Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Given any endeavor, their are circumstances beyond our control. These circumstances can keep us from achieving something. One thing that is always in our control is our own learning. We can all choose to learn.

I work hard. I work smart. There are days when I believe that I can achieve what I imagine all due to my hard and smart work.

The trouble with this “achieve anything” attitude is it isn’t true. There are a few billion other people on planet earth with me. They all have their own ideas on what should happen each day.

An example: I can drive around the Washington D.C. beltway in an hour. This is humanly possible. If I am on the road at the right time of day and the right day of the week, I can achieve this. My achievement, however, depends on a lot of other people cooperating. Perhaps they will, but perhaps they won’t. Circumstances beyond my control may stop me.

Ah, those circumstances beyond my control. They can be a real pest from time to time. They especially irritate me because of the last three words – they are beyond my control.

Okay, let’s go back to the first paragraph of this post. Let’s change the content of the second sentence to something like:

I can achieve what I imagine all due to my hard and smart work if all circumstances are under my control.

That is a little better, but where can I find a situation where all the circumstances are under my control? There is one thing that is always under my control: my ability to learn.

Maybe I can’t drive around the beltway in an hour. Maybe lots of other people are out there attempting the same thing at the same time. Maybe a few people are repairing the road. Maybe lots of other things occur to prevent me from achieving my goal. Still, I can learn.

There is one condition necessary for me learning: I have to choose to learn.

Well, there is one nice thing about this choosing to learn:

I can always choose to learn

I think that holds true for all of us. We can all choose to learn. No matter how disappointing the result of an event, we can all learn from it. What we learn can help us in the second attempt at the same goal. What we learn can help us with something else that is distant in time, geography, or field of endeavor.

Choose to learn.

by Dwayne Phillips

What was impossible at one point in the past, often is now possible. What is impossible today will probably possible in the future. Change the conversation by replacing “impossible” with a phrase.

What is impossible these days?

• Curing the common cold
• Finding politicians who are candid about their proposals
• An efficient government
• Any efficient group of people with more than three members
• A car that achieves 100 miles per gallon on gasoline without batteries
• A trillion transistors on a single chip
• A working computer program with 100 million lines of code
• and so on…

I find that the label “impossible” limits thinking. Why try to find a way for a large group of people to be efficient? It is impossible, so forget about it. The same question could be asked about the other items in my list. The same question could be asked about a thousand and one items that I didn’t list.

Forty years ago it was impossible to put a million transistors on one computer chip. Twenty years ago that was no longer impossible as someone learned how to do it. Fifty years ago it was impossible to write a computer program with a million lines of code that worked as promised. Again, someone learned how to do that.

Try this exercise: every time you see or hear the word “impossible,” replace it with “not yet known how.”

For examples,

• It is impossible to put a trillion transistors on a single chip
• It is not yet known how to put a trillion transistors on a single chip
• It is impossible to cure the common cold
• It is not yet known how to cure the common cold
• It is impossible to grow enough food to feed ten billion people on planet earth
• It is not yet known how to grow enough food to feed ten billion people on planet earth
• It is impossible to sustain our lifestyle without depleting the planet of energy resources
• It is not yet known how to sustain our lifestyle without depleting the planet of energy resources

I think that using the “not yet known how” phrase spurs thinking. Try it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Knowledge comes with age. Older colleagues don’t need to be taught some things that younger ones do. There are, however, times when you want older colleagues to attend events that are not necessary for them. Explaining the reasoning makes attendance easier.

I’m in my 50s. I know much more than people in their 20s. That reads a bit egotistical, but stay with me for a few more words. I don’t claim to be smarter than people in their 20s or better in any other way. It is just that

I have had 30 more years to learn things than people in their 20s.

That’s a simple statement. One of my challenges, however, is remembering it.

For example, I worked with several community organizations recently that were creating budgets. The total budget was about a million dollars a year, the budget for my part was about $5,000 per year. I’ve worked hundred million dollar projects in the past. Building a $5,000 budget takes about 20 minutes with 15 of that typing numbers into a form. It really isn’t worth the effort to type the numbers.

