Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

When you feel something tugging at you on the inside, you have hit a personal rule.

Recently, I had three gentlemen riding around with me in my van. We were visiting other office buildings in our area. Our first stop was for lunch at an bagel place. We had sandwiches and soup, and three of us had soft drinks in plastic bottles. We didn’t finish our 20-ounce drinks, so we took them with us on our visit to the other buildings. The gentlemen who sat in the front passenger seat of my van finished his Diet Coke and set his empty bottle on the floor.

I expected him to take the empty bottle into the first building we visited and dispose of it in a trash can. He didn’t. Well, of course he would dispose of it in another office building. He didn’t in the second and didn’t in the third. Well, I supposed, he was waiting to return to our main building before throwing away the empty bottle. He didn’t there either. He left his empty bottle on the floor of my van.

Something tugged at me on the inside. His empty bottle on the floor of my van pulled at my insides. I had found a rule.

Never leave your trash in someone else’s vehicle.

or

Always throw away your trash.

That was a simple thing. Why would anyone not know and follow that rule? He had violated my rule and I was off center.

I started to imagine that he was sending me a message. He was telling me that he was the boss and I had to tolerate what he did. He was telling me that he was displeased with my actions today and was punishing me. He was doing all sorts of things in my mind.

Let’s think about this rule and when violating it would be alright. Never leave your trash in someone else’s vehicle, unless:

(1) They tell me to leave it on the floor because they will clean their vehicle later.

(2) There is an emergency and I have to exit their vehicle quickly.

(3) Something more important happens that requires more attention than an empty Diet Coke bottle.

(4) Something important is on my mind, and I forget about the empty bottle.

Enough of that diversion and back to the point. We all seem to have rules. As much as I have matured over the years and grown out of rules learned in childhood I still have rules. I remember discussing rules and maturation a few months ago with a colleague. We had just attended a conference session on rules and transforming them. We talked about how some (other) people allowed rules to rule their lives. Surely, neither of us did that anymore in our lives. I know I had moved past them. Well, as the crazy thoughts in my head the afternoon in the van showed, I had not.

The day in the van with the riders was a good day as I learned (or relearned) something. Rules are with me regardless of my denial. I can live with them and even benefit from them. Since I like to make rules about rules or procedures about rules, here is a procedure.

Notice when something tugs at me. Like today, I was driving my van and I don’t remember anything about the traffic or anything else. All my thoughts were on that empty bottle on the floor.

That tug could be many things, but ask myself, “Is it a rule?” The tug could be indigestion as maybe the turkey chili I ate for lunch wasn’t cooked well enough. The tug could be a lack of sleep. Then again, the tug could be a rule.

If it is a rule, ask, “What is the rule?” This requires some analysis, and I like to do analysis. For some people, the analysis part brings more of a bothersome tug than any rule. Persevere as the answer may lead to something beneficial.

Now move on to, “When is violating the rule alright?” As my “clean vehicle” rule above showed, there are many cases when violating the rule is fine. Thinking about these exceptions to the rule may explain what happened. The exceptions may also lead me to a better understanding of myself.

Even more, “Does this rule matter much to me?” Some rules are terribly important. I emphasize the word “terribly” as some rules can provide terrible, excruciating pain when they tug at me. The day in the van was a simple little rule, but oh how that tug hurt for an hour or so.

by Dwayne Phillips

Project managers often use major changes to “get well.” They use the confusion of a major change to cover over lots of problems.

Projects change. That appears to be a fact of life. Every now and then, a major change occurs. Examples include,

• Two large organizations merge
• A large organization splits into several smaller ones
• A large change occurs in a project (work is added)
• There is a big shift in persons working on a project

Major changes bring confusion. People plan, and some people plan every single detail. They don’t, however, plan perfectly. There are many, “Oh, I didn’t think of that one,” moments in a major change. Some people take advantage of the natural confusion that occurs in major changes.

They “hide” problems in the confusion.

That isn’t difficult to do. It is quite easy to do. Often, it is quite advantageous to do. This is the origin of the slang in the post title.

The manager uses the confusion of the change to “get well.”

For example, a manager is managing a project. The person who pays the bills walks in and says, “I want you to do more work on this project. This is the extra work. Tell me how much additional money I need to send you to perform the additional work.”

The project manager estimates that an additional $100 is needed to do the additional work. The project manager also knows that the project is overrunning costs on several items. The project manager tells the person who pays the bills that the additional work requires an additional $200.

The person who pays the bills says something like, “Hmmm, that is much more than I expected.”

