The master of the bureaucracy has a fool-proof maneuver to always get your way in meetings, since you know that only your opinion matters.

Step 1

Let everybody else make moronic suggestions. 

 

Step 2

Stay uninvolved while the participants shred each other’s suggestions like crisp cabbage in a Cuisinart.

 

Watch as they develop intense personal dislikes that will last their entire careers. 

 

Step 3

Toward the end of the allotted meeting time, when patience is thin and bladders are full, offer your suggestion.

 

Describe it as a logical result of the good thoughts you’ve heard at the meeting, no matter how ridiculous that might be. 

 

If you time it right, all the participants will be feeling a sense of incredible frustration and physical discomfort and will realize that your suggestion is the fastest way to end the horror of the meeting.

By disguising your suggestion as a composite of the participants’ thoughts you minimize their need to attack you to defend their hard-argued positions.

You’ll look like the rational deal-maker while the other participants look like partisan whiners.

The only downside is that you won’t be singularly identified with the idea if it works.

But that’s typically not a problem, since most ideas don’t work.

And your boss takes credit for the ones that do.

 

 

And why is Scott Adams' The Dilbert Principle so popular? Scary stuff! (ed.)