Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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The Seemingly Under Qualified

March 7th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips History is filled with great accomplishments accomplished by people who shouldn’t be able to accomplish them. While not accomplishing great accomplishments, I find that I was almost always under qualified. I read history. Some would tell me that I read and reread too much history. One item I read repeatedly is someone […]

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Tags: Choose · Competence · People · Success · Trust · Wishes

Next-Level Everything

March 4th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Stretching the mind is generally a good thing. There are many ways to do this, so just do it. Over the years, I have spent hours playing the guitar. If I spend half-an-hour a day playing day after day, what I play starts to resemble jazz. I have some sort of lifetime […]

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Tags: Analysis · Competence · Education · Growth · Improvement · Knowledge · Learning

Meta-Competence

February 22nd, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Once again, thinking at one layer higher than usual may bring insights that prove effective. There is competence: someone is able to do something well. They know the topic, they know the skills, and they apply them all. The adjective “well” is used often and truthfully. Then there is meta-competence: this has […]

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Tags: Adapting · Choose · Competence · Management · Meta · Time

The Majority and the Individual

January 8th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Yet another statement about what happens in meetings shows itself to be something to toss away. For some reason, meetings tend to have many statements that are supposed to be proven by time and such but are nothing but folly. I have written about some of these before such as “silence means […]

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Tags: Accountability · Competence · Following · Group · Judgment · Knowledge · Management · Meetings · Synergy

Inability

January 1st, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we meet someone who lacks the ability to do something. How do we react? As I write this post, I am having one of those weeks when I have the inability to do something simple. For some reason, I woke one day this week with a sore left knee. The next […]

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Tags: Competence · Help · Humility · Injury · Judgment · Patience · Thank you

Mean What We Say and Say What We Mean

December 21st, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Let us mean what we say and say what we mean. Sometimes that requires too much effort. The effort is worth it if we want others to take us seriously. You know what I mean, huh? You get my drift, right? Just go along with me on this one. And then one […]

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Tags: Brevity · Clarity · Communication · Competence · Culture · Thinking

Accelerate the Learning

October 19th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Learning is good as it leads to better performance and other beneficial things. There are tools available that accelerate learning. Let’s use those. I try to learn. Sometimes I forget to learn. Yes, fatigue clobbers my mind and I simply forget to notice things, store them, and use them. There are tools […]

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Tags: Competence · Energy · Fatigue · Growth · Humility · Improvement · Learning · Thinking · Tools

The Stupid Hunters (still hunting down stupid everywhere)

May 8th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Aha! I was sort of right. Now companies have teams of folks hunting down stupid in their systems to keep the world safe from stupid. Way back in 2015, I wrote a blog post about being a stupid hunter. This is not a hunter who is stupid, but a hunter whose job […]

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Tags: Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Competence · Stupid · Systems · Technology · Testing · Visibility · Work

The Computer is Down

March 2nd, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We seem to be far more tolerant of technical failures. When I was a kid (we played baseball in the streets and things like that), I often heard the excuse, “The computer is down.” That excuse brought all sorts of grievous vexation that excuses usually bring. It was recognized as an excuse […]

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Tags: Accountability · Artificial Intelligence · Competence · Computing · Excuses · Technology

The Editor

December 19th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This post is about the person who edits. Most organizations no longer employ an Editor, and that practice is fraught with imminent peril. Consider The Editor: An Editor is a professional who is the voice of a company, ensuring that all written materials are accurate and of high quality. They work with […]

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Tags: Communication · Competence · Education · Ethics · Writing