Fred Allen Quotes

I don't get emails from my corporate overlords.

My father was a middle manager at an oil company, but I never knew anything about his work. Whatever business acumen I have just got gleaned over the years.

Depending on the level you're at in your company, the higher you go up in rank, usually the longer you can dance.

I had, at a point in time, decided not to write on the corporate world. But if people expect me to set stories in a work environment, then why go away from it?

I understand that bureaucracy, hierarchy and managing politics is not easy.

Will somebody please tell me what they do with all the Vice-Presidents a bank has? Why the United States is the biggest business institution in the world, and they got only one Vice-President and nobody has ever found anything for him to do.

If you make believe that ten guys in pin-striped suits are back in a kindergarten class playing with building blocks, you'll get a rough picture of what life in a corporation is like.

The average vice-president is a form of executive fungus that attaches itself to a desk. On a boat this growth would be called a barnacle.

organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up until he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they lay him to rest.

There are lots of women and lots of men in the business that the powers that be decide are the right people and they'll stand with them for quite a long time.

I'd be bored to death if I spent all my time with other businesspeople, bankers and lawyers.

I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

I had several different bosses during the early years of 'Dilbert.' They were all pretty sure I was mocking someone else.

I won't be making any friends in the corporate suites.

In a network situation, a vice president, while he's shaving, can decide your history.

Today's business climate is not for me.

Too many talk about a company's leadership, referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that: senior executives. Leadership doesn't automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.

I think everyone starts in the mailroom at some point! It's a right of passage. Your boss has to throw something at you and order you around for at least two years.

In the larger companies, you have this tendency to get top-down direction.

Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset. As people have been noting for years, the majority of strategic initiatives that are driven from the top are marginally effective - at best.

I find the business world hard.

Oh, what a day-to-day business life is.

Politics exist in the boardroom, as well.

What I have against M.B.A.s is the assumption that you come out of a two-year program probably never having been a manager - at least for full-time younger people M.B.A. programs - and assume you are ready to manage.