“Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams for the first time, to my knowledge, has taken the baby-boom generation head on in his strip for today:

(The full-sized strip is at the end of this post.)

The “pointy-haired boss” of “Dilbert” for years has been the quintessential baby boomer, utterly clueless and incompetent yet in charge of the whole show nonetheless — and in possession of wildly exaggerated views of his own competence, talents and worth.

The title character of Dilbert, I do believe, is a member of my generation, Generation X (which is probably why I’ve always loved “Dilbert”). Dilbert incessantly struggles to do a good job despite the obstacles that his incompetent baby-boomer boss puts in his way.

Today’s “Dilbert” strip has Asok, a member of Generation Y, I believe, flat-out telling the “pointy-haired boss”: “Your [generation] has destroyed the hopes of my entire generation.”

Yup.

Not that the boomers give a flying fuck that they are the first generation in the history of the United States of America that didn’t give a shit about leaving the nation in better shape for the next generation than the nation was when they inherited it.

I would say that the boomers’ mentality always has been “Get mine and get out,” except that they always got not only what was theirs but also what wasn’t theirs, but what belonged to their children and to successive generations. Like cancerous tumors, the boomers just can’t get enough at the expense of the whole (that’s why I’ve also thought of the boomers as Generation Swine), and their greed has brought the entire nation — indeed, the entire world — to the brink of collapse. 

Ironically, the boomers apparently thought that things would collapse right after their deaths, but their unbridled, hordes-of-locust-like greed has been such that we are seeing the catastrophic results of their utter selfishness and irresponsibility sooner (as in now) rather than later.  

The boomers’ legacy will include such things as stolen presidential elections, bogus wars in the Middle East (only perpetuating the terrorist threat from there for years to come) and environmental devastation (including melting polar ice caps, for fuck’s sake) and economic devastation that will affect generations to come.

There are exceptions that are far and few between, but even the most progressive boomers tend to show central boomer traits, such as materialism (even their “spirituality,” such as “The Secret” bullshit, is about materialism) and a refusal to acknowledge the damage that their generation has done to the generations succeeding them.

I wonder if Adams is going to continue the discussion, and I wonder if a larger national discussion about the worthlessness of the baby boomers is going to follow.

I hope…

P.S. The Wikipedia entry on Scott Adams notes that he was born in 1957 — which makes him a baby boomer. He is one of the rare exceptions, one of the few boomers who will admit that the baby-boom generation dropped the ball on the American dream, which is that each generation would make things better for the generations that follow it.

When we finally round the boomers up for Carousel (or maybe for Soylent Green [or for both]), perhaps we can give Adams an exemption…

Dilbert cartoons are usually bang on point. They are wonderful stress busters too. Here are my top choices… Thank you Scott Adams…

Best of Dilbert - 1

Best of Dilbert - 2

Notable Quotes

I really do believe I can accomplish a great deal with a big grin, I know some people find that disconcerting, but that doesn’t matter.
            — Beverly Sills

The body is a sacred garment.
            — Martha Graham

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
            — Scott Adams, ‘The Dilbert Principle’

Urban Dictionary

porn storm

Surfing for porn and getting bombarded with pop-up windows.

I tried to mouse off last night but I kept getting caught in a porn storm.

attention whore

Label given to any person who craves attention to such an extent that they will do anything to receive it. The type of attention (negative or positive) does not matter.

You’re such a GD attention whore!

cougar crush

Having a crush on a cougar. See cougar.

Alex: Damn, that chick is smokin’ hot!
Bill: Dude, that’s my neighbor Barb…she’s at least 50!
Alex: I think I just developed a cougar crush.

Dilbert by Scott Adams

“Should I date a co-worker”

“You should date anything that has a pulse, bad judgment, and no restraining orders against you.”

“But she has to be hot.”

“Settle for still warm”

~ Dilbert and Dogbert

]]> http://missionalthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/dilbert-on-twitter/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:30:21 +0000 Josh http://missionalthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/dilbert-on-twitter/

Are you on twitter? You can follow me at www.twitter.com/joshuareich.

