Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

It seems we still do this old time waster – hurry up and wait. Let’s try to reframe it into something more productive and creative.

I am writing this blog while waiting. I had been working feverishly on something and completed the task. Now…well, you know…

Hurry up and wait

Let’s see if we can reframe this into something else. For me at least, this waiting time often becomes

Hurry up and goof off

I can’t think of a better term for it. I am goofing off. I am wandering about trying to find something to do. It seems that I’m wasting the time of other people as I chat with them about this and that. At least surfing the net doesn’t bother anyone else here. I guess it does consume some of the shared net bandwidth.

Let’s see if we can reframe this into something else. For me at least, this goofing off becomes

Hurry up and think

Ah, that is a bit more productive. I use this waiting time to think about things. Maybe I can even think about things related to work. Well, maybe not.

Let’s see if we can reframe this into something else. For me at least, this thinking time often becomes

Hurry up and create

Ah, I like that one. Create new products. Create new ideas. Create things that satisfy. Yes, I like that one.

Come to think of it, this time that exists after the hurry can become the 20% creative or innovative time. The rumor is that at Google, and other really successful companies, employees are given 20% of their working hours to be creative and invent new products. The mythology is that the Post It Pad was invented during one of these 20% times. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t. At least the idea sounds good.

Therefore, I don’t have to ask my boss for 20% creative time. I just use that time after the hurry to be wonderfully creative and invent things that benefit the company or at least benefit my own mind.

by Dwayne Phillips

A school district in Maine has (accidentally?) created an excellent learning program for its high school students.

The Portland, Maine school district is issuing laptop computers to some high school students for use in school. The computers are loaded with censorship filters that will keep the students away from social media web sites.

This may be the best education program I have seen in years. Imagine, you give teenagers computers and tell them, “We have software on these that tells us what you are doing. There is nothing you can do to escape our oversight.”

The school district has just turned on these teenagers.

The kids are going to dig and study and practice and learn and learn and learn until they hack their way past the adults’ software filters. These kids are going to learn more in this weekend exercise than they have learned in years of formal school programs.

The kids will learn so much that I have to wonder if the school district created this situation on purpose. Did some adult actually figure out a way to challenge the kids and turn them on?

Some well meaning adult may have created a situation actually believing that the kids wouldn’t try to break the censorship tools. That interpretation is hard for me to believe, but since a government body is involved, that is probably the truth.

by Dwayne Phillips

Why don’t we have more engineers and computer scientists? Maybe, for better or worse, we don’t have enough “tough” people.

I have recently read of a shortage of engineers and computer scientists. I have my doubts about this shortage, but enough people are declaring it that there may be some truth to it.

One question I see asked is, “Why don’t people take online programming courses and fill these open jobs?”

The answer is, “They don’t want programmers, they want people with degrees in engineering or computer science.”

Aha! So that’s it – credentialism (or something like that).

Engineers and computer scientists take two years of calculus, one year of chemistry, and one year of physics in college. Those are difficult courses. Passing those courses requires an amount of toughness or fortitude. Taking online programming courses, while not trivial, does not require the same toughness or fortitude.

Note, I wrote “for better or worse” in the summary at the top of this post. Being “tough” may not be a good thing. It could simply be arrogance, and we could tolerate a shortage of arrogance.

Nevertheless, companies look for people with degrees in engineering and computer science. They look for people who have worked their way through difficult courses. We have yet to find another way to equate something to that difficulty.

We are open to suggestions.

by Dwayne Phillips

Answer questions in the same forum at which they are asked. If possible, answer questions immediately. Failure to follow these usually leads to suspicion, and that is the death of organizations.

Does anyone have any questions?

Yes, speakers feel obligated to say this. I am not sure why, but there is something that just pulls this question out of people.

Okay, so you ask for questions. Someone raises their hand and asks a “tough question.” That is a question that you may not want to answer now or don’t have an answer now or just don’t know what the answer is (what is the square root of 13)?

Here is point 1:

Answer questions in the same forum in which they are asked.

Speakers often miss this point. They respond with, “That’s a good question. Let’s talk about it later after the meeting.”

This answer is often heard as, “How dare you ask that question here and now. You are trying to embarrass me. I’ll fix you later.”

The answer is often also heard as, “I don’t want to tell all these people the answer to that.”

This leads to point 1.a.:

If you ask for questions, answer them.

This leads to point 1.b.:

If you don’t want questions, any possible questions, don’t ask for them.

Unanswered questions or questions passed to some other, less public, place lead to (among other things):

suspicion

There are few things for the life of an organization that are worse than suspicion. People stop trusting one another. When trust is gone, just close the door and turn out the lights because it is all over.

There is, however, at least one other way to delay a question to another place. Tell the asker, “I don’t have the answer to that. Will you help me work on the answer and distribute the answer to everyone here?”

Give this response only if you mean it, only if you have the time to work with the asker, and only if you can arrange a way to distribute the answer to everyone present.

Preserve the trust that exists among the people.

by Dwayne Phillips

When you say or hear a negative statement, add “up until now” to erase the negative.

These magic words come from author and consultant Jerry Weinberg. They are great erasers.

Here are some examples:

• I am not a good writer…up until now
• I stutter when I speak in front of people…up until now
• I eat too much…up until now
• I don’t practice enough…up until now

And here are some examples of what to say when you hear a negative statement:

• We don’t follow our employees’ careers enough…up until now
• We don’t talk to people enough…up until now
• We don’t advertise well…up until now
• We don’t care…up until now

You could become a hero be tossing in these magic words in meetings.

