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

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Entries from June 2023

You Would Think by Now…

June 29th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips You would think by now that we would have straightened out all this mess with computers not quite working right. Sigh. Maybe one day. Over 30 years ago, (yes, I am that old) I was loading software onto a computer via 5 1/4″ floppy disks (yes, I am that old) and… kaput. […]

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Tags: Change · Chaos · Computing · Technical Debt · Technology

Hollywood and Fighting Against What We Do

June 26th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we fight against something with all our might only to discover that are foe is ourselves and what we do everyday. As I write this, there is a writer’s strike in Hollywood. Note, I am not in Hollywood writing this as a writer who is on a writer’s strike. Now that […]

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Tags: Analysis · Communication · Consulting · General Systems Thinking · Jobs · Writing

AI Won’t Replace People

June 22nd, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we attribute things we don’t like to things we don’t like. It’s easier that way, even though it isn’t reality. Well, here we have it: AI is replacing people. We can read it in the newspaper. Plain and simple. I link to one newspaper article. I could link to a dozen […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Communication · Jobs · Management · People · Problems · Work

Abbreviations

June 19th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This is another fundamental of written communications that we seem to have forgotten—the humble abbreviation. Let’s abbreviate: The last item in the list is confusing, but given the context we always know what that means, right? Sorry, we don’t. I contend that we should not use abbreviations any longer. 98.6% of the […]

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Tags: Brevity · Clarity · Tools · Work · Writing

Predicting the Future

June 15th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We predict the future poorly. We know we do. What we don’t seem to realize is how often we predict the future. We predict the future poorly. Very poorly. Very, very poorly. Which among us predicted ChatGPT would arrive? And then become that fastest adopted system ever? I am waiting. Okay, I […]

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Tags: Leadership · Learning · Management · Mistakes · Reframe

The Simplest Thing

June 12th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips New problem? Need a new solution. First, try the simplest thing. It happened again at work the other day. We have a new problem (new day, new problem). We need a new solution. What will we do? Hmmm, there are so many options. Each option with its good things and bad things […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Leadership · Problems · Process · Solutions · Thinking

Don’t Believe…

June 8th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We live in a world of fake photos, videos, voices, and accounts. Go back to some old country wisdom I heard as a teen. We can fake videos. We can fake voices. We can fake photograph. We can fake entire people. We can fake fake detectors (Does that make sense? Yes, it […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · General Systems Thinking · Knowledge

The Experts and the Rest of Us

June 5th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips The experts devise a better way to do things. The rest of us attempt to follow their expert lead. We flop. Object-oriented programming flopped. Microservices and serverless computing flopped. I guess I could think of a few other great ideas that flopped. How about teaching kids to read via that total method […]

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Tags: Choose · Expertise · Failure · Fatigue · Learning · Process

Communism—The Same Old Corruption

June 1st, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Look at the world. Those countries with seemingly unsolvable problems were under communist rule the longest. This post is a bit different as I delve into some political science and recent world history. It appears that the countries on earth that accepted communism the longest are the biggest messes. Russia is a […]

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Tags: Analysis · Chaos