Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips The Great Resignation? The Great what-do-we-call-it? How about the embarrassing realization that we have been grossly inefficient in much of what we have been doing the last 20 years? We are in the midst of the Great Resignation. Record numbers of us are quitting our jobs and moving on to something better. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Data entry, one of the lower-paid professions, is prone to errors, and some can be fatal. During the aftermath of the recent Hurricane Ida, a person close to me needed an essential service. By “essential” I mean if the service did not arrive, someone would die. I repeatedly called the service provider. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Candid comments from someone on the inside. It can be ugly in here. For a while, I worked on a project where I would teach persons how to use the software that was produced. We had good intentions. When the software worked as advertised and taught, it allowed the users to do […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Our mistakes put us in this situation, a tree didn’t fall on us. “How did we get here? What happened?” Simple, we decided to do this and that and some other thing, and we were mistaken. No one made us do what we did. We chose on our own. So, here we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Regardless of how earnest and sincere the persons, being misinformed at Step 0 dooms any endeavor. Step 0 is the beginning. Some call it the foundation upon which all things are built. It is important. In my experience, regardless of how earnest and sincere any person(s) may be, if they are misinformed […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we can do it right the first time. Other situations render this nearly impossible. Let’s understand the difference and manage accordingly. There is an old saying that goes something like: We don’t have time to do it right, but we seem to have time to do it twice. Some say the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Past sins? Past poor performance? That is good news. It means we correct mistakes and do better. We have hope for our future. Good News: When we fixed things, we broke things When we changed things, we had unintended, bad consequences. We wasted money. We wasted time. We treated on another badly. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We make mistakes. We make mistakes at a given rate of X mistakes per unit of work. Look at all the work, find all the mistakes, learn, and change direction. We make mistakes. We make X mistakes per page. The more pages the more mistakes. In a bad situation? Sit and read […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Life doesn’t have an undo key. Isn’t that wonderful? The Ctrl-Z key sequence (command-Z for the Apple universe) is the universal undo command. Type the wrong words? Press Ctrl-Z to remove them. Deleted the wrong words? Press the Ctrl-Z to bring them back. Did something regrettable? Well, you know. Life doesn’t have […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We can’t seem to shake this childish manipulation. Ask around enough, and someone will provide the desired answer. And it won’t be my fault. I suppose we all did this as children. If Dad said, “No,” we asked Mom because there was a chance she would say, “Yes.” Childish behavior. We all […]

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