by Dwayne Phillips Sorry, we (you and me) don’t “know” as often as we like to think. When I ask a person a question and their eyes look up, that means… Hah! Silly notion. I know what this means. I know what that means. I know what the other person is doing and thinking and […]
Entries Tagged as 'Communication'
No, You Don’t ”Know”
July 6th, 2023 · No Comments
Tags: Communication · Culture · Knowledge · Learning · People
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 […]
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 […]
Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Communication · Jobs · Management · People · Problems · Work
Whose Words?
May 1st, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips It is important to remember whose words we are discussing. If you mentioned something, we are discussing your words. If I mentioned something, we are discussing my words. There are ways to back away from our words. I read the words from the PowerPoint. They were wrong. Simply wrong. 1 + 2 […]
Tags: Accountability · Communication · Humility · Learning · Meetings · Mistakes
Pause to Consider, Is This Working?
April 13th, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips A basic questions that managers should ask above the noise and bustle of the day. Every group needs a person who asks a nagging question or two every day or week or month or two. Is this working? Of course this is working. What do you think? We are all busy; we […]
Tags: Accountability · Communication · Management · Questions
Understanding by Walking Around
March 16th, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips It is rare that we can understand something from one and only one perspective. We need to walk around the other sides to gain other perspectives. There is a method of describing something called the DoD Architecture Framework or DoDAF. Sometimes DoDAF is quite useful, but sometimes persons misuse it and … […]
Tags: Communication · Design · Scale · Systems · Thinking · Visibility
Too Simple
March 13th, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips We tend to want complex things. Too simple shows that we didn’t work hard, right? No, that is usually wrong. It happened again at work this week… Someone wanted a couple of sentences that summarized a project. The project had been running for ten years and is a success. Lots of people […]
Tags: Brevity · Clarity · Communication · Simple · Writing
Words and Distant Lands
February 27th, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips People in distant lands use the same words differently. Time and generations create distant lands. I was fascinated by this story about younger folks putting things on TikTok et al. Then older folks who admit people to college and hire them for jobs noticed those things. The younger folks spoke in the […]
Tags: Communication · Conversation · Culture · Humility · Language · Time
Increments, Perfection, Fear, Candor, and Pride
February 16th, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Today’s practice of delivering software and systems emphasizes continuous delivery. Today’s practice, however, fails at this. Technology is not the problem. CI/CD is continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment). Work everyday. As each little increment of capability is finished, deliver it. Perhaps we deliver every day and perhaps several times every […]
Tags: Communication · DevOps · Expectations · Experiment · Honesty · Ideas · Leadership · Technology
Politics and the English Language
January 23rd, 2023 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips For what it is worth, and I think it is worth much, read or review Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” I didn’t take many English courses in college (just one). While happy, at the time, to skip needless courses, I sometimes regret what I could have learned. Then again, I was […]
Tags: Communication · General Systems Thinking · Honesty · Thinking · Writing