Curious what it is, here are some thoughts on why leaders should twitter.

Source:  Dave Ferguson.

Remember, there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.

Every act creates a ripple with no logical end” [Scott Adams].

Questions. Stress. Missed deadlines. Forgotten appointments.

Anger. Impatience. Sadness. Worry. Regret. Fear.

Indecision. Insecurity. Inequality. Insincerity.

Disappointment. Disregard. Depression.

Overlooked. Undervalued. Disrespected. Ignored.

Unanswered calls. Unnoticed opportunities. Irrational demands.

So much to do, so little time. Too many expectations, too few resources. All those attempts, all those rejections.

Ready to stop the insanity?

Or at a minimum, minimize the madness?

Throw some kindness into the mix.  Seriously! Be considerate, helpful, mild, and gentle. Show goodwill. Be charitable.

Random acts of kindness. Intentional acts of goodwill. They all add up to something remarkable!

Kindness will change things in ways you couldn’t even imagine.

Kindness has a power all its own.  It rewards the giver. Embraces the receiver. Changes the present. Impacts the future.

Kindness changes everything.

When you extend kindness, “it’s like the rain that falls into the sea. In a moment what has been, is lost in what will be” [Steven Curtis Chapman].

Kindness contains within itself the power to keep on giving and growing, changing circumstances, and transforming people.

“No kind action ever stops with itself.
One kind action leads to another.
Good example is followed.
A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions,
and the roots spring up and make new trees.
The greatest work that kindness does to others
is that it makes them kind themselves.”
~ Amelia Earhart~

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Deanna

In the old days you married whoever was nearby and willing.

+ Scott Adams, Dilbert Blog (9/17/2009)

I’ve been hit by a long spell of writer’s block, and it occurred to me recently that making lists is a good way to overcome the block. Last week I came across a great article listing the habits of bad managers. Here’s the link, and what follows below is basically my addition to that list, based entirely on my experiences (and not plagiarised from Scott Adams’ work ) -

Spinelessness: There are managers who frequently urge you to be ‘firm’ and ‘assertive’ and ‘not tolerate’ undesirable behaviour or results. You follow their directive and take a firm stand against someone or something, implicitly believing that your boss stands behind you to step in when things get out of hand. And when they do get out of hand, you turn around just in time to see your boss slink away from the confrontation! This in my opinion has to be one of the biggest motivation-killers at the workplace. A good subordinate needs a good boss who knows when to encourage and when to chastise, and does both with equal confidence.

Big-picture blindness: People who excel at executing individual tasks are not necessarily worthy of promotion to managerial roles. When the unworthy ones are given such roles, what you get is a manager who works in bits and pieces with no idea of how they fit into the big picture. They have no sense of priority or sequence, and are completely at the mercy of their boss’s orders. In the process, they look like complete scatterbrains to their unfortunate subordinates who get tired of being pushed around randomly from one “high priority” task to another and, if Lady Luck is merciful, eventually quit.

Lack of discipline: I use this phrase for lack of a better one to name the behaviour I intend to describe, which is about disregarding one’s own deadlines and not keeping one’s word. Some managers set up critical meetings and neglect to attend those themselves! Creating artificial deadlines (i.e. creating an illusion of urgency where none exists) is part of this habit. Since they lack the basic foresight or patience to plan ahead, they just tell their subordinates that so-and-so document is required by E.O.D. and hope the trick will work; which it usually does with subordinates who are unfamiliar and raw. But experienced hands will see right through it and cleverly ask for the critical ‘inputs’ from the manager himself, thus buying themselves time!

‘Proactiveness’: Proactiveness used to be a good habit (ask Stephen Covey) but some new-age managers have reduced it to mere showcasing of artificially created ‘results’. I refer to the way managers spend more time ‘thinking out of the box’ than in productive management of their own tasks and teams. They waste time thinking of quick ways to earn brownie points with their boss, while core tasks lie neglected. For example, a manager delights in showing off how he is helping other units ‘perform better’ by ’sharing best practices’ with them, while in the invisible background his own floundering unit gropes directionlessly. Proactiveness is taking the limelight away from good old productiveness, thanks to insecure, political-minded managers.

