First rule of management: first, do no harm
Medical ethics begins with the principle primum non nocere, Do No Harm. It’s the first rule of management too. Not because harm caused...

Can Stack Overflow grow beyond programming?
[Reminder / Disclosure: I work at Answers.com, which is in some ways a competitor] Congrats to Joel Spolsky on getting funding from an...
The Age of Anonymity has ended
“I want to believe that we will finally admit — to ourselves and to the public at large — that allowing people to hide behind anonymity...
Enlightened self-interest and the social web
Wikipedia set Neutral Point of View (NPOV) as the standard for user generated content a few years ago. Much of the Wikipedia community is...
The 5 steps of optimizing around failure
The key difference between people who analyze data and people who don’t is that people who analyze data know that they’re usually wrong,...
Humility: Recognizing greatness beyond oneself
Fantastic piece the other day by David Brooks (welcome back, David!) on humility and the lack thereof (High-Five Nation). The Joe Wilson...
In defense of negative thinking
This site’s loyal readers (both of you) probably noticed by now that I can be negative sometimes. Actually, you don’t know the half of...
Performance evaluations: 5 do’s and don’ts
Some will say there’s only one way to do performance evaluations — don’t do them. Tom Peters said it takes the average employee six...


The Onion, Star Trek, and communities
I found this hysterical: It made me think of the Product Management implications. Star Trek was saved by a small community of die-hard...
When work works
It’s easier and more fun to criticize and discuss negatives, but let me describe what work is like when it’s going well, so we can...