Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips
Events in life and work can be separated widely by time and space. They can also be two parts of the same story. Connected separated events grows valuable knowledge as long as we can make the connection.
My family and I were caught in a snow storm in December on Interstate 81. One result [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
If you are a leader or manager, the people who work with and for you are watching and listening. Bob Sutton recently had a blog post with the theme being,
leaders get the behavior they model and tolerate
Most leaders and managers understand this little concept. Most manageres even agree with this little concept. Few, [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
I have seen people doing some not-so-good things that I sometimes do. Yikes! I have a lot of incentive to cut down on those things.
The past several days I have been around people who are complaining a lot about something. It is really annoying to be around them as they complain. Don’t they [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Adjectives describe our work and the results of our work. Hence, our worked is judged by the adjective. More to the point, our work is described by the person who selects the adjective.
ad·jec·tive AC_FL_RunContent = 0;var interfaceflash = new LEXICOFlashObject ( “http://sp.ask.com/dictstatic/d/g/speaker.swf”, “speaker”, “17″, “15″, “<a href=\”http://dictionary.reference.com/audio.html/ahd4WAV/A0088900/adjective\” target=\”_blank\”><img src=\”http://sp.ask.com/dictstatic/g/d/speaker.gif\” border=\”0\” /></a>”, “6″);interfaceflash.addParam(”loop”, “false”);interfaceflash.addParam(”quality”, [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
I like to be ready. At times I forced myself to be less ready and learn during the moment. Those were quite satisfying. Project managers can take something from this and help their people learn.
I like to plan. Well, not to plan, I guess what is really like is to be prepared. That [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
I learned something big and useful this week - really useful. After kicking myself for not knowing it already, I grew some humility. Learning comes from unexpected people, times, and places. I resolve to use what energy I have to pay attention for the next thing coming my way.
I learned something this week [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
There are many methods to use to reach a conclusion. Since they all involve fallible people like me, most of the methods are fallible. Expect requests for further study. Anticipate them and ask others to study alongside you from the beginning.
Arriving at a conclusion is a primary task of an engineer, scientist, adviser, [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
As a manager, I once believed that life could not occur without my presence. I killed myself to be at everything. I learned that was false. This was a blow to my ego that I was around people who were competent enough to work without me.
The biggest college basketball game of the [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
I had an enjoyable evening yesterday. My son was working on a programming project for a freshman-level computer science class (college). I - after being asked - jumped into the problem. Several observations.
(1) Computer science professors aren’t any better at creating meaningful programming assignments than they were 30 years ago.
(2) Programming assignments are [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips
Newspapers are dying. They are being replaced by the Internet. The story goes on and on.
But why? Newsprint is easier to read for many of us. I always found the big page format clumsy to hold and fold and keep straight, but it was print and I could take it anywhere.
But why? Newspapers [...]

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