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 […]
Entries Tagged as 'Consulting'
The First Five Minutes
June 13th, 2024 · No Comments
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
Tags: Communication · Consulting · Group · Management · Meetings
Ingenuity or Let’s Try Something
July 24th, 2017 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips The day we fixed a supercomputer with a cardboard box. I suppose this post has to do with good old American ingenuity or some myth we like to create about ourselves. Regardless of myths and selective memory, this is actually a true story. On the job we had serial number one of […]
Tags: Computing · Consulting · Failure · Listening
Important Nonsense
May 22nd, 2017 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips When an otherwise rational person starts speaking nonsense—pay attention as something important is happening. People tell me how important a topic is to them by how they speak to me. Rational, logical, focused—nope. Not those adjectives. I am writing about important topics. When something is important, something burns inside. The heart quickens, […]
Tags: Breathe · Communication · Consulting · People