Organizational Culture and the Comics:  A Social Commentary
Frank J. Navran

Abstract: Observing the manner in which employees in US corporations, associations government agencies and non-profit organizations have chosen to decorate their “personal office space” at work over the past fifty years yields insights into some of the fundamental changes in organizational culture and the “social contract of work.” Understanding these changes can help leaders at all levels shape their organization’s culture, by ensuring that they address the strong but subtle perceptions and assumptions communicated by the messages displayed in their employees’ personal space.

General Trends in Office Décor

1950s - 60s Family photos, diplomas and mementos

My earliest recollection of office decor was from movies and the Leave it to Beaver / Ozzie and Harriet era of TV. Hollywood and the then TV family-oriented characterized the typical office environment as one’s business space as also having a sense of also being one’s personal space - made so by the display of family photos, diplomas and mementos.

It was how the employee brought the family to work and how they made their space a more personal and individual environment. It also characterized the office home as a significant part of one’s workplace frame of reference. What better than a photo of the wife and kids (in that era’s male dominated office environment) to reminded the person behind the desk of why he or she was working - to provide the “good life” for their loved ones.

1960s -70s Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

I first found Peanuts in the late 1950s. It was sweet, poignant and innocent. It explored the challenges of childhood in the context of family, school and within friendships. The challenges were familiar and there was warmth to the strip that still appeals as it is rerun in today’s newspapers.

Entering the working world in the 1960s it came as no surprise that Peanuts strips were cut out of the newspaper and displayed on office bulletin boards and office walls. As the young family men and women of that era came to the office they brought reminders of their own children to work - again as reminders of why they were working and to share with colleagues in similar situations. The Peanuts strip was a common addition to the still present family photos and other memorabilia. In fact it was not an infrequent sight to see the strip juxtaposed with the photo of a particular child and to hear stories of how that particular comic captured a moment in that child’s life,

1970s - 80s Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbs

Calvin and his philosophically mature stuffed tiger companion, Hobbs, came to work in the 1970s. Calvin was no insecure Charley Brown clone. He was on the edge - pushing the envelope and challenging his parents, teachers and the world in general in ways “Good Old Charley Brown” could never have conceived.

Calvin was that other child - the one many of us could remember being more like than CB - and the one many of us were trying to raise. For all the edge - Calvin was also a more honest picture of childhood. Kids weren’t always sweet and compliant. Sometimes they were “strong-willed” as the child psychology of the day called it. As their parents we still loved them and took a perverse pride in the struggle they presented us. And we brought them to work vicariously - sharing Calvin’s adventures and misadventures and relating them to what our own children were putting us through.

1980s - 90s Gary Larson’s The Far Side

Gary Larson forever changed our office décor. His was not the first comic about and for adults but it was the first to come to work in such numbers. His message - we live in a world one variable removed from absurdity. Change one factor in a commonplace situation and it shows just how close to the absurd we really are. It was not limited to work life, but work life was not spared Larson’s wit.

The Far Side was funny to so many of us, in part, because it wasn’t that far from our experiences and The Far Side calendar became a regular gift at the office holiday party. We all had favorite Far Side frames - among my personal favorites, a deer with a “bulls eye” shaped mark on his side and a friend commenting, “Bummer birthmark, Frank”

What made The Far Side funny was its absurdity. No deer had such a birthmark and even if he did he would not have the awareness to realize its significance, not would his friend have the communicative abilities to point it out.

Absurdity was also what made it relevant workplace decoration. The world was changing around us and work was more and more being governed by an absurdity that we could observe but could not quite understand and certainly could not control. Work was as absurd as Larson’s world - just not as cleverly illustrated. We added The Far Side to the office art as silent commentary, not on our family, but on what we were experiencing at work - absurdity brought about by uncontrolled and uncontrollable change.

Absurd stuff was happening to us at work and we saw Larson’s commentary as “on point” in raising our collective awareness of that reality. We hadn’t stopped bringing family-relevant comics to work, but we were expanding our context.

1990s and into the 2000s - Scott Adams’ Dilbert

What Gary Larson started, Scott Adams continued with a vengeance. But the message changed - from bemusement at absurdity to anger at stupidity - specifically, the stupidity of organizations as exemplified by the stupidity of one’s managers, supervisors and peers. We were left observing that, “The only sane one around here is me and sometimes I have doubts about that.”

