Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Every new thing involves a change. A period of chaos comes with every change. If the new thing is to be short-lived, the chaos may require a large percentage of time relative to the short-lived activity. A colleague noted that the estimates for short tasks were often incorrect by large percentages. Here [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips When things are going well, be careful about adding more “good” things. An addition is a foreign element and will change the situation. I wish we had a bigger budget so we could do more of what we are doing now. Wishes are often like the above. Granting a wish will surely [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips A simple yet powerful tool for change is to stop and breathe. This is a simple step in changing the world. It involves only one person – me. Therefore, I can do this whenever I decide, and no one else can stop me. This step is to breathe. Stop what I am [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Smart and caring people do stupid things. I do stupid things. I advocate going out and finding these stupid things. Knowing they exist helps to prevent and plan for them. There is a lot of stupid out there in the world. Otherwise smart and caring people doing things that are just plain [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Do you want to reduce the anger that people feel coming from you. Don’t stop shaking your fist; stop pointing your finger. Each culture seems to have its own form of an angry gesture. The one that comes to mind in my own culture is the fist. Shake a fist at someone [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Cook a meal, invite someone to eat it with you, and listen. I wrote about this topic earlier. I had forgotten about that earlier post until I started writing this one. I guess some ideas are harder to get out of my head than others. They keep bouncing about in my brain [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Solutions to problems don’t always work. A person can change the world by being available to another no matter the outcome. The situation is fairly common. One person comes to another with a situation that requires some assistance. The second person provides instruction for the situation. The first person is about to [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips The personal computer, the laptop computer, the home computer, the netbook – whatever title we use, they have all become the personal Google machine, i.e., the window into the knowledge of mankind. I live in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Tony Kornheiser, one of those guys on ESPN’s “PTI,”  has [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Introduce yourself by name. I was sitting in a meeting that had started five minutes earlier. The person to my right was presiding over the meeting and was talking without pause. I recognized enough of what he was saying to know that I was in the right meeting, but I didn’t know [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips While racing through the day from event to event, add five minutes to an event. During those five minutes, do something wonderful for someone else who is at the same event. Most of the people I know are busy. Most of the people I know are so busy that they just get [...]

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