Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I try hard at everything. Sometimes I try hard too much. <start advice> Slow down. Back away. Breathe. Drink a cup of coffee. Relax. Take a nap. Find your own little zen thing that helps you to not try so hard. <end advice>

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by Dwayne Phillips Before doing anything else—think. Yes, this is old advice, but it still works. Process, process, process. The world uses Agile processes now. (At least those people whose job it is to tell everyone else what their organization does tells the world that they are Agile. I tend to doubt that they actually […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We don’t choose what happens in life. We do choose how we react. The title of this post is something that I’ve heard numerous times from consultant and author Jerry Weinberg. It seems that almost every day I trip over yet another example of this. The phone rings at 2 AM. Something […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Hyperventilation and hysteria are shows of emotion, not commitment. A recent post from Seth Godin reminded me of the above. I have been the victim of the “why aren’t you going berserk?” syndrome over the years. I was once reprimanded for concentrating on performing the work instead of yelling and screaming at […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Senior managers issue policy. That is one of the more important tasks they do. A misunderstanding of policy statements and their purpose has given them a bad name. A better understanding of policy statements aids everyone in an organization. Issuing policy is one of the more important tasks that managers can do. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is a big difference between reasons for a decision and justifications created after a decision. Justifications, just a farce, succeed unless someone cares and is attentive. Someone announces a decision; then they announce the reasons behind the decision. Question: did they use those reasons in deciding or did they create those […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I read a classic management text. It is as true today as it was in 1969. When in college in the mid-1970s (yes, I am that old), an English professor spoke about the Peter Principle. This was a relatively new concept about how people rise to their level of incompetence. Work was […]

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by Dwayne Phillips “Be the Best” is a misguided goal because it is based on other people. A few years ago, I worked for a government agency who proclaimed loudly and often that it was the Best fill-in-the-blank agency in the Federal government. I tried in vain to convince people that was a misguided goal. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips To understand a non-sensical decision, consider the age of the person deciding. It was the early 1990s (yes, I am that old), we were using Cray and other supercomputers (government program, so we had several), and we were interviewing your programmers. They all gasped to learn that we were programming in FORTRAN […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Everyday I select a few teachers. Note, no one else selects them for me. It is all my selection. As with most aspects of life, there are good and bad points here. We all have teachers – people from whom we learn things. Tiny, rural Loranger High School graduated me a few […]

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