Dilbert is fighting a system that is founded on the knowledge that one is surrounded by incompetence reinforced by greed and fear. And who can’t relate to that. We see decisions that affect our lives being made by those unable or afraid to do the right thing. We see supposed leaders driven by self-interest versus the good of the company or its shareholders - certainly not their employees. We see credit for the good decision being taken by those at the top and blame for the bad decision pushed to the lowest levels.

Dilbert, in his passive-aggressive way, is fighting our battles, speaking on behalf of the angry, powerless and afraid and even if we don’t see ourselves in any of the strip’s characters - we certainly know each of them and know who at work IS them.

The Organizational Parallels

Patterns in how we chose to decorate our personal work-space do not occur in a vacuum. These patterns reflect a larger reality, otherwise they would have no relevance. Several patterns emerged in the past fifty years.

Work as Family

There was a time when work was “family”. The hierarchical organization reflected social norms of a time when the father was the authoritative head of the family and the hierarchical positions of a wife and kids were well understood. It was simpler time and in those post-war years there was a national optimism that, at least those who were white and educated, there was opportunity to “do better” than one’s parents had. But to do better one must abide by the rules.

If there were family problems they were private - equally true for the “nuclear” family and the “work” family. Outside the privacy of the bedroom the adults never “aired” their dirty laundry. We didn’t talk about family problems with others. We hardly talked about them ourselves - in part because it just wasn’t done and in part because we lacked a vocabulary.

It was difficult to talk about a disobedient, troublesome child then. We didn’t have diagnoses like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Back then the ADD child was just “rowdy” - and that could only be due to a failure by the parents. Our external focus was on the wholesomeness of family and that was how we treated the work family as well - complaining only in private. We protected our families and projected a positive image to the outside world. Charley Brown was insecure, suffered from low self-esteem, was an underachiever - but we just thought he was sweet.

Management by Objective

The hierarchical nature of work and the prominence of supervisor as father figure was exacerbated by the introduction of a new management scheme in the 1960s - Management by Objectives - MBO. This widely adopted system placed the assessment of one’s work by his or her immediate supervisor at center stage in the employee’s field of view. One negotiated (or passively agreed to) a set of measurable outcomes and one’s success (raises and promotions) would be a function of achievement in those specified tasks.

This narrowing of focus resulted in a shift in priorities - the strategic plan was secondary to individual attainment of one’s objectives. Robert Jackall captured it in his 1983 award winning Harvard Business Review article, “Moral Mazes: Bureaucracy and Managerial Work.” Hed reported an increase in concern for what “my boss” thinks since the measurement and rewards system starts and stops with “my boss”.

This is the Calvin and Hobbs era when we are recognizing that there are people on the edge but we are still are not certain what to do with them - except use measurements and rewards to get them to toe the line.

Unilateral Change in the Social Contract

By the mid-80s we were in uncharted territory. The social compact of child-like loyalty and obedience by employees in exchange for the paternalistic protections of longevity and security guaranteed by a “parental” employer was shattered by an unprecedented wave of staff reductions: downsizing, rightsizing, layoffs, reengineering - massive force reductions.

Leading the pack was the Bell System. Deregulation in 1983 and “divestiture” of the operating companies from AT&T in 1984 ended 100 years of employer patronage. The newly deregulated and competitive “Baby Bell” companies slashed costs and that meant an end to the 45-year “loyalty pin” and the prospects of a secure retirement.

We have changed one variable in the employment equation (lifetime careers as a norm) and the work world has gone from predictable to absurd. It is Gary Larson’s time. We cut and posted the Far Side cartoons as symbolic of our newly acquired appreciation of the inevitability of absurdity in our heretofore staid and predictable work-life.

The Absurdity of the Workplace

And the absurdity continued into the 1990s. Industries that didn’t exist ten years ago were creating instant multi-millionaires. The “dot.com” boom created a generation of “tyros” who forsook strategic planning and long-term considerations. Just get a product into the marketplace long enough to “flip” it and retire before age 30. Employees were more likely equally invested in getting rich quick so there emerged a new egalitarianism as everyone worked to get rich NOW!.

The absurdity had a down side as well. Charley Brown’s and Calvin’s parents were out of step. We came from a different era than the new technology sector leaders. We were the “one employer for a lifetime, retire with a gold watch on a modest pension” era. We were in it for the long haul. The golden children of the investment community played “hit and run”.

And Gary Larson understood us so we clipped his cartoons and hung them on our walls to remind us that is wasn’t “us”. The world had gone nuts.

