Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips A few thoughts on an item that has been forgotten in the workplace and society in general, the Memorandum for the Record.   Question: Can you believe what just happened? We should tell somebody. Somebody needs to know this. What do we do?  Answer: Write a Memorandum for the Record or MFR.  Follow-up […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Instead of paying fines to “the Treasury,” how about we do something useful instead? Facebook recently paid a $5Billion fine for violations of this or that. Lots of fussing about the “pain” felt by Facebook and the pain felt by those who were violated in this violation. Let us consider, for a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The clipboard and the pencil are perhaps the simplest yet effective tools for doing something important: recording history. And if we don’t have our history, we will repeat work and waste resources. I was in high school—a long time ago in a place far, far away. It was the train station (no […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We can’t seem to shake this childish manipulation. Ask around enough, and someone will provide the desired answer. And it won’t be my fault. I suppose we all did this as children. If Dad said, “No,” we asked Mom because there was a chance she would say, “Yes.” Childish behavior. We all […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Have we sunk so low that we give prizes to those who teach that lying and theft are wrong? Back in medieval times when I was in college and used punch cards for computer input…professors used to joke about (or so it went), “So and so was a programmer for such and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We often use a simple yet silly algorithm for ranking requirements. It is easy. I guess that is why we use it. We have a lot of work to do. We have more work than resources. Hence, we have to rank requirements to work the more important ones first. Well, maybe we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Spending resources is far easier when those resources belong to someone else. Return on Investment: what comes back from what I spend. That is a tough thing to consider. Where should I spend my limited resources? Now consider, Where should I spend another person’s resources? Oh, that one is much easier. No […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let’s not attribute to things that which belong to persons. The sign on the door read, This bathroom is out of order. Sorry! *MANAGEMENT* Just a simple little sign, and they said they were “sorry.” Who, however, was “they.” The writer of the sign was “MANAGEMENT.” (yes, that was written all uppercase) […]

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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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by Dwayne Phillips Let’s reduce all this accountability business to a simple question. The Accountability Question: “What happens if I don’t do this? (thing you told me to do or some regulation or policy says I have to do)” If the answer is, “nothing.” Well then, we have no accountability. Or maybe this “thing” just […]

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