Okay, that’s enough of a rant. While I’m at it, though, I might as well mention this very intelligent book on management by Henry Mintzberg, the candidly titled “Managers, Not MBAs”. It should be mandatory reading for all species of managers. I’ve been reading it with some avidity, and will probably have more to say about it when I finish it.

The Star Trek follow up to the Epic Star Wars Fails on the scifi blog was so-so (in other words, I didn’t get it). But there is no dearth of Trekkie humour on the Internet.

Even an eight-year-old article, like this one form Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is as humorous today as it was when it was first printed.

(That’s because nothing much has changed; the fanboys from back then are still living in their mothers’ basements today.)

(I’m just kidding. You know I am. ‘Sides, I’m one of them…)

LIFE WILL NOT BE LIKE STAR TREK

There are so many Star Trek™ spin-offs that it is easy to fool yourself into thinking that the Star Trek vision is an accurate vision of the future. Sadly, Star Trek does not take into account the stupidity, selfishness, and horniness of the average human being. Allow me to describe some of the more obvious errors in the Star Trek vision.

Medical Technology
On Star Trek, the doctors have handheld devices that instantly close any openings in the skin. Imagine that sort of device in the hands of your unscrupulous friends. They would sneak up behind you and seal your ass shut as a practical joke. The devices would be sold in novelty stores instead of medical outlets. All things considered, I’m happy that it’s not easy to close other people’s orifices.

Transporter
It would be great to be able to beam your molecules across space and then reassemble them. The only problem is that you have to trust your co-worker to operate the transporter. These are the same people who won’t add paper to the photocopier or make a new pot of coffee after taking the last drop. I don’t think they’ll be double-checking the transporter coordinates. They’ll be accidentally beaming people into walls, pets, and furniture. People will spend all their time apologizing for having inanimate objects protruding from parts of their bodies.

‘Pay no attention to the knickknacks; I got beamed into a hutch yesterday.’

If I could beam things from one place to another, I’d never leave the house. I’d sit in a big comfy chair and just start beaming groceries, stereo equipment, cheerleaders, and anything else I wanted right into my house. I’m fairly certain I would abuse this power. If anybody came to arrest me, I’d beam them into space. If I wanted some paintings for my walls, I’d beam the contents of the Louvre over to my place, pick out the good stuff, and beam the rest into my neighbor’s garage. If I were watching the news on television and didn’t like what I heard, I would beam the anchorman into my living room during the commercial break, give him a vicious wedgie, and beam him back before anybody noticed. I’d never worry about ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ because as soon as they got something nice, it would disappear right out of their hands. My neighbors would have to use milk crates for furniture. And that’s only after I had all the milk crates I would ever need for the rest of my life. There’s only one thing that could keep me from spending all my time wreaking havoc with the transporter: the holodeck.

The Holodeck
For those of you who only watched the ‘old’ Star Trek, the holodeck can create simulated worlds that look and feel just like the real thing. The characters on Star Trek use the holodeck for recreation during breaks from work. This is somewhat unrealistic. If I had a holodeck, I’d close the door and never come out until I died of exhaustion. It would be hard to convince me I should be anywhere but in the holodeck, getting my oil massage from Cindy Crawford and her simulated twin sister.

Holodecks would be very addicting. If there weren’t enough holodecks to go around, I’d get the names of all the people who had reservations ahead of me and beam them into concrete walls. I’d feel tense about it, but that’s exactly why I’d need a massage.

I’m afraid the holodeck will be society’s last invention.

Sex with Aliens
According to Star Trek, there are many alien races populated with creatures who would like to have sex with humans. This would open up a lot of anatomical possibilities, but imagine the confusion. It’s hard enough to have sex with human beings, much less humanoids. One wrong move and you’re suddenly transported naked to the Gamma Quadrant to stand trial for who-knows-what. This could only add to performance anxiety. You would never be quite sure what moves would be sensual and what moves would be a galactic-sized mistake .