One organization wanted me to attend several afternoon-long meetings to build this budget. I didn’t understand why we needed such a long meeting for a relatively simple task. Long explanations followed with me nodding my head through it all. Yes,

• you start with big goals,
• break them down,
• break them down,
• break them down,
• have activities at the leafs of the breakdowns,
• calculate resources at each activity,
• bubble the resources back up the branches,
• sum everything,
• and there you have it.

This is all simple enough and I have been through the exercise time and again for 30 years.

So why do I need to attend several afternoon-long meetings?

The meetings really weren’t for me. They were instructional sessions for people who didn’t have the same 30 years that I had. The bullets above were all new to them.

So why do I need to attend several afternoon-long meetings?

Encouragement. That was the answer. My presence was an encouragement to other volunteers. That is the nature of volunteer organizations. We often need to see others in the room to know that we aren’t alone.

I wish someone had started with,

This isn’t for you, but we’d like you to attend.

I could have understood that, and it would have reminded me that

I have had 30 years to learn things.

by Dwayne Phillips

People attend meetings. People make decisions in meetings. Two days later, people rarely agree on what they agreed on in the meeting. This doesn’t have to be the norm.

I lived through one agonizing week a few years ago because notes were taken in a meeting, but they were not done visibly and were not distributed quickly.

I was in California visiting a contractor on a large and troubled project. While on the trip, the people in my office held a meeting of senior managers to decide on one aspect of the project.

When I returned to my office, I needed to learn of the decision made in the meeting. I quickly asked a person who had attended the meeting. She told me all about the meeting, what was discussed, what was decided, and what I was assigned to do. I was a little surprised by the decision, so I talked about it with another person who had been in the meeting. The second person told me a completely different story. Confused, I now went to a third person to hear the tie-breaking story. I heard a third version of the meeting’s outcome. Did these three people attend three different meetings?

I was lost. I decided to wait four long days until the official minutes of the meeting were published. The meeting minutes finally came out on e-mail, but  they did not help. The minutes were written in English and my name was mentioned as the person who had to do something, but I couldn’t understand the words.

I took the minutes to someone who had been in the meeting for an explanation. The person looked at the minutes and told me that the action item written was wrong. That was not what I was supposed to do. I did the same thing with another person who had been in the meeting. They had the same response.

No one agreed on what was said in the meeting. No one agreed with what the official note taker had written.

I am happy to record that we were able to salvage the situation. We gathered the senior managers for an unscheduled meeting. They discussed the situation a second time and arrived at a decision that I could understand and implement.

The principle of taking notes at a meeting applies to most people. I have yet to visit an organization of people that did not have meetings. I have observed two things about people and meetings. One, meetings are almost universal. Two, meetings are almost always unproductive.

One of the problems with writing meeting minutes is that people feel foolish doing it. This seems to do with ego. I am smart and I attend meetings with other smart people. We can understand what we are discussing and can remember what we decide to do. I think we are smart enough, but I have noticed many cases when we didn’t understand and remember. Maybe we aren’t as smart as I would like to believe.

People rarely have a unanimous understanding of a conversation. We all bring different perspectives and different goals to a meeting. We hear different things. Sometimes we hear and see the same words, but interpret them differently. Whatever the explanation, the old fashioned principle of recording minutes of a meeting is still worthy of attention and effort.

Taking meeting minutes is not that difficult to do. The first step is to decide to do it.  I hope that this chapter has convinced you of the need and wisdom of this principle.

Once you decide to have meeting minutes, assign a person to take the notes. I find that meeting minutes work best when the note take is a person who is not interested in the outcome of the meeting. The note taker doesn’t care if the group is going to buy a red car or a blue one. The note taker only cares that the group discusses the car, decides in an agreeable manner,  and agrees on what the note taker writes as the decision.

The note taker should use a large flip chart to take the notes. The note taker should write clear, legible words. Good penmanship is not prevalent these days. Try to find someone who takes pride in their handwriting.

Keep the meeting notes visible to everyone in the room. The flip chart is a good media for note taking.
A computer with a projector also works well. The group can all see the words that the note taker types into the computer.

