Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook

Rating:
Summary: Great book for anyone who knows the office hell
Review: As a former manager this book hits it right on the head! Although it's listed as a 'comedy' book, everything you read is exactly how it is in real life which makes it even more funny!

We have Scott Adams years of experience in corporate America that helped him (and of course Dogbert) fine tune just how managers think...if that is even possible!

The book is hilarious and you'll enjoy reading it as well as the comic strips that relate to each section of the book! A *must* have for any future manager or those who try in vain to understand them!

Rating:
Summary: The ULTIMATE manager handbook!
Review: As a former manager this book hits it right on the head! Although it's listed as a 'comedy' book, everything you read is exactly how it is in real life which makes it even more funny!

We have Scott Adams years of experience in corporate America that helped him (and of course Dogbert) fine tune just how managers think...if that is even possible!

The book is hilarious and you'll enjoy reading it as well as the comic strips that relate to each section of the book! A *must* have for any future manager or those who try in vain to understand them!

Rating:
Summary: LOL
Review: As luck would have it, I was reading Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook when an old friend showed up at my door with a sad tale. Rich was an IT guy at a bank in Florida that had gone through five buy-outs.

"I always survived before," he said. "So, I didn't think anything of it this time."

He did not survive this one. He told me how he was doing 90% of the work. The boss was a goof-off, who played a lot of golf, and there was a pretty new hire who really did not know how to program, but she had a great smile. Rich was a good team player-filling in for her deficits and doing most of the boss's work as well. So of course, the guy doing 90% of the work was the one who got sacked.

I even surprised myself when I found myself saying, "You have got to read this book," pointing to Scott Adams' cartoon book. Yes, Scott Adams may be a cartoonist, but he is also a highly accurate chronicler of corporate culture.

Since I am not a manger, I really don't know what possessed me to read this book, which I did despite Dogbert's "WARNING-- IF YOU ARE NOT A MANAGER PUT THIS BOOK DOWN RIGHT NOW. THERE ARE THINGS YOU'RE BETTER OFF NOT KNOWING."

So as a non-manager I am what Dogbert calls "a curious little wanker." Rich, who is now thinking of starting his own company, was about to benefit by my being such a nosey parker. I told him, "Everything you are going through is in here!"

What really endeared me to this book was the use of similes, which are peppered throughout, such as:

"If you hear a new management buzzword, jump on it like a starving squirrel on the last peanut on earth."

And:

"Working in a cubicle has made my ego shrivel like a raisin on an Egyptian sidewalk."

The faulty logic is priceless, such as in this example:

"Doctors are satisfied workers; doctors work long hours-increasing your employees' workload will make them as happy as doctors."

There is an absolutely hysterical send-up of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, and a chart of companies combining their synergies that will have you howling on the floor.

Now, if only Scott Adams could get the highly secretive Catbert to spill his guts for an entire book-wow, stop the presses!

Rating:
Summary: Oh, the beauty of good management principles!
Review: I love this book! I oversee 10 department managers, who supervise another 120 or so more employees. I keep this book under my desk for reference when I need a hint on what to do. Tomorrow I think I will spring an employee evaluation on someone! A reorganization of a department might be in order soon too. This book will help you keep the balls you're juggling in the air (toss them off to your secretary). Helpful strategies like pretending to care and stuff like that. I hope none of my employees read this review.

Rating:
Summary: A Dog's Eye View of Middle Management
Review: If you think you can learn management skills from a character in a newspaper comic strip, this book is not for you. On the other hand, if you read Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strip before you read the headlines of your local paper, or if you find yourself LOL at most of his cartoons, you have already committed this book to memory and don't need this review.

Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook is a combination of reprinted Dilbert comic strips from the first half of the 1990's and a management handbook written as if it were the work of a cartoon dog named Dogbert. The cartoons are funnier than the handbook. I gave up reading the book linearly and read the cartoons first. Then I went back and read the management handbook.

The cartoons work better because you get to see Scott Adams view of management both from the manager's point of view and also from that of the dumbfounded workers. It is this juxtaposition of manager logic and worker reality that makes the Dilbert strips so funny.

The text of the handbook is entirely one-sided. You get to see the world from the unrelenting point of view of the demented management expert. The cruel logic is there, but you, the gentle reader, are forced into the role of Dilbert facing the twisted thinking of middle management. You may laugh on the outside, but you may be crying inside. I do not recommend reading this book before spending lots of time with your own manager.

Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get any better than this!
Review: Scott Adams is a genius, as we all know. What I didn't know is that he could best himself. After reading "The Dilbert Principle" and saying "Right on!" to myself a lot, then reading this book, I find even more enjoyment in Dogbert's handbook. Dogbert is more brutally to the point without frills and direct than much of what was in "The DIlbert Principle." TDP is too serious. DTSMH is a more comfortable read. I love the parts about motivating employees and how management continually seeks to avoid compensating employees and providing empty rewards and trying to make them appear great and sought after. How true! How long do they think a donkey will chase a cardboard carrot anyway??My only criticism of both books is the repetition of strips within each book. I'll be the first to admit my greed in wanting as much Dilbert as possible

Rating:
Summary: Logic is futile
Review: That's from the text. It almost sounds like something from
the Borg, doesn't it? There's a lot of other scary quotes
in this book. Scary because they're all true. I won't tell you what they are. You'll just have to buy Scott Adams' book. In my not-so-humble opinion, he's tight on the money with everything he says about management, most of whom appear to have been
promoted far beyond their level of competence. If you want
to laugh at the morons who are your bosses, Adams is the
guy who'll push your laugh-button.

Rating:
Summary: Read it and weep - it is terrifying!
Review: The true horror in this fantastically funny book is its incredible accuracy. For any one who works in a corporate environment with levels of management it reads like a horror story, all the more frightening because you know all of the characters personally.

Yes it is hysterically funny. But read it at your own peril. You will never look at your colleagues and managers in the same way.

Rating:
Summary: A True Classic
Review: This is a great book. Adams does a wonderful job of capturing Dogbert's arrogance and some common themes in hi-tech management.

Rating:
Summary: The fear of office cubicles
Review: While I found it to be a bit confusing to take advice from a bespectacled dog, and some of the text was a bit unremarkable, the actual comic strips were so maddeningly true-to-life that compressing laughter proved to be quite complicated. I especially enjoyed the ones where the manager either asks for impossible things or tries to crush his employees' willpower. Oh, yes, the "Project Ducky" is also quite endearing...