Times compares Dell to David Brent

AS IF Michael Dell did not have enough on his plate, he is now being cited in a book that doubts the suitability of alpha males for top jobs. And worse, being accused of a likeness to David Brent of The Office.

Dell gets name-checked in Alpha Male Syndrome, a book by Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson, a pair of management trainers that have worked with Dell and his CEO Kevin Rollins among other corporate bigwigs.

The thesis of the book is that alpha males can take a company high but then, unless they're willing to bend, they can stifle a company with their overweening presences.

According to a Times review this morning: "Testosterone-charged, hyperachieving alpha males like Dell are the masters of the business universe; the kings of the corporate jungle. [But] when alpha males go off the rails they create ‘corporate soap operas' more appropriate to an episode of The Office than management textbooks. For Michael Dell, substitute David Brent."

To be fair to the books' authors, this seems to be The Times extrapolating somewhat - in fact, Dell management has been approvingly remarked up on by the authors in several articles passim.

Anybody who has met Michael Dell will find the Brent comparison hard to swallow. Compared to most CEOs, he comes across as a impressively modest and down to earth. In fact, he is far more like Brent's smoothly efficient boss Neil than Brent himself. In fact, he even looks like Neil.

Still, Dell and Rollins should be used to such nonsense and madness. It's not so very long that Dell was used by ‘The World Is Flat' author Thomas Friedman to extend his theories. Friedman was already well known for his discovery that countries with McDonald's burger joints never go to war with each other. He then made a similar claim about countries participating in the Dell supply chain, calling it the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention.

As for Rollins, he recently caught a broadside from Mad Money TV presenter Jim Cramer. "He managed to turn a great company into an embarrassment," Cramer said, suggesting that Rollins should quit. µ