

Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management - wallflower
http://www.leadershipnow.com/minute0014.html

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JanezStupar
> Never direct a complaint to the top. A serious offense is to "cc" a person's
> boss.

All right, I have seen nothing good come of breaking this rule - for many
complex reasons. However what is one to do, when his PHB is
incompetent/misinformed and supposedly damaging the company? Just quit? Is
quitting the appropriate response to everything? Where are we (as species)
going if we resign when something bad happens. Go away start anew and have
people resign on us for our misbehaving?

Edit: Also what does one do when lets say - working as a contractor and people
that hired you intentionally/out of stupidity do everything contrary to what
they were supposed to do (a mission critical project and you wait 2 weeks for
any response). You quit? You let yourself be sacrificed as a scapegoat. Or do
you just roll over and die?

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PakG1
This is really tough, and the question relies on the nature of your
organization. If your organization is well-run and has clear escalation paths,
then you follow the process, and the process will sort out the situation out
for you. If there are no such processes in place in your organization, then
you either rely on your direct relationship with that guy's boss (if you have
one), or more commonly, escalate to your own manager, and your own manager
dialogues with that guy's manager.

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erikpukinskis
I was certain this was going to go here:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIZ4ckmd9-I>

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SoftwareMaven
If anybody knows how to get a hold of the book, I would greatly appreciate the
pointer. Apparently, once upon a time, Raytheon would send you a copy for free
if you asked nicely, but the request mechanism is gone now.

~~~
dhs
It seems like Raytheon stopped distribution because it was discovered that
most of Swanson's "unwritten rules" had actually been written before, by other
people, and he had just copied them without attribution:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/business/03cnd-
raytheon.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/business/03cnd-
raytheon.html)

(hat tip to brl)

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danbmil99
The article seems to say he first presented these rules in a powerpoint
presentation, and then they were published in 1944.

~~~
frobozz
The timeline of the narrative does seem a little confusing, but it's not
wrong.

 _Some_ of the rules were published by King as part of The Unwritten Laws of
Engineering in 1944.

The _whole collection_ of rules were published by Swanson as The Unwritten
Laws of Management, after his own powerpoint presentation.