The project manager says something like, “Well, you have to understand that it will take a lot of work to move from the current tasks to the additional tasks, there are additional support people needed to support the additional work, and besides there are lots of little technical and managerial details that I don’t expect you to understand and I don’t want to take all of  your time and aren’t you bored yet and ready to walk away and leave me alone and just accept the new price tag?”

If all this sounds a bit sneaky, well, I consider it a bit sneaky as well. I approve of total honesty and openness, but, then again, many people tell me that I am naive about these things.

by Dwayne Phillips

Several years ago I was working with a troubled project. We had a few days to plan and learn. Here are 14 lessons I learned.

Several years ago,  I spent three full days with a group of people trying to plan their way on a project that was failing. They were doing the right thing: planning, learning precisely where they were and what they had to do to travel to the end.

How did they lose thier way? How did they find themselves with a fuzzy idea of where the were and what they were supposed to do?

One of the things I observed was a senior manager pulling a group of individuals into a (maybe) group. He started with the basics. “I want to look at a task. What are the inputs? What are the outputs? Who sends things to me? Who do I send things to? What resources do I need to do the task?”

Those are basics. They must be too simple to tell people, but if they had realized those little, simple, basic things they wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Lesson one: Nothing is to little, simple, or basic to go unsaid.

Another thought: it seems that small groups of people or little teams could huddle together and do their work. They were solving problems, moving forward, and accomplishing work. They were doing well. The trouble would eventually find them in that they would come to work one day and have nothing to do. What? Nothing to do? Why? Well, their little group never bothered to talk to any other little groups to find out what was next. That must have been someone else’s job. Surely someone else was tying the little groups together.

Lesson two: Occasionally, stand up and look at the other little groups.

The project manager (PM) gave a team leader (TL) three months and five people to accomplish work and deliver a product. The TL should gather the team for one day to plan the work. Start again with simple things.

If we are to have the product on day X, what must have on day X-10? For that to happen, what must happen on day X-20? X-30? X-80?

It seems that none of the TLs did that with their team. They jumped right into the work in big chunks of work and big chunks of time. Along they way, they felt they were doing well. They had smart people; they were working hard, and things were going to come out in the end. Weren’t they?

Contractors create proposals in a combination of top-down and bottom-up work. Their bottom-level tasks are detailed, but they are not really detailed details. They are sort of “not too detailed” details. The detailed details are left up to the TL when they start a three-month stretch of work.

Sometimes, however, the TL and the team don’t work out their details.

Lesson three: Start at the conclusion and work backwards until you know what must be done in small increments of time.

Lesson four: The project manager needs to ensure that the team lead works out the details with the team on day one.

Lesson five: The person paying for the work needs to ensure this happens by drilling down into the detailed details on at least one area.

It seems to me that there are lots of opportunities here for a retired person and consultant to make money on these planning exercises.

A big surprise to me was how much time was spent by one or two people correcting the errors in the schedules of other people. I couldn’t understand what kinds of errors people could have in schedules. Someone tried to explain that to me, but it never made much sense. It was sort of like task A was supposed to connect to task B, but they didn’t connect them on the scheduling tool. Instead they just told someone that the tasks connected.

No one would ever do that. Everyone knows that you have to connect tasks so that they are connected. No one would just pretend they were connected and hope that things worked out. Well, someone – actually several “someones” – did that.

Lesson six: Someone will do what no one would ever do.

I asked some of the people on the project what they thought might have gone wrong. One was that they had worked on projects with three or four programmers. This project involved 25 programmers. What worked before wasn’t working now, but the programmers and their supervisors didn’t realize it or wouldn’t admit it. They needed to change, but they didn’t.

Lesson seven: Weinberg’s Law of the Power of Three. 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, … What works at one level of staffing will not work at the next.

Another person on the project mentioned the trouble that they were having with requirements. This project has requirements – the “what” is being built. The team had the choice of “how” to build the system (design), but did not have a choice of what to build (requirements).

Many people on the project started work in the dot-com era at start up companies. A key to success in that other environment is to create the what, to think of a great product that people would love to buy. They would create the how while they were thinking of the what.

In this project, the persons paying for the work stated the what. The system engineer allocated the what to different teams. The teams were to decide how to build and then do it.

A problem was that many of the team members decided what whats were really good and worthy of their efforts and what whats were dumb ideas. They decided this on their own and didn’t implement the dumb whats.

Eventually, a test team walked in and started testing the whats. Some of the whats weren’t implemented, and the corresponding tests failed. Trouble. Now the team had to fix the unimplemented whats. They argued with all their hearts that those whats were unworthy. The problem was the corporation had a contract that said they had to fullfil all the requirements. The second problem was that at this time in implementation it was really costly and troublesome to put other requirements into the design and implementation.

