Are You an Underpants Gnome
Putting people over process
If you blindly follow a process just because you were told too, then you might be an ‘Underpants Gnome”. If you manage a team and you keep them inline with repetitive, mindless task assignments unaware of negative impacts it may have on your organization, then you might be manifesting “Underpants Gnomes”.
Recently I rewatched South Park’s “Gnomes” episode. This first aired in December 1998. Coincidentally at that time in addition to being a South Park fanboy, I was a new manager working in the first startup company of my career. This painfully hilarious episode hit home with me then, and again multiple times throughout my 48 year career in software development and management.
Anecdotally this “Gnomes” episode has been used in business school classes to analyze the anti-corporate sentiment that, big corporations are evil and drive out wholesome small businesses. Trey Parker and Matt Stone satirized this notion with their crude animation cartoons and trashy yet profound humor. Comedic genius!
The South Park boys are tricked into doing a school report on how local hometown, “Tweaks Coffee” is being overrun by a large outside corporation. Ironically the mom-and-pop coffee shop actually sells worse tasting coffee than the new corporate giant, “Harbucks” who moved next door…