Me Trying to Have Sex with an Alien
Me: May I touch that?
Alien: That is not an erogenous zone. It is a separate corporeal being that has been attached to my body for six hundred years.
Me: It’s cute. I wonder if it would let me have sex with it.
Alien: That’s exactly what I said six hundred years ago.

The best part about having sex with aliens, according to the Star Trek model, is that the alien always dies a tragic death soon afterward. I don’t have to tell you how many problems that would solve. Realistically, the future won’t be that convenient.

That’s about half the article. Read the whole thing here.

And if you would like to forward this, don’t forget the bit about: Written by Scott Adams, published in “The Dilbert Future” by HarperBusiness. Copyright United Media, 1997. Please keep this notice with the text if you forward it by e-mail.

One of my chief purposes in creating a course on Creativity & Entrepreneurship for UC Berkeley engineers and MBAs was to prove a point:  creative genius and innovation can be found in many aspects of the start-up or intrapreneurial venture.  It’s not just new products or services, but in my experience, you can find highly creative approaches in leadership, business model, marketing, manufacturing, sales/channel approach, financing and fund-raising.

After 12 years in the venture capital business I like to say “show me a strong Entrepreneur, and I’ll show you a highly creative thinker.“  It’s not only the nature of an entrepreneur to get creative & think differently – but it’s pretty much a REQUIREMENT – the sheer number of challenges one has to face to get a venture from concept to exit is mind-boggling these days and new challenges crop up at every turn in the process.

But where do creative concepts and approaches typically come from?

The ultimate student of management, Peter Drucker, identifies 7 sources of innovatoin in his book Innovation & Entrepreneurship, which was nicely condensed into an HBR article called “The Discipline of Innovation” (HBR 3480).  He says new ideas are found from:

(1) unexpected occurences

(3) process needs

I love #1 an #2, because they are also the reason a GOOD JOKE works – the “unexpected” or “incongruent” punchline leads to a creative new outcome – which leads us to (hopefully) laugh.  In his book The Medici Effect, Frans Johanssson likes to call the place where creative thoughts occur “The Intersection.”  The intersection is the spot in your mind, or reality, where thoughts from 2 or more fields or disciplines intersect, creating a new concept or idea.

Seth Godin, founder of Squidoo and author of  numerous web and marketing books actually takes the argument in almost the OPPOSITE DIRECTION.  In a January 2009 blog post writes “For me, creativity is the stuff you do at the edges. But the edges are different for everyone, and the edges change over time.”   The edge, as in “leading edge”, means being on the fringe of a movement and demonstrating a new approach that leads the pack, which others have not yet thought of. Depending upon your own experience, the edge might look creative or it might look mundane.  Creativity is in the eye of the beholder.

Perhaps The Edge and The Intersection are quite related.

When my friend, Scott Adams (the quintiscential entrepreneur) conceptualizes a Dilbert cartoon strip over his morning coffee, his mind has the ability to pull incongruent thoughts together in unexpected ways.  Scott, who certainly seems to think at “The Edge” with his sarcastic observations of life,  creates the Dilbert cartoon strip somewhere along the  “The Intersection” of restrictive business rules and every-day life principles.

Hats off to all those creators and entrepreneurs – living on The Edge, driving in The Intersection, and (hopefully) enjoying The Ride.

Small tribute to Scott Adams, who apparently has some peculiar voice disorder problems recently. Replace Vodafone with your big fancy corporate name, will make no difference. Nevertheless, my own working experience for Vodafone pretty much prove Scott right.

“In the future, there will be no compelling reason to invade anybody’s privacy.” Scott Adams (1997)

One of this week’s major themes has been privacy and self-revelation: not so much mine, as other people’s.

I turn on the radio, and discover that fashion designer Betty Jackson has a prosthetic leg. Everyone knew she walked with sticks – but even her own children forgot she only had one leg of her own.