Oh well, they had to do it.

Lesson eight: Requirements are things that are required not desired.

I kept talking to people about the need for learning and improving. To make this point, I did an exercise on the morning of the third day. The exercise was:

Everyone has two cards and one piece of paper. On card #1, write two or three things that you noticed other people learn, notice, or realize. On card #2, write two or three things that you learned, noticed, or realized. Write these four to six things on your piece of paper.

Stand up, pass your card #1 to the person on the right. Repeat this three or four times. I wanted to ensure that everyone had someone else’s card #1 and not the card from the person sitting next to them. The person next to them probably worked directly with them all week, so they probably had a similar learning experience. I wanted them to have a card from across the room.

Stand up, pass your card #1 to the person on the left. Repeat this three or four times.

Write the four to six things on these two cards on your piece of paper. Now you have eight to 12 learnings on your piece of paper. Please use these learnings during the rest of the project.

Unexpected to me, we had mass confusion while passing cards to the right and then to the left. People were facing all different directions so that their right was someone else’s left.

Lesson nine: It is easier to pass cards to the right when everyone is facing the same direction.

Lesson ten: Start a project by having everyone face the same direction.

Another confusion was that people were passing cards away, but were not receiving them. Some people had three cards while some people had none. These people did not seek out one another without a great deal of prodding from me. What was wrong with these people? Surely they realized what was happening and that they should rectify the situation without prodding. They didn’t.

Lesson eleven: If you have no cards or extra cards, find a person that is in the other situation.

One more unexpected thing happened. At the end someone suggested, “Let’s collect all the cards and pin them to the wall so everyone can see them.” What a great idea. Why didn’t I think of that?

Lesson twelve: Great ideas come from unexpected places at unexpected times.

Lesson thirteen: Keep your senses active so that you can notice and use great ideas.

Lesson fourteen: It is probably worthwhile to have someone on a large project who has no assigned duty other than to wander around and notice things.

There was one side conversation that I overheard. When you are on the critical path, don’t worry about being efficient. The money you waste by slipping the entire project day-for-day is much greater than what you might waste staying on schedule.

by Dwayne Phillips

I learn how to raise someone else’s power by losing some of my own.

I once received a call in my office from a gentleman named Brian. Brian worked for a company up the road half an hour away.

There was something weighing heavy on Brian’s mind. He didn’t sound like himself on the phone. He spoke slowly and struggled with his words. He wanted to come to the building and talk about something
that had happened in the past.

I wasn’t sure what Brian wanted to discuss. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to talk with Brian. It seemed like something was wrong. I didn’t like talking to people about things that were wrong. For some reason, I agreed to set aside some time and talk with Brian. Something tugged at me. This seemed important to Brian, and I felt a tinge of guilt  about blowing off something that seemed so important to another person.

Brian came in at the appointed time and we went to an empty room where we would have privacy. I closed the door and we sat next to one another.

Brian talked about something that had happened a few months prior to that day. I really cannot remember the details as I sit here and write. The topic was something about how he had told me that his company could deliver a product for a price. Later, it happened that his company could not deliver as promised. That explanation sounds pretty simple. The real occasion was not so black and white.

While Brian was recalling the occasion to me, I kept thinking, “Oh, Brian, that was nothing. I understood what was happening. I never felt as if your company and you were lacking in integrity. There was no offense. There is no reason to be apologizing.”

Somehow I managed not to say any of this. Somehow I managed not to apologize while Brian was apologizing.

I felt odd listening to Brian speak. This “little nothing thing” was important to Brian. He had decided that.
I did not have the power to decide that the event was not important to him.

This was an enlightening and debilitating thought. I could not decide what was important to other people. The other person alone had the power to decide what was important to them.

I am not sure how or why I had the thought that I could control  the thoughts of other people. I don’t think that I ever told myself that I could control that. Nevertheless, I was living as if I had that control.

Giving up the idea of control was liberating. I no longer had to think about what should be important to other people. I no longer had to correct people when they had the mistaken  impression of what was important to them. I had a lot less to think about for others and more energy to think about what was important to me.

One of the things that become important to me was other people. These other people became true  individuals with a real freedom of choice. They were much more powerful than they used to be. I like being around powerful people. Somehow I had raised their power by reducing my own. That is amazing in some ways.

by Dwayne Phillips

An experience with high self-esteem, congruent communication, and buying a car.

A few years ago, my wife and I bought a new van. Our old van was ten years old, and one of our sons was about to start college. We would need a third vehicle and decided to buy a new one instead of a used one.

