Communication Technology

The Israeli military cancelled a planned raid on a Palestinian village after one of its soldiers posted details of the operation on Facebook.

The unnamed soldier revealed the time and place of the raid and the name of his unit on the social networking site.

He said on his status update that his unit planned a "clean up" raid.

The soldier was court-martialled and sentenced to 10 days in prison.

He was also ousted from his battalion and relieved of combat duties.

See Israeli military 'unfriends' soldier after Facebook leak (BBC News) for more details.

I came across quite an interesting, yet short account of what an employee can and should do if they feel that they need to right a wrong with a work colleague, a boss, etc.

Such ideas are deliberated by Jon Bentham of The Guardian (Office Hours) in How to...Get your own back.

Take the following quote as flavour of the article:

Getting even in an office environment requires immense cunning, tenacity, and very possibly a Crocodile Dundee-style hunting knife - depending how far you want to take it.

The scale of revenge you wreak will of course depend on the degree to which you have been wronged.

Responding to a colleague who has put one too many lumps of sugar in your tea by pinning them against a wall and pummelling their kidneys might earn you a reputation as a bit of a grumpy-pants.

So keep things in perspective...

Use the article to see alternative ways in which to tackle problems with colleagues, senior management and your employer.

The other day I commented on some survey findings about 'management speak' and 'jargon' and how readers of the BBC website had inundated one of their forums on the said subject.

The next day the BBC ran an article on what was said in the forum - some of which could be referred to as 'counter jargon', or employees coming up with phrases to mock or undermine management speak and jargon. See if you can guess what the following counter jargon means before visitng the actual article - Let's help to herd the dinosaurs (Claire Heald, BBC News: Magazine).

There is also an interesting article in The Scotsman today on the matter of management speak and jargon - it lists 30 such sayings and their supposed 'true meaning' - Why can't we say what we mean? (Jim Gilchrist).