HBR: You have a new book coming out, How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life. Why did you write it?
Adams: I grew up in a small town in upstate New York, and when I was a kid I didn’t have a lot of role models who had been really successful. I knew people who’d been successful in their jobs, but nobody had really broken out and done something important. I always felt jealous of all those rich kids, the Harvard-bound types who could look to their family and friends for role models and get all kinds of advice. And I thought, Wouldn’t it be nice to write a book about how at least one person did it? I’m not suggesting that anything that I do would work for anyone else, but I think it’s useful to see people’s stories and see what was their plan, what did they do, how did it turn out? So that was the genesis of it.
HBR: Do you really believe the Dilbert Principle—that the least competent people are promoted into management, which is the place they can do the least harm? Or is it just a funny line?
Adams: When I wrote that, I was working at Pacific Bell, and it was true there. Employees who were a little bit technical but weren’t going to be inventing the next iPod—or anything else—were the people who got moved to management. Their bull---- skills were good, and that was about it. The people who were geniuses, the technology gurus, the people who were really going to make a difference—the last thing you’d want to do is ruin their productivity by moving them into management and making them order doughnuts and schedule meetings.
HBR:In your new book, one chapter lists all sorts of ventures you’ve launched that have failed: a frozen burrito business, two restaurants, various computer programs, some sort of a tennis gadget. How did these failures change the way you think of management?
Adams: In this case the failures were all part of a larger strategy, which was trying one thing after another. They were all long shots, but if one worked, it could grow forever. There was no upside cap. That was always my strategy. Right out of college, I had a diary in which I actually mapped out my life strategy, and that was to build something using my creativity that could be reproduced easily and infinitely. And Dilbert was just the thing that worked. The other things didn’t.
http://hbr.org/2013/11/scott-adams/ar/1
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