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Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Entries Tagged as 'Stories'

Do and Claim, in That Order

March 6th, 2023 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are many endeavors in which it is important to do something before talking about doing it. Have an idea for a book? Great. Don’t pitch the idea to publishers. They will expect you to come back with 90% of the book in hand. Then they will talk to you about you […]

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Tags: Concepts · Ideas · Intellectual Property · Resources · Stories · Tools · Work

Putting a Face to a Name

August 25th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Perhaps this is the complaint of an old man, but all the Zoomer Teams meetings just aren’t getting it done. The title of this post is an old expression from an old time. We used to talk with people on the telephone. That worked to a point, but we couldn’t “picture” the […]

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Tags: Appearances · Clarity · Humility · Respect · Stories · Trust · Video · Work

A Meat Grinder (time for a reframe)

March 17th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips That job is a “meat grinder.” It has chewed up several people. Stay away. Or do we simply need to reframe the situation? While writing this, I have spent much of the past week(s) looking at the help wanted ads and talking to several companies about their job openings. Several of the […]

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Tags: Adapting · Choose · Jobs · Learning · Reframe · Stories

Organizing the Material

January 27th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Almost anyone can gather the material. Organizing it or creating a story from it, however, appears to be a rare yet valuable skill. We have lots of information. Go to Wikipedia. Download PDFs of the pages. Concatenate the pages. There it is. Go to a search engine. Find a dozen hits. Copy […]

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Tags: Clarity · Communication · Context · Design · Information · Purpose · Reframe · Stories · Teaching · Thinking · Wikipedia

Write a Short Story

May 6th, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips A simple method for writing a short story (I mean really simple). I like to write short stories. Perhaps that is because I think I have so much to tell, but not enough persons to sit and listen. Anyways, here is one method to writing a short story: Remember an event in […]

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Tags: Learning · Meta · Stories · Writing

Does It Matter How We Do Things?

January 21st, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips All organizations have management processes. Do they matter? All organizations have management processes. Some organizations codify them, teach them, spread them, proclaim them, and even sometimes use them. Do things management processes, i.e., “the way we do things around here,” matter? Of course they do. And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the personnel, […]

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Tags: Management · Process · Stories · Success

Fiction and Disinformation

December 14th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Fiction, when repeated enough, becomes fact in the minds of many. So why aren’t we trying to stomp out fiction that is far from reality? I have seen many movies on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries. 99% of murders in real life are not like that, nothing like that. 99% of murders in […]

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Tags: Expectations · Fable · Fairy Tales · Information · Stories · Writing

Any Excuse, Any Reason

October 26th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips When something does not hold up to rational analysis, any excuse or any reason is as good as another. And when no excuse or reason comes to mind now, we will think of something later. A recent xkcd cartoon had a wonderful punchline, “No, for another reason I’ll think of later.” The […]

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Tags: Excuses · Myth · Questions · Stories · Teaching

A Good Story

August 16th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Most of us profess to like a good story, but do we? Stories are important. They inform others of our path to where we are today. We love stories. Or do we love the word “story?” If we love stories, we would tell them often. We would type the words to the […]

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Tags: Communication · Ideas · Stories · Writing

Talk to the Page

February 11th, 2019 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips One of the reasons I write (there are many) is that persons simply grow weary of the sound of my voice. I like to tell stories—some true, some not so. There are a few people in my life, see, e.g., my wife of 35+ years, who have already heard most of them. […]

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Tags: Stories · Writing