Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

More often I find myself needing help from a person who is good at figuring out stuff. A PeGAFOS.

I have simple needs at work. I need a person good at figuring out stuff. Someone who can consider a puzzling situation and figure out how to work our way out of the puzzle. A colleague named Roy O’Bryan (see our book here) would often tell me, “Let’s see if they can figure out this one.” I would often reply with, “I don’t know if they have any good figure-ers.”

Excuse all my bad grammar. I suppose the proper term for this type of person is an analyst. Someone who can analyze a situation, understand the fundamental issues, and plan a way through those issues.

I like the “figure out” term better than “analyst.”

The PeGAFOS sounds like a name for a dinosaur. Perhaps these PeGAFOS are dinosaurs in that they are extinct or nearly so. It is hard to find these good figure-er out-ers. Perhaps it isn’t so hard. Perhaps it is just hard to recognize their talents and employ them as we often don’t really want to work our way out of our puzzling situations. The puzzling situations are a good excuse for what ails us. That, however, is a different subject for a different day.