My friend is ready to go with a major project but afraid of public blogging: some big stuff happened to him in the dot-com boom era and he can’t imagine it’ll be any different now. He predicted the credit crunch about a year ahead of when it hit the rest of us. He’s worried – what might happen if he now says what he really thinks?

I open a freebie e-book and discover the online marketer Joe Vitale finally sharing ‘the secret’ of how he came to be down-and-out years ago. He’s talked about the results many times, but never about how he lost his money through naivety. That was one embarrassment too far.

I meet a woman who is video-blogging about the ’strange’ experience of staying happy and positive through the treatment of breast cancer: self-revelation writ large.

Meanwhile, Big Brother gets cancelled by Channel 4.

And I find that a Google search on my own name exposes my ‘blog juvenalia‘. In those days I was in a huge battle with embarrassment: having grown up in a small town, and then become a small-town news reporter, I had a terror of washing my dirty linen in public. I couldn’t bear to be ‘known’, and avoided close friendships for that reason (among others).

Eventually, I pushed against the ‘glass ceiling’ and broke through. The fear was almost too much for me – and its momentum took me through Chapel Perilous and out the other side. For me, it was a big change: you may have gathered that I do big changes

Now I’m in there with Dilbert’s creator: “I realized I had accidentally discovered a means of keeping my personal life completely private. I was dangerously boring.“

Quotations

The fact is, sometimes it’s hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes. That’s why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun.
            — Jenny Bicks, Sex and the City, A Woman’s Right To Shoes, 200

When people think the world of you, be careful with them.
            — Margaret Cho, Margaret Cho Blog, 09-26-05

When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope still is to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here. It’s a wonderful life and I love it.
            — Jim Henson, It’s Not Easy Being Green And Other Things to Consider

Frankly, I知 suspicious of anyone who has a strong opinion on a complicated issue.
            — Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog

Urban Dictionary

blinker beat

• When the tic-toc of the blinkers syncs with the music playing on the car radio.
• dude check it out, I got blinker beat happening on this Jay-Z song.  

go primitive

• Instead of keyboarding or texting a long and detailed story someone suggests a phone call as a more direct way to have the conversation.
• Dude, I’m good with texting but this is giving me carpel tunnel, let’s "go primitive" I’ll call you tomorrow at 8.

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

After lifetimes of aggressive independence, Boomers may seek a sense of community as we age. The co-housing movement looks back to the free-spirited hippie communes of our youth but forward to a Utopia of health, learning, and productive work – without skimping on material comfort.

Remember those generally rural, usually idealistic, and mostly unsustainable experimental communes a fair number of Boomers flocked to – at least temporarly – in the ’60s and ’70s?

I certainly do. I was invited to visit a northern California commune for a week or so, in order to write a story for my newspaper column about women living out-of-the-ordinary lives. The woman in this case was named Laraine. Her commune consisted of five or six families occupying a large farm, which one family inherited from a childless uncle.

Laraine, who had a burly husband with a bushy beard and two adorable little children who never seemed to wear shoes, was trained as a biochemist. But she’d traded in labs and test tubes for a small herd of goats, a magnificent vegetable garden, and a healthy life of self-sufficiency.

This was pre-Internet, of course, but the collective families had decided to ban television and newspapers and weren’t too keen on music, either. They grew – or slaughtered – all their own food, made all their own clothing, and home-schooled their kids, way before anybody else thought of doing it.

They were idealistic, earnest, and more than a tad priggish. I found them quite interesting and in some ways, quite admirable. But I finished my assignment with a sigh of relief and without the slightest desire to live the way they did.

Fast forward to today and another northern Californian, Scott Adams.

Scott, a Marin County architect and housing expert, believes the idea of communal living – albeit sophisticated and even luxurious communal living – could start to appeal to Baby Boomers again. He’s among a group of thinkers – architects, planners, economists, and sociologists – lately enamored of a concept called co-housing, which first arose in Europe and is now spreading throughout the world, including the US.