It is not necessary to record every word said in the meeting. Try to record the names of the attendees, the decisions, and the action items. Sometimes a person will disagree with what the group decides.
If that person wishes, have the note taker record this person’s opinion. Put that dissenting opinion is the minutes of the meeting.

After the meeting, the note taker should type the notes and distribute them quickly. The next business day is the latest that the meeting minutes should be distributed. Delaying the distribution adds to confusion.

by Dwayne Phillips

To provide a system for users, we need to know the users. How can we know the users without being a user and forgetting about the providers?

I once worked a couple of years in an American Embassy in Africa. A constant concern at the U.S. Department of State was that its employees would “go native.” The worry was that the employees would live in Africa long enough that they would identify more with the Africans than with the State Department back in Washington.

But wasn’t that the point? That they would understand the Africans? Not exactly, and that is the tension.

The job of the U.S. employees in Africa is to represent American foreign policy to the Africans. The better they know the Africans, the better they can help the foreign policy makers in Washington state their case in a way that the Africans understand and appreciate. If, however, the Americans in Africa become “too close” to the Africans, they start to love the Africans and hate Washington. At this point, they fail to do their job.

The same tension occurs with system developers and the eventual system users. To build a system that people will use and love, the developers should know something about the users. Ah, simple, live with the users for a while. Live with the users too long, however, and the developer comes to love the users and hate the other developers.

Sigh.

What to do? How do you have one of your own live with the other side, yet keep them from turning into the other side?

The ideal answer is to not have “sides” of “us” and “them.” The ideal answer is to have one big happy family where we are all in one group striving for one solution. I have never seen the ideal answer in practice. I have seen several attempts at it, but the managers one or two levels up the chain always pulled back to the “us and them” model with the inherent danger of “going native.”

I think the root problem is ego. Someone wants to “get ahead” of someone else. They way to do that is to keep the us and them going. If I am ahead of you, I have created a split comprising “me and you” and “us and them.”

Sigh, again.

I encourage people to attempt the ideal answer. Maybe someone will find a way for it to work some day in some place. Please let me know.

by Dwayne Phillips

Situations change and people adapt to those changes. Has adapting to chance taken away your  ability to adapt?

Change is constant

Okay, that is neither original nor brilliant. It does, however, describe my experiences.

Groups of people adapt

Another observation that is neither original nor brilliant.

What many people fail to observe is how to have groups of people adapt. Most groups of people adapt to one situation. They become better and better for their situation. In engineering terms,

they optimize their operation for their situation

Optimization, however, reduces and sometimes eliminates the ability to adapt. Hence,

Constant change leads to constant adaptation which eliminates adaptability

This is a principle of general systems thinking. Look around,

1. The railroads optimized at rail transportation. They lost the ability to adapt to changes in transportation technology and they were clobbered by automotive and air transportation.
2. Kodak optimized for chemical-based photographic film. They lost the ability to adapt to changes in recording images and they were clobbered by digital image capture (digital photography).
3. The Swiss watch makers optimized at making tiny mechanical devices. They lost the ability to adapt to changes in time keeping and they were clobbered by the digital watch.

We could go on.

Is your organization adapting to one situation? Are you optimizing to one environment? Have you lost the ability to adapt?

by Dwayne Phillips

On Internet coffee shops and my preferences for such.

I frequently visit places that sell coffee and have Internet WiFi service. On a regular weekday, I will usually visit two of these places. There are several personal and professional reasons for this habit, but that is not the subject of this post.

My preferences for Internet Coffee Shops:

1. Good coffee
2. WiFi access (fast WiFi access)
3. Smiles
4. No corporate uniforms
5. Convenient location

I once had a favorite such place near my home. Someone bought it and they didn’t smile. Preference #3 caused me to find another place.

I have been flexible with preference #4. The place I am in now sort of uses uniforms. Each person wears a white t-shirt and a brown apron. The manager doesn’t wear any of that. I also frequent a Starbucks – the epitome of corporate logos and rigidity. The Starbucks, however, is perfectly convenient and the people there smile all the time.

As you may have noticed, my preference list is not in priority order. I have yet to decide on the priority and I have been working on this list for about five years.

