Management has been a boring topic but not managers. Though most of the times we only get irritated at what our manager does (or his doing nothing), sometimes we also laugh seeing it. There is always fun in stupidity. That is what this book exploits. It would not be tough to call it the ultimate management spoof.
The Dogbert cartoons are not new to people who belong to software industry (rather people who spend their time productively in email forwards). This is the book from which all those come from.
Who can read this book?
I would not recommend this book if you are a manager or have been a manager. You might attempt suicide half way through this book (If you took that in a literal sense, then you are a manager for sure). It is better to read it when you are just an employee. Employees are not spared either, but the insult would be only to the extent comparable to a slap on the face with BATA products. Youngsters in school and college might not be able to relate much from this book. You have to be a part of the industry to understand the sarcasm in this.
When to read this book?
Best time to read this book is when you read it! Whenever you read it, LOLs and ROTFLs are guaranteed. But I felt a bit boring if I read this book continuously for hours together. Best way might be to read it in short breaks and not more than a couple of pages in a stretch. The book has mostly cartoons that you might still finish it within a week.
Etceteras …
The book makes a mockery of every single management concept known. I didn’t know of any concept that got left out; Decisions, Leadership, Employee satisfaction, Incentives, Appreciations, Downsizing, Rumor control and lot many. This is how the book starts:
“In an ideal world, your job as a manager would include setting goals and acquiring the resources to achieve them. But you don’t live in an ideal world, largely because there are people like you in it.”
It got me laughing there and I haven’t stopped laughing even after finishing this book.
This is not a book that can bring sense by showing the negative side of things. It is a book to read and laugh, but forget the logic in it. If you look for logic, then there can be contradictions. Few of those contradictions are not too tough to spot at all. But this is not any concept book, but a book that makes fun of the concepts. As an example,
When criticizing managers insisting dress code, the book says this:
“Shopping tip: When you shop for a new computer, always ask what kind of clothes are worn by the manufacturer’s employees. If you don’t like what you hear, move on.”
Same book criticizes casual clothes too, “Definition of casual clothes 1. Clothes that make you look neither attractive nor professional 2. Clothes that you don’t own 3. Clothes that make your a*s look flat”
So it is best to forget logic.
The best thing about the book is that it relates directly to an employee, though it is about managers. We can relate the fun in this to our everyday office scenarios. That adds to the fun. After bragging autobiographies, clichéd self-help/management books and boring fictions it was nice to read a management spoof, at least for a change.
-Vinayak
(Please do RRC)