Think of co-housing as a ’70s commune with a coat of white-collar polish. Or a monastery without the monks and religion. Or maybe a condominium complex with the real estate aspect seriously altered.

While co-housing communities often look like your average neighborhood condos – they typically comprise 20-50 residences and townhouse architecture is popular – they differ considerably from other forms of real estate in how they evolve, grow, and what they mean to those who own them.

Intentional Utopias

“People don’t opt into a co-housing arrangement after the fact,” explains Scott. “A group of people come together with the intention of forming a community. They purchase the land, hire the architects and builders, decide on the features and amenities they want, and are involved in every aspect of the community’s development and subsequent growth.”

There’s considerable flexibility in this basic model, making each co-housing arrangement unique. Some communities are multi-generational; some are not. Some welcome children; some do not. Some share professional interests, as in intentional communities of artists, teachers, or even computer programmers.

Scott’s recently-formed company, Communities International, is focused specifically on co-housing arrangements for Boomers, which he thinks will become increasingly popular from now on.

“Yes, Boomers are angry, partly because of financial reverses,” he says. “But they are also disillusioned, because so many sources of emotional support may have failed them, too. Many have been ‘outsourced’ or ‘downsized’ from corporate communities. Others are divorced or widowed. People have chosen to be childless, or children and other relatives may live far away. The world is simply not as socially supportive as it once was, and a feeling of isolation seems to be widespread among the Boomer generation.”

Some studies show that aging within a close-knit community can help prolong one’s life, as well as rendering it happier. “My own family experience supports this thesis,” says Scott, who fondly remembers the small town of Allegan, Michigan, where his aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents lived and died.

“My grandfather Adams lived with his sister into his late 80s, surrounded by five daughters and their children. My grandmother Herman lived in the same house since she was 18, and after my grandfather died, she had three sisters as near neighbors.”

A Vineyard in Your Future? – Possibly in Mexico?

But not everyone is so lucky these days. Both Scott’s mother and former mother-in-law died in nursing homes. And the incident which inspired the formation of Communities International ended on a down note.

Seven years ago, a group of several professional couples and singles, Scott among them, attempted to build a community in rural Sonoma County, California, which would be based on the plan of a Japanese country village with a central garden. All of them were friends of a wonderful man named Jerry, an astronomy professor who had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “The idea was that we would all take care of Jerry as his illness progressed and take care of each other as we aged as well,” relates Scott.

But Sonoma County zoning laws at that time worked against them. “A wealthy person could get permission to build one 12,000 square foot home. But we couldn’t get permission to buy land jointly and build seven small homes totaling 10,000 square feet.” The potential community disbanded, and Jerry, now unable to talk, lives isolated in a small nursing home, with only occasional visitors.

This incident inspired Scott to turn his full attention to promoting co-housing and eventually building new communities. This fall, he is teaching a workshop on the co-housing concept at a local college. Communities International should launch its first Boomer-planned and Boomer-built project within the next 18 months.

One possibility is a community sited in a vineyard. “That fulfills a dream of many California Boomers,” he says. “Monastic communities have been based at vineyards for centuries. And members of the community could theoretically offset some of their living costs by running the winemaking operation as a business.”

Another possibility that appeals to many Boomers is a co-housing project for small business owners. There are already many neighborhoods where small business owners live in townhomes above the shops, restaurants, or professional businesses they operate. There’s no reason such an entrepreneurial neighborhood concept should not work well within a co-housing framework, with Boomer small business owners banding together to buy and plan the community in which they’ll both live and work.

As the housing market recovers, co-housing projects which need to be financed may be as appealing to potential lenders as they are to potential owners, Scott believes. “A major concern of every lender is ‘Will units in a particular project sell, and will the project be fully occupied?’ That’s never a problem with co-housing, because you know you have 100 percent occupancy before the ground is broken.”

