Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips
When faced with a situation on a system-building project, we can find an approach that will work. We can also find many other approaches. Do we choose the better approach or one we personally like?
Several years ago, a professional soccer player spent a few afternoons helping to coach one of my son’s soccer [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
To provide a system for users, we need to know the users. How can we know the users without being a user and forgetting about the providers?
I once worked a couple of years in an American Embassy in Africa. A constant concern at the U.S. Department of State was that its employees would [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Traveling - living in and out of motels - is different from living in a home. This differences points to lessons that can improve home life.
I recently spent five weeks on the road. Motel after motel, night after night. In the past, I have had jobs where I traveled two and sometimes three [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Projects to reduce work, production, or consumption should reduce costs. This corresponding reduction in costs, however, rarely occurs. Instead, an increase in cost often happens. Please be attentive to what you are doing and watch for this contrary behavior.
There are many things than many people want to reduce.
Consider body weight. The average American [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
The familiar is comfortable. The comfort, however, sometimes hides risk and impending doom. Take care.
I have been on the road for two weeks walking mostly through rural Alabama. This weekend I am in Tuscaloosa. This is a university town, so it differs from most of the places I have been. I was driving [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Customers don’t always act like responsible customers. Managers don’t always act like responsible managers. This is the real world, and often less-than-adult behavior exists. Sometimes you soothe people by giving them something they really want, even if it isn’t good for them.
Here is a true story.
I was the engineer. I was talking to [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Some musings about personal spending and saving.
I’ve never been a good consumer. By that I mean that I have never consumed enough. It seems that the American economy in the past half-dozen decades has been driven by consumers. The more people consume, the more jobs there are for producers who then become consumers [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Managers often start things that they cannot sustain. Great endeavors begin with gusto, but fade away quietly. I dislike these. There are ways around the continual disappointment of the unsustainable.
I’ll never forget the evening. My dad had pulled out his slide projector (in case your are too young to recall these machines, see [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Handwriting is not dead. It lives on despite the computer age. Cursive, however, is on the way out, and I for one am happy to see it go. (Start writing comments about how bad a person I am)
Time magazine mourns the death of handwriting. That is a nice headline, but I don’t put [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Most organizations have “magic words.” Utter these words and things happen. If you don’t know the words, work slows and frustration rises. None of this makes any sense, but nonsense continues to exist and often thrives.
Years ago, a colleague who lived in a nearby rural area wanted to construct a building on his [...]

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