Stay away from the Koolaid

Dims are lovable but thick, and are apt to wander off and hurt themselves if not carefully guided. The thankless task of helping Dims to help themselves falls to the Dimherders.

Dimherders are simple folk. Often they are Dimclimbers in their spare time, but they only prosper in top-heavy Dimclouds, where leadership is something odd that happens somewhere else, and promotion is simply an acknowledgement of time served amongst the Dim population.

It's important not to confuse Dimherders with real-world shepherds. Better to compare them with the dog. A lot of barking but no biting; and no understanding of the sheep, the shepherd, the pen, the field, the farm, the anything.

A low-level understanding of the connection between the shepherd's sheep and shepherd's mint sauce is useful when Dimclimbing.

Exemplary amongst MegaCorp's Dimherders is Diana Koolaid. Popular with ol' Cumulo Nimbus, she commands a healthy disrepect from the non-Dims burdened by her services. Dimherders, like the 'climbers they idolise, succeed by fomenting dissention where none exists (belting their sheep with Clue Removal Sticks works well); by provoking angry debate where previously only productive discussion reigned; and by promoting themselves at the expense of the reputations, home-lives and sanity of their subordinates.

Koolaid excels in the use of the 'herder arsenal. Her sheep are cracking under the strain while she bumbles her way through one counterproductive argument after another. Meanwhile, the Dimclimbers above can only marvel at the scale of her productivity; being Dims themselves, the 'climbers are limited to measures of productivity such as meeting count or volume level; not by anything as radically useful as, say, problems solved, tickets closed or value provided to the company.

This means of self-aggrandisement can only exist in corporate or government bureaucracies. In the army, for instance, one does not typically gain promotion by shooting one's old soldiers; still less, by the shooting of soldiers belonging to a neighbouring battalion on whose survival one depends.

Still, one must admire Koolaid for rising so close to true Dimclimber status with so remarkably little talent, intelligence, wit, grace, subtlety, elegance, sophistication, courage or integrity. It takes a special kind of persistence to struggle on in the face of such an overwhelming lack of ability. God Bless MegaCorp!