In addition to US locations, Scott’s company is scouting out sites in Latin America, including Mexico. “Land use regulations tend to be very favorable,” he says. “Cost-of-living is often far lower, and there are active groups of ex-patriates in many locales.”

Scott believes that, paradoxically, the financial and political shocks of the past few years may prove to be beneficial to Boomers in the long run, because many have begun to rethink their futures in a positive way.

“Boomers now know it’s important to economize, to feel secure, and to be proactive about their futures, instead of just reacting to what life throws at them,” he comments. “Co-housing can be cheaper than many other alternatives, yet with more amenities and greater safety and security. It can provide a base for continued employment and productive endeavors. And communities can expand and change as residents age, according to their needs and desires.

“It’s an attractive concept in virtually every way.”

What Do You Think?

Could a “sophisticated commune” be part of your future?

What type of community might appeal to you most?

Would a project based on common professional or entrepreneurial goals interest you?

How about a co-housing project in Latin America or another ex-patriate haven?

Is isolation as you age a concern of yours? If so, what steps are you taking to combat it?

For the next story in the series, “Re-Engineered to Smithereens,” please go to: http://wp.me/pxD3J-B

For our hard-hitting article on Anti-Boomer Propaganda and How To Combat It, please visit: http://wp.me/pxD3J-8

Recently, Stephan Murray (Three Minds) pointed to a post from the Scott Adams entitled Your Bank Hates You.

It’s a kind of post that’s become increasingly common—the banks are evil rant.  Here are a couple of quotes:

“Banks inconvenience their customers for a reason.”

“They have a naked interest in keeping their service as inconvenient as possible.”

So banks are inconvenient and evil.  And inconvenience is no longer a sin of omission, but a sin of commission.

I know that banks are anxious for consumers to just to move on, but the public distrust of banks is still very much with us.  In fact, there are indications that it’s building up steam. The billion-dollar question is: how do you build trust (which should be a priority for every bank), when the perception is that everything you do has a sinister motive?

The answer is simple, but difficult to apply.  And it takes time.

Here are thirteen trust-building behaviors from Stephan M. R. Covey’s book, The Speed of Trust.  It’s as good a plan as I’ve come across:

1. Talk straight
2. Demonstrate respect
3. Create transparency
4. Right wrongs
5. Show loyalty
6. Deliver results
7. Get better
8. Confront reality
9. Clarify expectations
10. Practice accountability
11. Listen first
12. Keep commitments
13. Extend trust

Any bank that puts even a handful of these into practice will be miles ahead of the competition.  Industry-wide adoption could totally transform banks’ relationships with their customers.

Of course, this is just the kind of thing Dilbert would ridicule, but marketing never was his strong suit.

Here’s a fun fact:

Adams got his start in banking, and the experience inspired his successful cartoon strip.  Think about that for a minute.

4pm9xryska

Cartoonists tend to be reclusive people. Bill Watterson and Charles Schulz come immediately to mind. These are guys who really didn’t want to be celebrities, yet their comics were and are read by millions of people every day, so there’s this Salinger-esque enigma surrounding them.

I can understand a cartoonist’s insistence on privacy, especially in Watterson’s case. If I had my beloved character hijacked by certain interest groups to uncharacteristically kneel in front of a cross or piss on the name of someone’s least favorite football team, I might also retire from the public indefinitely.

So Scott Adams is basically Dilbert with a mouth and no hair.

But then there’s the guy who writes Dilbert. If you’ve read Scott Adams’ blog, or done what I’ve done and read his blog collection, Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!, then you know he is an entertainer who embraces resistance.

The book is an assortment of reflections, complaints, and anxieties from the author, and it’s actually pretty interesting to see what life is like for one of the most influential smartasses in America. He goes on speaking tours, weasels questionable strips past newspaper editors, and responds to criticism in a manner that makes one hesitate before sending Scott Adams an angry email.

