Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

When confronting something that looks odd, show it to an old person. They may have seen this before and can explain it.

Many years ago, a programmer saw an odd way to demodulate amplitude modulation. The method didn’t resemble any of the equations or diagrams regarding amplitude modulation (AM, or that radio you never use in your car anymore).

The fresh PhDs (really smart people) looked at it and shrugged.

One of the smarter fresh PhDs said, “Show this to what’s-his-name. He is old and has seen a lot of things. Maybe he’s seen this before.”

The programmer followed the advice and showed it to the old guy.

A smile slowly formed on the old guy’s face. His hand went to his forehead and slowly rubbed the thin hear left on his head.

“Yes, we used to do this. The nature of AM is such that there is so much redundancy in the signal that you can do this and have a very cheap demodulater that works well enough for people to understand the content.”

It was a decades-old hack of the AM system. Do this crazy thing that shouldn’t work, and it will work.

Lots of AI is this way this year. Show it to an old person. Watch them slowly smile and rub the thin hear left on their head. At this moment, be prepared to hear about a decades-old hack that someone has declared to be a significant new breakthrough.

Old people may not be quick any longer, but they know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.

by Dwayne Phillips

Did the system we are building pass the test? Wrong question. Let’s consider the purpose of testing.

We have been testing the system we are building. The first question is almost always, “Did the system pass the test?” Wrong question. What these anxious folks want to know is, “Will the system do what we want it to do?” That is a much better question, and all the testing we are doing is aimed at answering that better question.

Was the test a success? That is another form of the wrong question. Tests provide information we can use. A successful test provides information we can use. An unsuccessful test provides information, but that information isn’t useful.

For example, “The test showed that the system is blue!” Well, I wanted to know how much the system weighs. Knowing the color isn’t useful information.

A similar example, “The test showed that the system weighs ten pounds!” Well, I wanted to know what color the system is. Knowing the weight isn’t useful information.

What do we want to know? Design a test that provides that information, that answers my question.

Let’s ask the right questions and provide useful information. We can do this.

by Dwayne Phillips

Forget the term “social media.” We are fussing about society media in which everyone in society has a tall soapbox on which to stand and shout. And many of us don’t like that.

It’s not social media—it is Society Media, in which everyone can now shout as loud as Walter Cronkite used to. Everyone has a soapbox on which to stand and shout.

But those folks are ignorant fill-in-the-blanks. They are spreading misinformation (a generic term that means, “You have the gall to disagree with me.”).

Really smart folks have to deal with it. Really smart folks didn’t fund the publicly funded schools well enough. Really smart folks didn’t teach. This is the result of the choices of really smart folks.

Really smart folks are humming down the parkway in their $150,000 electric vehicle and look over to see a guy whose skin is a shade or two darker than theirs with his companion and four kids (hey, they don’t have enough restraining devices for all those kids) in a bashed 1990 Toyota with the windows rolled down because the air conditioning stopped working ten years ago.

Don’t you wish they would just find their own road? Ick. Welcome to America.

Let’s deal with it and deal with it better than we have been. We can do better. Bemoaning free speech is not endearing. Elevating is.

by Dwayne Phillips

Once again, I am reminded that their is a marketplace. If I want to do something for which people pay me, I must consult the marketplace.

Just do good work, and everything will be alright…or something like that.

The trouble is (and I feel it is quite troublesome), you must first find someone who will pay you to do the good work. There are few people today who will pay me to make writing instruments from the feathers of birds and do good work of it. Rats.

There is the marketplace. That is the place where people with money and tasks, for which they will trade that money, exist. If I want to find those money-earning tasks, I must go to the marketplace and notice what is happening.

But I just want to do good work. I am not a marketer.

Well, I should then hire a marketer. Well, that is one way to do it. Well, sigh. Can’t I just forget the marketing?

Nope. If I want to be a freelancer or whatever, I have to do the marketing. That is a necessary part of the deal.

by Dwayne Phillips

Tomorrow is our national election day. As with almost everything, it is not the event, it is the reaction.

A little research shows that I have written on this topic several times. I do so again as I think it is important.

Tomorrow is our national election day in America. Millions of folks have already voted with the US Constitution sort of noting that those votes are questionable, but that is yet another topic for yet another day.

Perhaps by Wednesday morning we will know the result of the election of President and many other offices for representatives of the people. I hope so. I hope we have peace.

I am certain that we will have angst. I am certain that about 40% of America will feel awful. Perhaps about 40% of America will be ecstatic with the results.

Note to those who feel awful: record your feelings. Remember your feelings. Remember what increases your angst and what relieves it. The day after every major election will produce 40% of your neighbors who feel just as you feel. Experience has taught you how to increase and decrease the suffering of 40% of your neighbors. Use that experience for the good.

Feel awful? Feel angry? Feel distrust of some of your neighbors? Fine. It is fine to feel what you feel. Punch your neighbor because they are gloating? Not fine. We can all feel what we feel, think what we think, and say what we wish. But we don’t have the right to do whatever we feel like and punch anyone who disagrees with us. And I caution the saying part as sometimes we only make matters worse.

The event is important. How we react is more important. Nothing guarantees we “win” on election day. We guarantee that we learn from the experience.

The event is important. How we react is more important.

by Dwayne Phillips

Thoughts on writing and publishing a non-fiction book. This book strongly recommends having a plan for the business and a plan for the book’s content.

I recently finished “Hungry Authors” by Liz Morrow and Ariel Curry, Rowan and Littlefield, 2024.

I like the book. It focuses on knowing why you are writing a non-fiction book, knowing who will read it, and how you will meet the needs of the reader.