Management is Stupid

Not coincidentally, Scott Adams, Dilbert’s creator, was a Bell System engineer and a first hand observer of the shift from working in a hierarchical cocoon to organizational turmoil. He noted that the managers who survived the change adapted by becoming blame avoiding, responsibility shirking, credit-taking “rear end” covering survivalists on a now hostile corporate battleground.

They are the managers who avoid risk - even low-level risk where there is potential for high return. They don’t listen. They don’t lead. They do nothing more than act as conduits - passing direction from those at the top to those at the bottom with as little impedance to the flow as possible. They are in “defense” mode - doing whatever they believe it takes to avoid being “next” (as in “next to be downsized, right-sized, reengineered….”).

And as such are “stupid” in the eyes of their employees - failing to recognize their good ideas and valuable contributions because they are too busy protecting themselves to notice or care. Failing to take responsibility, to act, to do anything at all that seems to be necessary and appropriate - unless, of course, their survival depends on doing something. Then they will act - often with little regard for what they do - just so they can be seen doing something, even if is something stupid.

The Leadership Challenge

All of this sets the stage to challenge those who choose not to be the “pointy-haired” boss in the Dilbert comics. What leadership actions and decisions are necessary to establish and maintain an organizational culture where stupidity is not the norm?

We don’t know all the answers but we think we know some of them. Here is what we know.

• Leaders set the tone at the top. The common belief that such was the case has been tested and proven to be true. Senior leadership shapes the culture of the organization. In Dilbert’s world, leaders are chosen for the wrong reasons, are measured on the wrong outcomes and manage based on the wrong assumptions
• One’s immediate supervisor is still the most influential leader. Again the research bears this out. What takes place in the Boardroom or Executive suite only matters to the extent it changes what my immediate supervisor wants, requires, expects of me. No more, no less. In Dilbert’s world, supervisors are justifiably afraid and create a mirror image of what they experience for their employees. It’s all about CYA, blame avoidance and grabbing credit for anything that eve resemble success.
• What we talk about is almost as important as what we don’t talk about. Leaders communicate less eloquently by what they say as by what they don’t say. For example, if the leadership doesn’t address the stupidity of the pointy-haired bosses that they obviously know are in place, then they are communicating that approve that management technique. (See Nadler…). In Dilbert’s world reality is never discussed. Its all about creating impressions and appearances rather than substance. Principles aren’t discussed - they are presumed (or worse, presumed to not apply) thus no one really knows what standards are expected or required - other than self- preservation.
• We are still selecting leaders for the wrong reasons. The Peter Principle is alive and well. More often than not managers are selected to manage the functions they once performed. Typically the organization using that system loses twice. They lose a good task worker and get a bad manager. In Dilbert’s world promotions seem to go to those who have cultivated the necessary relationships, made the boss look good and agreed - even when agreement was wrong. It is a world that rewards toadies and worse. Where saying what the other person wants to hear is preferred over the truth.

Inverted Market Analysis

One way to address the challenges in Dilbert’s world is to first determine if they exist in your organization, and if so, how they are manifest. There is a powerful analytical tool that goes by the unfortunate name - “inverted market analysis.” Its origins are in the retail and service industry. Consider this example. A dealership was bemoaning its loss of market share and blaming the failings of the manufacturer to provide a world-class, segment-leading “flagship” model for the current year.

During a leadership seminar I asked, “What would you do if your wanted to be certain not to sell the “flagship” model you have been provided?” An absurd question, all agreed. Their answers:

• Don’t advertise it
• Don’t feature it on the showroom floor
• Don’t discount it aggressively
• Don’t train the sales staff on its features
• Don’t arrange preferred financing for it
• Don’t keep brochures on the showroom floor
• Don’t display feature articles on it from the automotive press
• Don’t incentivise it with aggressive commissions
• If a customer asks for one, have it stored at the back of the lot
• Have the “demonstrator” in an ugly color and don’t keep it washed
• Don’t train the service staff o how to maintain it
• Don’t stock parts for it

The group got into the task but after a dozen or so responses the question changed.

How many of these things are you currently doing?

It turned out they were doing most of the things they identified as necessary to ensure poor sales of that model. Step 1, stop doing those things.

Ask yourself, “What would we have to do to make our organization look like Dilbert’s world?” After you develop the list, ask, “How many of these things are we already doing?”

Then stop doing them!