employee that he was leaving to take a position at another company, grabbed the employee in a headlock and started crying while repeating, “you can’t leave me, you can’t leave me.”

Then there was the manager who was always taking credit for her subordinate’s ideas. She had no industry experience (automotive product engineering) and everyone she worked with knew it. Her team decided to create a new product offering using completely fabricated industry terms (think ’skyhook’, ‘finnegan pin’, and ‘bucketofsteam’.) They presented the idea (complete with ACAD drawings) in a meeting and she rejected it as too costly to develop. Then, as planned, she went right to senior management and presented the product concept as her own (and was subsequently fired.)

We laughed while asking the question, “How do these people get these gigs in the first place?” After much consideration, we agreed that it’s most likely due to Scott Adams’ Dilbert Principle in action. Adams observed that “…companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they’re capable of doing.” That’s got to be the answer.

Whatever the reason for ending up where they are within the organization, we agreed that these bad managers often share a common set of traits:

• They have incredibly poor communication skills
• They have incredibly poor people skills
• They lack subject matter (industry) expertise
• They exhibit a severe case of overconfidence and hubris (which stems from a severe case of underconfidence and fear)
• They encourage hard work, not smart work
• They’re ass-kissers, behaving differently in front of their bosses than they do at other times (see “underconfidence and fear”, above)
• They never establish proper expectations, responsibilities, or goals
• They regularly throw their subordinates (and others) under the bus
• They schedule pointless meetings often and for long periods of time (with no appreciable results)
• They take credit for the ideas and successes of their subordinates
• They lie
• They will not accept constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement

Of course, this is a list my buddy and I hammered out in a few minutes, based on our own experiences. YMMV.

What has your experience been with managers? Great stories? Horror stories? I’d love to hear from you.

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