A summary of Scott Adams’, Dilbert and The Way of The Weasel

chillibreeze writer — Jahnavi

Does your boss call meetings, which do not have any real purpose but to waste time?
Are you asked to submit weekly, daily, hourly status reports on projects, which are going to be scrapped soon?
Does your boss always ask you to come up with value ads but never suggest one?
Are your benefits replaced by stereotypical words like cost cutting and company goals?

If you find yourself nodding your head in agreement to any of the above questions, Scott Adams’ “Dilbert and the Way of Weasel” comes to your aid. This book helps you to cope with your boss and survive in the company. With 26 well illustrated chapters and enhanced with Dilbert cartoons, this book describes the corporate world in a hilarious and outrageous manner.

A well framed quote “To err is human, to cover up is weasel”, which precedes the introduction, gives a gist of the weasel attitude. The introduction chapter begins with a summary of the most popular book - “The Dilbert Principle” by the same author. He condenses that book into a single line “A retarded chimpanzee can drink a case of beer and still perform most management functions”. Some of the management functions, which are referred to by Scott and support this statement are avoiding decisions, attending meetings, demanding status reports, not reading status reports which are ironically true.

The present book “Dilbert and the Way of Weasel” can be seen as an extension of the proposed concept. In this book Dilbert is the central character that struggles in this weasel filled world. Almost every situation in the corporate world is captured and presented in a hilarious way. Adams peppers the book with some real life situations, which support this concept.

Before we start wondering what the weasel is all about, Scott wittily explains the terms ‘weasel’, ‘weasel zone’ and ‘weaselness’. The concept of weaselness is defined as everything that is misleading but not exactly a lie. It is the subtle difference between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities and a person who behaves this way is termed a weasel. An engineer who says that he is going to explain briefly or a sales person who says that there are no hidden charges are some of the examples. The zone where all this weaselness is present is defined as the weasel zone, where to our surprise most of our colleagues, bosses, salespersons, and even our loved ones reside.

After understanding the ‘weasel’ concept, Scott comes up with the best practice weasel methods to survive in this weasel-infested world

Let me summarize some of these methods:

To avoid work:

Act as if you are overcommitted and too busy to take up any other work.
Make ignorance an excuse.
Confuse your boss with a set of buzzwords, which he can’t decipher.
Leave an incomprehensible message in the voice mail when you sense that some one might call you.
When anyone comes up with a query, just tell them, “I’ll find information and get back to you” and hence avoid it forever.
Take all possible leaves. Make a note of all possible ailments and this will help you in planning enough leave.

To hide your incompetence and appear better than your co-worker:

Take training classes, which give your boss a warning signal that you are planning to leave for a better job. Training sessions are easier than working if you do not pay attention to the instructor.
Learn to agree with people who are nuts, especially your boss.
If you have to give a presentation, make it look brilliant by applying weasel knowledge, which is a bunch of ignorance combined with power point charts. Compensate for the lack of information by increasing the number of power point slides you use.
If you want to present some statistics, manipulate the data to look more accurate rather than being vague. 4.01 million seems to grab more attention than 4 to 5 million. Doesn’t it?

Scott also provides business vocabulary, which can be used to cover up any level of ignorance. Action items, bench mark, best practice, metrics, goal sheet, day-to-day, show stopper, team work, result driven, bottom line, paradigm shift and vision are some of the best examples.

Finally, there are some special tips provided for the CEO’s. Recommending a big hike for the board of directors or implementing a program with an impressive sounding name like ‘six sigma’, are a few.

If you are still worried and confused about how to get on with weasels, Scott Adam shows you the lighter side by providing an analogy of weasels with motor oil. Weasels are as important to the society as motor oil is for an engine. The world would be scary without them. White lies are always better as none of us want to hear a bitter truth. We always want a cover up and that cover up is nothing other that weaseleness.

To sum it up, Scott Adam’s”Dilbert and the Way of Weasel” is a funny, yet thought provoking management book, which makes us realize the stupidity of certain management practices.

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Read another funny article where an employee in the US outsources content to India to impress his client. Now THAT is weaselness.

But not everyone who outsources content to India is a weasel. Sometimes, people do have a genuine reason- They need great content. Contact us to see how we can help you with your content requirements.

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—About our writer:

Jahnavi writes for Chillibreeze.

A summary of Scott Adams’, Dilbert and The Way of The Weasel

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