My wife and I went out to eat a little dinner and go to a car dealership. We went to the same dealership where we bought a Cavalier in 1997. They had one van on the lot like what we had before. I guess it was a Chevy Astro as opposed to the GMC Safari. We had a Safari and still have it today. It is our son’s favorite vehicle.

Anyway, we took a little test drive in the new van. It was fine with the interior being a little different and improved over the old van. I recall it had an electric seat at for the driver’s seat. I didn’t like that because it seems to be one more thing to fail and cost a lot to repair.

Two other items I remember. First, it had plastic running boards.  My wife  thought they are great in that short-legged people can step up into the van easier. I don’t like them because they squeek and – yes again – are one more thing to fail and need repair. The second item is a towing package. I had no idea what that was. We have never towed anything and I don’t know that I have ever had the desire to tow anything.

The price tag on this van seemed a little high. I think it was around $29,000 or something. I took note of it at the time, but really didn’t take it seriously.

We went inside the dealership to chat a little. I don’t know why we did that, but we did. The VERY YOUNG salesman talked to us and asked us a few questions about what we were doing looking for a car and other things.

The thing I remember most about this was that I was quite congruent. I was feeling good about myself and everything else. In other words, I had high self-esteem. I was aware of this self-esteem and how I was communicating. I didn’t feel pressure, confusing, fear, or any negative feelings. I liked that new van out there, but my wife and I had searched for a new van for all of 15 minutes. I felt no pressure to buy this van or negotiate a great deal or ensure that I wasn’t cheated by the salesman.

I was able to communicate my feelings to the sales team. The sales manager came in the room and asked us the usual,  “What would it take to put you in this new van tonight?”

I confidently told him a price. I don’t remember what it was, but it seemed to be much lower
than the sticker price. The sales team went away and came back ten minutes later. They offered to sell the van to us for a couple of thousand  dollars less than what I had told them.

I was surprised. Buying cars is not supposed to be easy. I hate buying cars. I guess what I hate is the negotiating on the price for the vehicle. The few times I have bought a car, I acted like I hated negotiating
the price. I guess now that I am writing this, I realize that I had low self-esteem in all those instances.
I felt inferior, I hated the time, I did not say what I felt in a loving manner, I was incongruent, and I always negotiated a bad deal. Funny how that works. Poor self-esteem, poor communication or what I feel, poor performance.

Oh, by the way. my wife and I happened to be shopping for a car on the last day of the month. We surmised later that they dealer was anxious to sell the car and  remove it from their inventory before the new month rolled around.

I think there is some truth to the last-day-of-the-month theory. Car dealers do like clear their inventory.

I think the congruent communication has a bigger part to play in this good deal. I felt like I really didn’t have to have that new van. I could take it or leave it. That new van was not going to make me into something wonderful. I was someone wonderful already with or without that new van. I was able to communicate that to the sales team. More important – I was able to communicate that to me. I felt it inside, I said it outside in a loving manner.

This congruence stuff is interesting stuff. I like to read about it; I like to study it; I like to twist it around and do experiments with it in my head. That is all nice stuff. Nice stuff aside – congruence really works.

I have a nice van that I bought for several thousand dollars less than I imagined I could have. I felt good going in the sales room and good coming out.

One more thing – maybe the biggest thing of all. I ended up liking those people at the car dealership. I didn’t hate them or feel that they were a bunch of penny-pinching, lying, thieving bastards. I believe they are nice, loving, caring people. I have a much better Christian view of them and Christian feeling for them in my heart.

by Dwayne Phillips

If you manage software development, here is a tip for success: write less software.

The above tip for success doesn’t make much sense at first, but humor me by reading the following story (a true story).

Once I worked in government, and we hired a company to write software for us. The software dealt with scheduling resources. We paid the company about $3Million to write this software. What a mess. The software eventually worked, but it was painful to writer and painful to test and painful just to be in the room when people were talking about this software development effort.

Time marched on.

A few years later, we wanted to upgrade the system for new use. A new software development manager arrived at the company. He suggested that instead of upgrading the software, we throw it away and use Microsoft Calendar software instead. Microsoft had already written the software, and it would provide about 90% of the functions we needed. He wanted to write software that would interface with Microsoft’s and add the custom features we needed.

We did as he suggested. They finished in one month. There was no pain.

Let’s think about this story a little more:

The company would have been paid a lot of money to upgrade their software, that is if they had written a lot of software. Their solution meant less money for their company. Their solution also meant success for their company. Everyone was happy with the result.

Upgrading the software would have meant writing a lot of software. The company wasn’t good at writing a lot of software. They would have earned a lot of money, but would have failed.

