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Entries Tagged as 'Group'

Questions Without Answers Are the Easy Ones

March 28th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Questions without answers are the easy ones to ask and discuss. I recently saw a movie about folks building bombs. Large parts of the movie were discussions among scientists and engineers about building devices that kill people, but also save lives by stopping the killing. Those discussions were easy, much easier than […]

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Tags: Competence · Group · Knowledge · Meetings · Questions · Time

The Majority and the Individual

January 8th, 2024 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Yet another statement about what happens in meetings shows itself to be something to toss away. For some reason, meetings tend to have many statements that are supposed to be proven by time and such but are nothing but folly. I have written about some of these before such as “silence means […]

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Tags: Accountability · Competence · Following · Group · Judgment · Knowledge · Management · Meetings · Synergy

The Buddy

May 30th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips It helps to have someone standing next to you. This is a simple, old, and often overlooked aid to working better. A buddy is someone standing next to you whom you assume knows what they are doing. Often, a few moments later, you both realize that you both assumed the other is […]

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Tags: Appearances · Competence · Expertise · Group · Improvement · Observation · Other · People

Let’s Take a Walk Around the White Boards

April 23rd, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This is a basic thing to do when working as a group to create and refine ideas. This procedure works with just about any task where a group of persons is working together to create and refine ideas. One example is gathering requirements and creating preliminary designs. Another is outlining or formulating […]

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Tags: Alternatives · Communication · Group · Ideas · Uncategorized

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

Don’t Try Too Hard

October 30th, 2017 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we simply try too hard when applying what we already know in small doses suffices. It happened again the other day at work… I needed to know something that I didn’t know. I rushed about frantically screaming to the moon, which is hard to do in the middle of a sunny […]

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Tags: Adults · Breathe · Group · Health · Thinking

Facing the Same or Opposite Directions

September 25th, 2017 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Which way is your team facing? When? Why? Consider a few options. If we are all facing the same direction…we can’t shake hands, that only happens when we face opposite directions. We can’t see what is sneaking up behind our colleague, again that only happens when we face opposite directions. If we […]

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Tags: General Systems Thinking · Group · Management

Explaining

November 28th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes, all that is needed is to explain the other people. This may be the most difficult task in the world. Some people just don’t understand some other people. Why not? Because those are other people who are somewhere else. The two groups of people need someone who lives with one group […]

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Tags: Clarity · Communication · Differences · Group · Ideas

A Numbers Game

September 19th, 2016 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips This is simple. Have more people working with you, and success is much more likely to come your way. This one cannot be overstated. Linus Torvalds is famous for stating it, but many others have also stated it many times over many years. Anything that increases the number of people working a […]

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Tags: Communication · Culture · Freelance · Group

We All Agree on This

July 27th, 2015 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I have never be part of a group that stated the title and time showed that their words were true. I have facilitated groups of people who were trying to issue a policy or a statement on some matter. Often, the first meeting of the group in my presence begins without someone […]

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Tags: Consulting · Group