If you don’t like planning and planning in detail and planning in more detail, you won’t like this book. Plan for the market place. Who will read this book and why will they read it? Focus on those things. The book should serve those readers.

Know the genre of the book. Know comparable books. Study those things. Write accordingly.

Key points:

• I am writing to a person who fill-in-the-blank.
• I can best serve the person who fill-in-the-blank.

And then their is the book map and book plan. If you write by the seat of your pants, forget this method.

It is almost become too mechanical—almost but not quite. I like this book. It helps me focus on the next book and the next half-dozen books which I will probably write. It’s worth the $25 and the time.

by Dwayne Phillips

Here come the AI assistants. They will do amazing things for us. Nothing new here. We’ve had these for decades. Nice, but not new.

I’ve seen several AI assistants recently. They are usually called “agents.” Well, “agent” is shorter and easier to spell than “assistant,” so I guess that is an improvement. And some of these agents, if they work, will be nice software to have.

Nice, but not new.

Let’s see: I have written a book, but I am not a good speller. Hey, AI agent, check and fix my spelling. Wow! It did it. What an amazing AI agent. Oh, that is a spell checker, that isn’t AI, that is easy. Really? Just check each word to see if it is the dictionary. Oh. How do you store the Oxford English Dictionary on the computer? How do you search it quickly? How do you compress everything? How do you index everything? You ever seen the algorithms for that? Simple stuff? Not hardly.

Let’s see: I have versions 270 and 271 of a source code file (simple text). What’s the difference between the two versions? Hey, AI agent, tell me differences. Wow! It did it. What an amazing AI agent. Oh, that is the old “diff” program running, that isn’t AI, that is easy. Really? Have you ever read the source code of plain old diff? Have you every examined the algorithm? Simple stuff? Not hardly.

I suppose we could go on with more examples of software that performs amazing and useful things for us. New? No. Nice? Yes. Clever algorithms invented by really smart people. They went from, “It would be nice to have such a thing,” to “This does it.” They didn’t hyperventilate about AI. They solved a problem.

AI agents and assistants? Some may work and then disappear into usefulness. New? No. Nice? Yes.

by Dwayne Phillips

The title is the hallmark of a person in a bureaucracy. Do less; just get by.

I have worked in and around government agencies for four decades or more. Gosh, that’s a lot. The title of this little post summarizes the mean of the bell curve in these places. Let’s expand a bit.

Someone needs assistance. This is usually a junior government employee. This junior employee goes to a senior employee and describes a situation. The senior employee, quite accustomed to and skilled at doing less than they can, tells the junior employee, “You need to go see whats-his-name.”

What the senior employee could is say, “Whats-his-name is the person to see for this situation. Come on, lets both go see him right now and talk with him about this. It will take some time, but will save everyone much more time in the end and produce a better result.”

The second thing is the right thing to do. The first thing is less than the senior employee could do, but will get by and, if questioned later, would allow the senior person to tell even-more-senior persons that they did their job. You know, they gave a partially correct answer, but you get partial credit in bureaucracies.

No, this is passing the buck. Go see someone else. I am not interested in you, your situation, or the mission of this organization enough to get out of my chair and do more than the minimum.

Yes, there is some value in having the junior person, “learn how to do things on their own.” Still, it is lazy. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

It is only healthcare and security in old age. Not very important, huh?

In the recent past, I joined Medicare (yes, I am that old). Let’s see, just go to a government website, fill in the blanks, and viola’. Well, being a technically savvy person, I did that, or tried that.

All this required the Social Security Administration one month to learn what my name was.

Then the Social Security Administration required one month to learn my address.

Then the ten-minute process of signing up took a few hours in person. Well, I am exaggerating, as this all took much more than “a few hours” in person.

And what does this have to do with this blog, technology, systems, and managing work and leading people? Well, all the systems that broke down during this exercise were built by people working for leaders of people and managers of work, i.e., US.

We built systems that didn’t manage to connect the dots on ASCII characters that folks type into computers. Close is not close enough in all this. Okay, we don’t want auto-correct to correct small errors in data entry as that may be worse, but how about auto-warning, auto-suggesting, or simply flashing red lights that show there may be a data-entry error? How about improving the people who are in the system via improved hiring, improved training, and all the other things we could improve? How about this and that and all sorts of other things that smart folks can do when they give themselves the time to be smart?

Perhaps that is the conclusion: we are smart folks, let’s act like it. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is what the people who steer the money want from AI or anything else.

We don’t want AI to do the dishes and the laundry. Well, most of us want these things, but the people who steer the money, i.e., the CEO folks, want answers to their big questions. Big questions like:

• What is bothering people?
• What do people wish?
• What do leaders wish people knew?
• Who do leaders wish they could hire?
• Where are people wasting their time?
• How can I get people to do the right things instead?
• And of course, what are the big questions you want answered?

So, let’s record everything (all those calls to Customer (dis)Service, all those emails, meeting notes, etc. and have some software (people who think cost too much money) answer the big questions. Let’s use AI and whatever is next to analyze all the data. All of this is “data” (we seem to call everything data as almost everything may provide information and I guess if something can eventually provide useful information, it is “data”).

Tell me the answer! Cries the person steering the money. I want to steer the money better! Give me a dashboard! (Why is it we call them dashboards?)

Little side note, if such AI or whatever can provide the answers to the big questions, then anyone can be the CEO and decide the big decisions. So if the smart CEO gets the system, the smart CEO will lose their job and their huge paycheck. Why do they want to fire themselves? Oh well.