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Entries Tagged as 'Consulting'

Show This to the Old Person

November 18th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips When confronting something that looks odd, show it to an old person. They may have seen this before and can explain it. Many years ago, a programmer saw an odd way to demodulate amplitude modulation. The method didn’t resemble any of the equations or diagrams regarding amplitude modulation (AM, or that radio […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Clarity · Consulting · Expertise · General Systems Thinking · History · Knowledge · Leadership · Learning

It’s the Marketplace (Rats)

November 7th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Once again, I am reminded that their is a marketplace. If I want to do something for which people pay me, I must consult the marketplace. Just do good work, and everything will be alright…or something like that. The trouble is (and I feel it is quite troublesome), you must first find […]

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Tags: Consulting · Freelance · Money · Wishes · Work · Writing

The First Five Minutes

June 13th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips An old adage, one that I have experienced to be true, is that a person will tell another person the solution to all their problems in the first five minutes of the first conversation. Many years ago, an experienced consultant told me, “The client will tell the consultant the solution to all […]

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Tags: Consulting · Learning · Listening · Problems · Solutions

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

Writing about Writing (and everything else)

October 18th, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips When you do something, someone will ask you how. Sometimes the explanation works, often it doesn’t. It seems that once I wrote a book or two and a few dozen magazine articles, I was approached by persons who wanted to write a book or two and a few dozen articles. They wanted […]

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Tags: Consulting · Expertise · Listening · Success · Writing

Ethical Consulting

August 6th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Giving advice? Do we do what we advise? Quick point: an ethical person will only consult, advise, recommend, etc. only things that they do themselves. There are limits. If I advise a company to buy a million-dollar computer system, that is ethical even though I don’t have a million-dollar computer system myself […]

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Tags: Consulting · Ethics · Practice

Consultant and Consult

November 4th, 2019 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We hire consultants to consult, i.e., advise us on things which they know better than us. That is the end. We often confuse things. There is so much to do and consider, it is no wonder that we do. One common area of confusion is the consultant(s). We need to know something, […]

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Tags: Choose · Consulting · Expertise

I Hate It When Someone is Looking Over My Shoulder

December 20th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips It isn’t easy to admit that I lack knowledge for something that “I should know.” Most people are like me in this respect. How can I “help” without looking over their shoulder? “Maybe if you did it that way instead of this way,” said the eager, wanting-to-be-helpful person standing behind me and […]

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Tags: Communication · Competence · Consulting · Help · Humility

Don’t Try Too Hard

December 13th, 2018 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Some of the best advice I ever heard and heeded is simply, “Don’t try too hard.” Writing. Studying. Researching. Don’t try too hard. Writing: let it come out of you. When you hit a difficult spot, type “this is a difficult spot, come back later.” Done. Now keep banging away on the […]

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Tags: Breathe · Clarity · Consulting · General Systems Thinking

An Interaction Exercise

November 2nd, 2017 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Here is a simple exercise you can use with your team to learn something about how well you work together. Step 1: Get a deck of playing cards. Step 2: Hand every person on your team some cards. Hand some person a couple of cards and hand some persons a dozen cards. […]

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Tags: Communication · Consulting · Group · Management · Meetings