One more thing. Funny, the negative statements tell us what to do. They are the solutions to our problems. Think about it.

by Dwayne Phillips

One measure of project stress is the means to which you go to hide from people so that they cannot bring you bad news.

I used to hide in the men’s room. Actually, I had to go into a stall, close the door, and sit on the toilet in the men’s room. This was ten years ago. In many ways, this was the worst project in my life. In many ways, this was also the most educational project in my life, but that is another post for another day.

Needless to say, this was a bad project with lots of stress. If I went for a walk in the hallway, someone would find me and give me more bad news about the project. If I went to the cafeteria and sat in a corner, someone would find me and give me more bad news about the project. If I went outside and stood in the sun on a hot day, someone would find me and give me more bad news about the project.

The stall in the men’s room was the only place to hide. No one ever knocked on the stall door and said, “Dwayne, I just spoke to so-and-so and he has some bad news.”

Hence, here is a measure of project stress:

Where do you go to hide from more bad news?

Think about it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Taking from Seth Godin, what kills large organizations is that people don’t know what other people are doing. Managers at the top level are responsible for these problems.

Seth Godin has a recent post on his blog that I love to hate or hate to love or something. He highlights a problem in large companies – people don’t know what other people are doing. Godin’s post is about what a person does when they see a problem in their company’s product, but they don’t know who to tell about the problem. They don’t know which person is responsible for that product.

The problem is not unique to companies and corporations. Non-profit and community volunteer groups have the same troubles. The group becomes so large that a person doesn’t know who in the group is accountable for something else.

Godin understands the problem well and he knows who is responsible – the senior managers. These senior managers set the direction of the organization and hire employees or bring in new members. They determine the structure of the organization that allows and prohibits communication.

Technology to the rescue. Well, sort of. Organizations have web sites and blogs and such. These devices are places to hold the information that can answer the titular question, “Who does that?”

Of course, some person needs to keep updating those sources of information so that they are current. Again, the senior managers are responsible for that happening.

You might object that the senior manager eventually becomes nothing but a librarian, i.e., someone who points to sources of information. Yeah, that is about it. That is the job.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes the world changes and you have to alter your product in what may seem to be an evil way.

Samsung recently announced that they are including WiFi in their higher-end cameras. I can see some of the engineers and scientists at Samsung wincing in pain. Excellence in cameras is about lenses and mirrors and geometry. WiFi? That is RF communications. What does that have to do with a camera?

The world changes; paradigms shift.

Cameras no longer capture light on chemically treated surfaces. It is now about charge-coupled devices and processing on computers. The lenses and mirrors are still there, but the user is carrying a computer image capture device. The data captured (data, not photons) are sent to a computer. You can use wires or you can use wireless, but you have to move the data.

Paradigm shifts are not new. The mechanical wristwatch changed to a digital wristwatch. Springs, gears, and levers were replaced by integrated circuits.

People who understood wristwatches, however, knew that wristwatches are items of jewelry – not time pieces. The jewelry fashion designers said goodbye to their mechanical engineer colleagues and welcomed the chip makers and computer programmers. They tolerated the changes so they could continue to design fashion jewelry.

People who understood cameras, and still understand computer image capture devices, know that the reason behind the camera is to record a moment forever. They have to say goodbye to the chemists and hello to chip designers and computer programmers.

Paradigm shifts tend to bring necessary evils, and those necessary evils sometimes take funny forms and have unfamiliar faces.

by Dwayne Phillips

There is a trend lately for young male programmers to act like fraternity pledges. This is just the last in a long line of dysfunction in computer science.

The percentage of female computer science graduates and professional programmers is declining. It has been in decline for several decades. There is much speculation about the causes, but one recently cited cause is the “brogrammers.” These are young male programmers who act like fraternity pledges. They don’t act like drunken college boys, they act like want-to-be drunken college boys.

And sometimes we wonder why women don’t flock to this.

Where can we start? Let’s start with the programmers themselves. Perhaps they didn’t have the advantage of the parents that I had. I had two brothers and no sisters. My only regular interaction with females was with my mother. If I didn’t behave well, I got a knot on my head courtesy of my father’s knuckles. After leaving home, the idea of treating a woman poorly never entered my mind.

Now let’s move to the persons who supervise young, male programmers. These are sometimes known as supervisors and sometimes as managers. Young, male programmers do what their managers allow them to do. The managers are supposed to be a little more mature than the persons they manager. It seems that this no longer holds.

<rant>I am disgusted when I hear about brogrammers and the like. Such should not be tolerated.</rant>

by Dwayne Phillips

Once you refer to some person as “boss” and other persons as “employees,” all is lost.

I saw this post a few days back about the boss’ greatest fear. They don’t want the employees to catch them on video. There might be something in the video that can harm them.

Let’s back up a few steps. I think the boss’ greatest fear should be:

Some persons are called “boss” while other persons are called “employees.”

I worked in the U.S. Federal government for over 25 years. I attended countless gatherings where we discussed supervisors and employees. I was always confused about this because it seemed to me that supervisors were also employees. I mean, they were paid by the same taxpayers and worked for the same U.S. government. How did they stop being “employees?” These “supervisors” were supervised by someone else. In fact, everyone in the Federal government has an official supervisor except the President.

Still, people insisted on separating everyone into two groups: supervisors and employees. These people insisted on pitting these two groups against one another.

That is what I see as the problem with this boss and employee thing:

It creates two embattled groups.

Whatever happened to, “we are all in this together” and “we all have one mission” and those things? Were they just a bunch of silly sayings from and for naive persons like me?

Take care with the language we use at work. Are we all working together or not?