San Jose, Calif. - Scott Adams lampoons consultants in his
Dilbert Cartoon strip - but he can also pose as one and make
managers believe him.
Adams, whose strip appears in 1,700 newspapers in 51
countries, spouted nonsense during a meeting with executives of a
Silicon Valley company, and most of them - following the lead of
their boss - just nodded in agreement.
"What if I was a management consultant?" Adams wondered
"I could lead a bunch of executives in writing a mission
statement so impossible complicated that it has no real context
whatsoever."
An account of Adam's hoax, which happened last month at
Logitech International - the world's biggest maker of computer mice
- was printed in the San Jose Mercury News' Sunday magazine, West.
Adams pulled off the deception with the cooperation of
Logitech co-founder and vice chairman Pierluigi Zappacosta.
Zappacosta summoned executives to a meeting with Adams - alias
Ray Mebert - to draft a new mission statement for Logitech's New
Ventures Group.
His memo touted Mebert as an expert who could help the group
"crisply define" its goals.
Adams is hardly anonymous. His photo appears on his best-selling books and elsewhere, and his Dilbert cartoons get pinned up
on bulletin boards and in employee cubicles at innumerable
companies, including Logitech.
He disguised himself with a wig and fake mustache.
He also arrived at Logitech's Fremont, Calif., headquarters
with a photographer, videotaping crew and a writer.
He told the group his credentials included work on Procter &
Gamble Co.'s "Taste Bright Project," a supposedly secret effort to
boost sales by improving the taste of soap.
"there actually are some people who admitted in focus groups
that they would sometimes taste soap," Mebert explained.
Executives nodded agreement.
Mebert sneered at the New Ventures Group's existing mission
statement - "to provide Logitech with profitable growth and related
new business areas" - and led an exercise in which managers
suggested words and ideas that might become part of a new one.
The new statement read: "The New Ventures Mission is to scout
profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally
and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive markets, and explore
new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the
findings."
Finally, the ersatz consultant drew a last diagram, one that
he said would bring the session into focus.
It was a picture of Dilbert, and Mebert then pulled off his
wig, revealing Adams' thinning locks.
"You've all been had," he said.
The executive took the joke with good grace.
"If Adams hadn't revealed himself, I wonder how many of us
would have gone home and tried tasting our soap?" joked Jack
Zahorsky, senior program manager for control devices.