Peer to Patent / Community Review BACKGROUND: Software and algorithms used to be unpatentable. Recent court decisions and patent-office rule-making has made software the fastest growing patent category. In 1991 the patent office was cut off from general tax revenues and required to subsist entirely on fees for its operating budget. The political argument wasRead… Read more »
Rule number 5 is closely related to rule number 4 both having to do with empowering employees. While rule 4 has to with decision-making, rule 5 deals with written work products. All large organizations are document driven (they may be paperless but they still have electronic documents) which have a number of purposes, most importantlyRead… Read more »
Most individuals’ rise within an organization based on their proven track record; that is after all the basis of “merit promotion”. Therefore, most first line managers are selected based on their technical skill and often succeed in their first management position by exercising their superior technical knowledge rather then developing management skills. My own experienceRead… Read more »
Rule #2: “Honesty is measured by telling the boss what he/she needs to hear not by whether you keep your hand out of the cookie jar” The vast majority of employees in the workplace can be trusted to deal honestly with money and materials (yes I know everyone has the experience of someone constantly violatingRead… Read more »
Back in the 1980”s (you remember the 80’s-the “me generation”, big hair, bad rock and roll), institutions began to develop courses on ethical behavior in response to a perceived lack of ethical behavior in the workplace (venerable Harvard Law School placed an ethics course in their curriculum which generated more then a modest amount ofRead… Read more »
Management is (to paraphrase Casey Stengal) :”75% art and the other half is science” . To individuals entering the profession, managing can appear to be an endless minefield with potential disasters lurking at each step. Yet veteran managers often appear to subordinates as magicians able to generate optimum performance effortlessly. Over the next several weeksRead… Read more »