The book is 368 pages, and I like it, but I dare say it’s too much Scott Adams. A Dilbert a day is one thing, but after 20 entries or so the cynicism starts to congeal into a solid ball in my stomach. And at that same point it’s hard to ignore that his entries, though very funny, mostly repeat a formula. Monkey Brain’s a blog book after all (and definitely one of the better ones you’ll ever see), so I had the best time with it as a bedside/bathroom/breakfast table book to be read in snatches.

“…And that’s why kangaroos don’t drive cars.”

Adams’ entries feel pretty similar to his comics in the sense that things can quickly take a turn for the surreal.

There’s this Dilbert I remember where a staff meeting is interrupted suddenly when Wally From the Future emerges from a time portal in someone’s chest. And when he disappears, nobody has anything to say except for “Present” Wally, who remarks, “This is awkward.” A lot of Adams’ posts work just like that.

He’ll begin a post describing a impasse he had with airport security (a recurring theme) and before you know it he says the line, “Today is the day I am most likely to hear the phrase, ‘You smell like an apple cider whore.’”

While the collection is pretty random, there’s actually some rising action to the posts once his wedding day approaches. You can sense his groom-to-be nerves firing, which mostly comes out as bitching about how expensive weddings are. (And this is the creator of Dilbert fretting about finances, so Elvis’ Drive-Thru Love Chapel’s looking pretty good right now.)

And what a strange condition Adams has. I’d never heard of spasmodic dysphonia before reading this, but then again barely anybody has it. It’s a loss of speech that’s determined entirely by context: Scott can speak in front of crowds just fine, but in normal conversation his throat muscles spasm and he can barely squeak out a word. It’s not even connected to social anxiety, making it all the more mysterious and frankly scarier. But there’s a post in Monkey Brain unlike the others—where Adams figures out an odd exercise to recover some of his speech and reports, “This is one of the happiest days of my life.”

Monkey Brain’s a witty enough read that you don’t have to look hard for some choice Dilbertisms, but all the same there’s an appendix of selected quotations. Some of my favorites:

“It’s important to agree with people if you want them to think you are a genius. For most people, the definition of smart is, ‘Thinks exactly like me but even more so.’”

“If you think there’s an easy way to explain to your wife why you were thinking of Vladimir Putin while she was telling you about her feelings, you would be totally wrong.”

and

“I believe everybody in the world should have guns. I also believe that only I should have ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn’t trust the rest of you goobers with anything more dangerous than string.”

Considering how many people he’s miffed, I think he has good reason to feel that way.

Dilbert is one of my favorite cartoons of all time. I love Scott Adams’ sense of humor.

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Este “teorema” creado por Scott Adams para su personaje humorístico Dilbert en la década de los 90’s  establece de forma irónica que las empresas asignan a empleados mediocres a puestos mas altos y mejor pagados, a tal forma de que el que se ocupe del “choclo”, o mas bien, de salvar los problemas reales de la empresa sea el que tiene que rebuscarselas haciendo amplio uso de su mente y sus capacidades.

Al ser en muchos puestos (sino en la mayoría) cierto dicho teorema, muchos académicos lo proponen como falso y una simple sátira, mientras que otros lo toman como un buen punto de vista de la realidad empresarial.

El mismo establece lo siguiente:

‘Los Ingenieros y los Científicos, nunca pueden ganar tanto como los Ejecutivos y los  comerciantes’.

Esto se  demuestra matemáticamente a partir de los siguientes dos postulados que son del dominio popular:

Postulado No.1:
‘Knowledge is Power (el Conocimiento es Poder) ‘

Postulado No.2:
Time is money (el Tiempo es Dinero)’

Time = Money

Tenemos que:

Knowledge (Conocimiento) = Work ( Trabajo) / Money (Dinero)

Ahora, si en ésta ecuación, despejamos la variable ‘Dinero’ obtenemos que:

Dinero = Trabajo/Conocimiento

“Así se demuestra que, cuando ‘Conocimiento’ se aproxima a cero, el dinero tiende a infinito, independientemente de la cantidad de trabajo realizado”.

Con lo que queda demostrado que: ‘CUANTO MENOS SEPAS; MAS GANARAS’