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

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Entries from June 2018

Dear Employers: Don’t Ask for Bribes

June 28th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Please don’t ask job seekers to do something for you. That is work that has monetary value. we all know what it is to give someone money before they do their job…bribery. The recruiter or hiring manager asks, “Please write a one-page essay (short computer program, simple design, webpage for fictitious company, […]

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Tags: Employment · Intellectual Property

Dear Employers: Don’t Ask for Stolen Property

June 25th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Employers often ask job seekers for stolen property. Please don’t do that. It happens frequently. The employer’s recruiter or hiring manager asks the job seeker, “Can you show us some source code (proposals, web pages, white papers, designs, etc.) that you’ve done previously?” That’s an innocent request. That’s a good request. Let’s […]

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Tags: Economics · Employment · Information · Intellectual Property

Here is How We Will Make this Right

June 21st, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Customers don’t want long—or any—explanations. Simply tell the customer how we will make the situation right. Another month, another bad experience with customer service. The details are not important. I paid for a service, the provider made a mess of things, I heard dozens of reasons why the situation went wrong. I […]

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Tags: Accountability · Customer · Excuses · Problems

Guilt-Free Improvement

June 18th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I like to improve. I find most persons like to improve. Let’s do better with less effort and less time. Pretty good goal, but how do we reach that without stomping on persons? Process improvement. I like that. Lots of persons I know dislike it. Why? Don’t we all want to do […]

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Tags: Improvement · Review

The Product Review

June 14th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips When reviewing a thing, we use the same basic principles: Review the product, not the person. Praise the person, not the product. We review products daily. No, not just writing a review of the iPhone or Instagram, but all the little “products” that take us from a concept to a final product. […]

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Tags: Review

In Praise of the Sticky Note

June 11th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The Sticky Note exemplifies the temporary idea. Nothing is a useful and, at the same time, as benign as a temporary idea. I guess you aren’t supposed to write about Sticky Notes. They are temporary by nature. Hmm, temporary. Temporary things seem to ease the fears of many even though these many […]

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Tags: Change · Fear · Ideas

Lack of Focus, Lack of Foresight

June 7th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Jumping from one thing to the next may appear to be a lack of focus when it really is a lack of foresight. We’re working on this great thing. It took longer than we thought to build it. As we came close to finishing, rats, we quit because we realized that this […]

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Tags: Adapting · Analysis · Change · Estimation · General Systems Thinking

Defining Goals

June 4th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips How I define my goals has a large affect on how I perceive my successes and failures. It also affects how I see others in their efforts. Define my goals. When I reach them, I am a success. How many people do we know who are successes? There is a key to […]

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Tags: Goals · Influence