Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips There are two essentials for an employee. Given the job market, it appears that the great majority of employers don’t understand these essentials. I have been on both sides of the hiring and being hired world. I find two and only two essentials: Okay, that’s it. Next? The trouble is, it is […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips The old saying about not having time to do it once still holds. Perhaps we will learn one day. There is an old saying about not having the time to do something right, but always having the time to do it over and over and over and… I’m not sure who said […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Once a meeting ends, the after meeting begins and the real work is done. Can we do this better? I’ve seen it a thousand times—literally a thousand times. I’ve attended that many meetings. The meeting has its agenda and participants. The meeting is conducted. We are finished. People stay in the room […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips We have tools that multiply our productivity. Every age seems to have such tools. Will we have the sense of urgency to use these tools this time around? From what I can find, the screwdriver was invented in the late 1400s. It was created to, of course, turn screws. The screws were […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips The infamous question in the title might as well be, “What can we do to kill this good idea?” We found something that works well for. We have used it several times. We intend to keep using it. Then someone asks the deadly question, “Will it scale?” They want to know when […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips There is the meta-plan or the plan about the plan. There is the meta-rehearsal or the rehearsal for the rehearsal. There are many other meta-this-and-that. They are quite useful. My wife and I have been married since 1983 (40 years as of the writing of this post). I recall our wedding rehearsal. […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips If we work a little, learn a little, and repeat, we can do some pretty impressive things. We don’t, however, like to do this “little” thing. Let’s work a little, talk about what we did, learn a little, and try again. That reduces the misunderstandings. That keeps us from wasting resources by […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we attribute things we don’t like to things we don’t like. It’s easier that way, even though it isn’t reality. Well, here we have it: AI is replacing people. We can read it in the newspaper. Plain and simple. I link to one newspaper article. I could link to a dozen […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips This is another fundamental of written communications that we seem to have forgotten—the humble abbreviation. Let’s abbreviate: The last item in the list is confusing, but given the context we always know what that means, right? Sorry, we don’t. I contend that we should not use abbreviations any longer. 98.6% of the […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips This is a basic practice. It is unfortunate that many have either forgotten or never knew this practice concerning documents. I find a document on the disk drive farm or network or whatever it is we call these things today. There are a jillion files out there, but I find the document […]

[Read more →]