Joke's on Me

In both London and Amsterdam my desk prominently displayed a battered black and white Dilbert comic that my father had sent me.   It involved Dibert’s colleague conducting a cross functional exploration to hunt down a profession less miserable than Sales.  Punch line:  Marketing was the only other job he qualified for because ‘it’s just liquor and guessing.’

That comic strip gave me confidence that I was doing everything possible to deliver against the fundamentals of my position.

I just received another Dilbert strip in the mail that my dad had clipped on New Year’s Day 2012.  This one didn’t make me feel as smug.  

My life boiled down to a Dilbert comic strip.  

Of course, I was sent to some of the world’s greatest cities – nothing close to dirt stains (although Jakarta was threatened once).   But the rest of it is pretty much dead on.  The most painful reality being the corporate manipulation and schadenfreude of underlings taking place.  Actually, I just really enjoy the word schadenfreude (the years of leadership training must have worked!).

Yesterday Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator and Presidential candidate, blogged about the Yoke of Credibility.   Essentially, Scott believes that credibility makes people dull and cowardly, paranoid over fear of failure.   

As Adams puts it:  “…credibility comes at a high price. Credibility makes you edit your ideas down to what you imagine are acceptable forms. No one wants to slip from being a credible expert to a ridiculous buffoon. That's a steep drop. Credibility makes you avoid risk. It makes you boring, and leaves you too often stuck in the past.”

It makes sense that credibility is not one of Adams core values - he is in the business of not being taken seriously.   But I’d like to believe that credibility performs an opposite function to what Adams states and actually allows a person flexibility to go from “credible expert to a ridiculous buffoon.”  At least, that’s how I justify happily blogging about crotches, groins and Uranus from the comfort of my parent’s home at the age of 35.

Adam's and I disagree on this point, but his illustration of the Corporate World is witty and far too accurate. I just wish he hadn’t waited so long to tell the truth about exclusive Employee Development Programs.  It might have saved me an awful lot of hassle.