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 […]
Entries Tagged as 'Learning'
Show This to the Old Person
November 18th, 2024 · No Comments
Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Clarity · Consulting · Expertise · General Systems Thinking · History · Knowledge · Leadership · Learning
Passing the System Test
November 14th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Did the system we are building pass the test? Wrong question. Let’s consider the purpose of testing. We have been testing the system we are building. The first question is almost always, “Did the system pass the test?” Wrong question. What these anxious folks want to know is, “Will the system do […]
Tags: General Systems Thinking · Information · Learning · Questions · Systems · Testing
Society Media
November 11th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Forget the term “social media.” We are fussing about society media in which everyone in society has a tall soapbox on which to stand and shout. And many of us don’t like that. It’s not social media—it is Society Media, in which everyone can now shout as loud as Walter Cronkite used […]
Tags: Communication · Information · Learning · Listening · Respect · Teaching · Writing
I Will Do Less Than I Can
October 24th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips The title is the hallmark of a person in a bureaucracy. Do less; just get by. I have worked in and around government agencies for four decades or more. Gosh, that’s a lot. The title of this little post summarizes the mean of the bell curve in these places. Let’s expand a […]
Tags: Commitment · Conversation · Excuses · Government · Leadership · Learning · Systems
When the Audience Knows More
October 10th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes, the audience knows more than the designation teacher or expert. Great. There is much good that can come from this. Let’s discuss teaching adults or at least a situation where someone says you are the teacher and everyone else in the room is an adult. It is common for one of […]
Tags: Adults · Authentic · Conversation · Honesty · Learning · Teaching
I’m Writing, I Don’t Know if I’m Any Good at It
October 3rd, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Maybe one day I will know what “any good at it” means when applied to writing. I heard the title used as a line in a movie recently. Yet another young, earnest person was confessing to an acquaintance about how they spent their idle time. They wrote. They were trying to write […]
Tags: Appearances · Concepts · Growth · Learning · Money · Success · Writing
Learn Now or Later
September 26th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips We often have the choice of learning now or later. Often we don’t have the time to learn now, so we put it off until it really hurts. Gosh, we are in a hurry so much of the time. We just can’t pause to think, reflect, and learn at this moment. Some […]
Tags: Agility · Analysis · Decide · Learning
How Simple Can You Be?
September 19th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips This is a question we should constantly ask. Try the simplest thing to be, to do, to have. Several years ago, I posed a question to participants at a conference session I was facilitating. The design problem was about storing information from a business. I wanted a design of a system that […]
Tags: Choose · Design · Learning · Problems · Simple · Solutions
Kids’ Sports and the Company Picinc
September 9th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Some advice on kids’ sports. This is really good advice. As usual, someone else gave it to me. Major league baseball is concluding yet another season. The Little League baseball national and international tournaments just concluded (putting all those kids’ games on national TV live was a horrible mistake). What’s one to […]
Tags: Adults · Competence · Fun · Learning · Teaching
Always Be Ready to Teach
August 19th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Hiring new people? Want to them to know everything that people who already work here know? There is no easy answer, but there are some answers. When look at the Help Wanted ads, I frequently encounter employers who want to hire people who already work for them. The ads are easy to […]