Notice that I don’t demand “free” Internet access. I like free access, don’t get me wrong on that one. Starbucks, for example, uses a registered user card system to provide somewhat free access. Their registered card also allows for free coffee refills – bonus points for anyone who does that.

Conclusions? I don’t have many at this time. Perhaps if you are considering opening an Internet coffee shop, you may take my list as a start.

by Dwayne Phillips

Traveling – living in and out of motels – is different from living in a home. This differences points to lessons that can improve home life.

I recently spent five weeks on the road. Motel after motel, night after night. In the past, I have had jobs where I traveled two and sometimes three weeks a month. Motel after motel, week after week. During these periods of travel, I noticed something about myself:

I acted differently while on the road

I,

1. lived slower
2. wasn’t rushing in and out of stores
3. held doors open for more people
4. took the time to smile more
5. treasured my family more

As a logical person (engineer), I could find good reasons for these things. Basically, while on the road I don’t have to do or assist with many time-consuming household tasks like cooking, cleaning, shopping, cutting the grass, and so on. Of course I could take more time to enjoy life and people.

Those logical reasons are also conscious-soothing excuses.

Recently, I saw a blog post about making a home office look like a motel room. Hmm. This person changed his home to reflect some of the benefits of traveling. Perhaps I could do the same. Perhaps I could reduce my attention to, i.e. not worry so much about, the day-to-day maintenance activities of home life and enjoy life and people more.

by Dwayne Phillips

I voted on Tuesday using a paper ballot where I filled an oval with ink to register my vote. This removed one computer from the voting system. I think that was a good thing.

I voted on Tuesday. The voting place near my home in Northern Virginia used paper ballots. This felt a bit strange at first, but they gave me a single piece of paper and asked me to go stand in front of a little table that had vertical sides on it so that no one could see where I marked the paper. The instructions asked me to fill in an oval next to my choice with the pen provided. We only had five things to vote on here – four elected offices and one funding matter – so it was pretty simple and quick.

After filling in the little ovals, I looked around for a place to put my piece of paper. A woman stood at the end of the school gym pointing to a machine next to her. I fed the piece of paper into the machine, the machine “took” it, and a motor pulled it in. I guess that the machine detected which ovals I had filled.

As a side note, the machine did look at lot like a paper shredder. I trust that it was a ballot reader and not a paper shredder.

We did not use Windows 7-powered laptop computers on the voting tables. That was a relief. I never understood how someone thought it a good idea to use a computer system built for millions of users to run thousands of different applications as a hyper-secure, private, single-user, and single-application system. But then again there are many things that government employees do that I have never understood.

Perhaps we have returned to the paper ballot for the next few elections. Maybe one day, someone will write software for a voting machine. They will start with nothing and write the software for voting and for nothing else. There seems to be a market for this.

Then again, my paper ballot was read by a computer and that computer passed data to another computer and that computer counted the votes and that computer passed data to another computer and …

by Dwayne Phillips

Organizations tend to highlight their differences. The differences set them apart in the marketplace. Concentrating on the differences also can dim thinking. Perhaps it is good enough to merely be good enough.

In my experience, organizations tend to highlight what makes them different from all other organizations. They concentrate on the differences. They talk about the differences often.

This is who we are! This is us!

Well, why not? Why drive across town to buy a product from me if I am just like the store around the corner? Why travel a thousand miles to hear my seminar if the one in your town is 90% the same? My eyes are blue, not brown. That must make me special, right?

We could highlight our similarities. That would be the opposite, but wouldn’t it be boring? “Our cars also have four wheels,” isn’t exciting.

Alas, there is trouble in concentrating on the differences. Our differences soon become paramount. They become important beyond their worth. They go beyond rational thought and discussion.

If all consultants know the same things I know, write the same books I write, give the same speeches I give, why would you hire me? Why pay me the money? Why help me grow my business?

But isn’t it enough that an organization does good in its endeavors?

There are a lot of question marks in this blog post. That isn’t good writing. Good writing makes assertions instead of asking questions. Perhaps the question marks will set this blog post apart from all others. Perhaps this blog post will highlight the differences between me and other bloggers.

Then again, perhaps this blog post will spur some thoughts. I think that would be good, and that is enough for me for today.