The Dilbert Principle

The Dilbert principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing. In the Dilbert strip of February 5, 1995 Dogbert says that "leadership is nature's way of removing morons from the productive flow". Adams himself explained,

I wrote The Dilbert Principle around the concept that in many cases the least competent, least smart people are promoted, simply because they’re the ones you don’t want doing actual work. You want them ordering the doughnuts and yelling at people for not doing their assignments—you know, the easy work. Your heart surgeons and your computer programmers—your smart people—aren’t in management. That principle was literally happening everywhere.

Adams explained the principle in a 1995 Wall Street Journal article. Adams then expanded his study of the Dilbert principle in a satirical 1996 book of the same name, which is required or recommended reading at some management and business programs. In the book, Adams writes that, in terms of effectiveness, use of the Dilbert principle is akin to a band of gorillas choosing an alpha-squirrel to lead them. The book has sold more than a million copies and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 43 weeks.

Adam's presentation of the principle is satirical—facetious but also addressing a real-world concern.

The Dilbert principle is comparable to the Peter Principle. As opposed to the Dilbert principle, the Peter principle assumes that people are promoted because they are competent, and that the tasks higher up in the hierarchy require skills or talents they do not possess. It concludes that due to this, a competent employee will eventually be promoted to, and remain at, a position at which he or she is incompetent.

The Dilbert principle, by contrast, assumes that hierarchy just serves as a means for removing the incompetent to "higher" positions where they will be unable to cause damage to the workflow, assuming that the upper echelons of an organization have little relevance to its actual production, and that the majority of real, productive work in a company is done by people lower in the power ladder. An earlier formulation of this effect is known as Putt's Law.

A related principle is the "Dolson Principle," formulated by The satirist D. Dolson Dolson in his book "Rule Zero." The Dolson Principle states: "The higher the management level, the easier the job." The Dolson Principle is compatible with the Dilbert Principle; it differs slightly in positing an explicit inverse relationship between the management level and the knowledge and ability required to perform the job. The Dolson Principle somewhat contradicts the Peter Principle, which implicitly assumes that higher levels of competence are required at higher levels of an organization. Dolson argues that people can be DEmoted, not PROmoted, to their level of incompetence.

In his book, The Peter Principle, Laurence J. Peter explains "percussive sublimation", the act of kicking a person upstairs (i.e. promoting him to management) to get him out of the way of productive employees.