How many failures can your company accumulate before people stop hiring you?

Think about it:

• writing a little software is easier than writing a lot of software
• writing a little software takes less time than writing a lot of software
• writing a little software costs less money than writing a lot of software
• writing a little software has fewer headaches than writing a lot of software

Hmmm, what are the advantages to writing a lot of software? I don’t know.

If you are a software manager and want to succeed, try to find ways to write less software. In this case, less work usually means more success.

by Dwayne Phillips

Self-flying airplanes are coming. They will be very good, but not perfect. Younger generations may accept that less than perfect.

Aviation is repeating its history from about a hundred years ago. Instead of the Wright brothers, we now have “drones” or “UAVs.” I put these terms in quotes as they are misused terribly and often. Regardless of the ignorance of the press, we are seeing a repeat.

Self-flying air vehicles have been used in military reconnaissance for more than a decade. Next, these reconnaissance planes started dropping ordnance on people. Coming, they will be used in air-to-air combat. We saw the same sequence in aviation in WW I.

After WW I, we saw the advent of commercial aviation. Hence, the next step for self-flying planes is commercial aviation. The question is,

Will any passenger fly in a plane without a pilot?

Most people of my age (50+) will answer, “No.” That is why we make the pilots sit in the front of the plane. If there is an accident, they hit first. That gives them a really big motivation to approach the ground carefully.

Coming into the picture, however, is the younger generations. I’ve already written that since these guys grew up in a digital world, they have come to accept less-than-perfect performance from their computers.

My guess is that they will accept pilot-less airliners. I might as well. It could be pleasant to fly without hearing the mindless drone of the pilot telling us that they will try to get us there early.

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the best things to know is what I don’t know. A next best thing to know is what to do when I don’t know what I’m doing.

I have my shortcomings. Yes, hard to believe, but true.

One of my shortcomings is admitting when a situation highlights one of my shortcomings, i.e., I don’t know what I am doing or I cannot do what is expected of me. Another shortcoming is deciding what to do when I don’t know what I am doing or I cannot do what is expected of me.

Enough going around in circles with my shortcomings and ignorance. Now to the point.

Know your limits.

Know when you don’t know; know when you can’t do.

And know what do to when you can’t do.

Bring a friend.

Yes, a friend can be most helpful. If nothing else, the friend will sit next to you so you don’t feel alone (a terrible feeling, especially when you are overcome). Friends come in many forms.

Techniques can be friends. That is knowledge, but sometimes knowledge is of the form: take a problem you can’t solve and break it down into smaller problems that you can solve. I learned that in college calculus a long time ago.

Time can be a friend. I am still amazed how much smarter I am tomorrow than I am today.

Give a friend to colleagues who are overcome. Sit next to them and listen while they vent frustrations. You don’t have to have a clue what it is they are discussing, just sit and listen. Funny how a person who doesn’t know anything can help a colleague who doesn’t know anything.

Two unknowing people can sum to one knowing person.

That doesn’t make any sense, but it seems to work.

This is sort of rambling, but I don’t know how to write it any better. Perhaps I will ask a friend to look at it for me. I will probably understand how to write this better tomorrow. Then again, this is just a blog post.

by Dwayne Phillips

Do people associate your appearance with bad tidings? There is another way.

Let’s oversimplify and divide the world of bosses into two categories:

1. those bosses who only visit when something is wrong

and

2. those bosses who visit everyday to chat about the weather

I have worked for both and prefer the second type. It should be no surprise that I behave like the second type. When I supervise people, I visit them everyday to learn what is happening in their world.

These behavior patterns manifest themselves in several ways and extend beyond the boss-not boss relationship. For example, there is the service provider and service consumer relationship. When I am a service consumer, I visit the service providers often to chat about the weather. When I stick my head in their door, they don’t know that I “want something from them.” I may be there to learn how their kids did at soccer over the weekend.

Regardless of the relationship type, I know that with the first type of person, when they stick their head in the door I won’t like it. I come to associate their face with bad things.

Yuck, who wants to be the face of bad things?

by Dwayne Phillips

I discover another reason for writing – the keyboard has an infinite attention span.

Last night I discovered another reason why I like to write:

The keyboard has an infinite attention span.

I sometimes tell my stories (fiction and non-fiction) to my wife. After a few minutes, she usually tells me, “enough.” I have to quit. It isn’t just my wife. Other people I know grow bored of my stories.

My computer keyboard has never told me, “enough.” It sits there and clicks and clacks hour after hour and story after story. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the story I am writing, the keyboard just sits there and listens to me. I like that.