Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Here come the AI assistants. They will do amazing things for us. Nothing new here. We’ve had these for decades. Nice, but not new.

I’ve seen several AI assistants recently. They are usually called “agents.” Well, “agent” is shorter and easier to spell than “assistant,” so I guess that is an improvement. And some of these agents, if they work, will be nice software to have.

Nice, but not new.

Let’s see: I have written a book, but I am not a good speller. Hey, AI agent, check and fix my spelling. Wow! It did it. What an amazing AI agent. Oh, that is a spell checker, that isn’t AI, that is easy. Really? Just check each word to see if it is the dictionary. Oh. How do you store the Oxford English Dictionary on the computer? How do you search it quickly? How do you compress everything? How do you index everything? You ever seen the algorithms for that? Simple stuff? Not hardly.

Let’s see: I have versions 270 and 271 of a source code file (simple text). What’s the difference between the two versions? Hey, AI agent, tell me differences. Wow! It did it. What an amazing AI agent. Oh, that is the old “diff” program running, that isn’t AI, that is easy. Really? Have you ever read the source code of plain old diff? Have you every examined the algorithm? Simple stuff? Not hardly.

I suppose we could go on with more examples of software that performs amazing and useful things for us. New? No. Nice? Yes. Clever algorithms invented by really smart people. They went from, “It would be nice to have such a thing,” to “This does it.” They didn’t hyperventilate about AI. They solved a problem.

AI agents and assistants? Some may work and then disappear into usefulness. New? No. Nice? Yes.

by Dwayne Phillips

The title is the hallmark of a person in a bureaucracy. Do less; just get by.

I have worked in and around government agencies for four decades or more. Gosh, that’s a lot. The title of this little post summarizes the mean of the bell curve in these places. Let’s expand a bit.

Someone needs assistance. This is usually a junior government employee. This junior employee goes to a senior employee and describes a situation. The senior employee, quite accustomed to and skilled at doing less than they can, tells the junior employee, “You need to go see whats-his-name.”

What the senior employee could is say, “Whats-his-name is the person to see for this situation. Come on, lets both go see him right now and talk with him about this. It will take some time, but will save everyone much more time in the end and produce a better result.”

The second thing is the right thing to do. The first thing is less than the senior employee could do, but will get by and, if questioned later, would allow the senior person to tell even-more-senior persons that they did their job. You know, they gave a partially correct answer, but you get partial credit in bureaucracies.

No, this is passing the buck. Go see someone else. I am not interested in you, your situation, or the mission of this organization enough to get out of my chair and do more than the minimum.

Yes, there is some value in having the junior person, “learn how to do things on their own.” Still, it is lazy. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

It is only healthcare and security in old age. Not very important, huh?

In the recent past, I joined Medicare (yes, I am that old). Let’s see, just go to a government website, fill in the blanks, and viola’. Well, being a technically savvy person, I did that, or tried that.

All this required the Social Security Administration one month to learn what my name was.

Then the Social Security Administration required one month to learn my address.

Then the ten-minute process of signing up took a few hours in person. Well, I am exaggerating, as this all took much more than “a few hours” in person.

And what does this have to do with this blog, technology, systems, and managing work and leading people? Well, all the systems that broke down during this exercise were built by people working for leaders of people and managers of work, i.e., US.

We built systems that didn’t manage to connect the dots on ASCII characters that folks type into computers. Close is not close enough in all this. Okay, we don’t want auto-correct to correct small errors in data entry as that may be worse, but how about auto-warning, auto-suggesting, or simply flashing red lights that show there may be a data-entry error? How about improving the people who are in the system via improved hiring, improved training, and all the other things we could improve? How about this and that and all sorts of other things that smart folks can do when they give themselves the time to be smart?

Perhaps that is the conclusion: we are smart folks, let’s act like it. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is what the people who steer the money want from AI or anything else.

We don’t want AI to do the dishes and the laundry. Well, most of us want these things, but the people who steer the money, i.e., the CEO folks, want answers to their big questions. Big questions like:

• What is bothering people?
• What do people wish?
• What do leaders wish people knew?
• Who do leaders wish they could hire?
• Where are people wasting their time?
• How can I get people to do the right things instead?
• And of course, what are the big questions you want answered?

So, let’s record everything (all those calls to Customer (dis)Service, all those emails, meeting notes, etc. and have some software (people who think cost too much money) answer the big questions. Let’s use AI and whatever is next to analyze all the data. All of this is “data” (we seem to call everything data as almost everything may provide information and I guess if something can eventually provide useful information, it is “data”).

Tell me the answer! Cries the person steering the money. I want to steer the money better! Give me a dashboard! (Why is it we call them dashboards?)

Little side note, if such AI or whatever can provide the answers to the big questions, then anyone can be the CEO and decide the big decisions. So if the smart CEO gets the system, the smart CEO will lose their job and their huge paycheck. Why do they want to fire themselves? Oh well.

by Dwayne Phillips

Yes, we accept a few things that aren’t great, but that’s okay. When, however, is enough enough?

Okay, we know this isn’t correct, but let’s let this little one slide in because it will make for peace in the big picture. You know, let someone see their idea implemented. They will feel better. Others will see that the organization is not stuck in the status quo. We will move on. This won’t cause much harm. The good will outweigh bad; well, sort of.

Then we do it again.

Then we do it again.

Then after X iterations, we are mired in complete nonsense.

How big a number is X? How do we stop short of X? What percent do we stop short before falling off the cliff?

Knowing the value of X is not as important as realizing what we are doing. The next person walks in the room with an idea that is sort of nonsense, but they say, “You accepted the other fella’s idea, why not mine as well.”

Stop. Work on the next person’s idea until it makes sense. Make a habit of changing sort of nonsense into perfectly good sense. Everyone (well almost everyone) is happier. We can do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, the audience knows more than the designation teacher or expert. Great. There is much good that can come from this.

Let’s discuss teaching adults or at least a situation where someone says you are the teacher and everyone else in the room is an adult.

It is common for one of the “students” to ask a question that reveals the student has studied this point far more than the teacher. The teacher is there to teach something. A side point arises and the student knows much more about it.

NOTE: this is not high school where the teacher (should) know more than all the students on all topics. There are adult professionals who have studied side topics on the side and really know their stuff.
What does the teacher do?

Admit it, “You seem to have studied this topic a great deal and I sense that you should be teaching me about it. That is not the main topic for this session, so let’s move back to the main topic. At the next break, please come talk to me about this other topic. I would enjoy learning from you and perhaps we can share your expertise on that matter.”

This is a candid and truthful statement. The teachers acknowledges (1) the expertise of the student and (2) their own human fallibility and limited capacity. These are all good things to say. Who would want to be teaching a room full of adults who knew nothing? Of course the room is full of folks who are experts on something. Celebrate.

by Dwayne Phillips

The aftermath of Hurricane Helene in the mountains of the east coast reminds us of a basic.

Hurricane Helene hit the Gulf Coast of Florida recently. It hit the coast hard. The worst damage and the most deaths, however, occurred in the mountains up the east coast of the US. This is like Hurricane Camille of 1969 which killed several hundred people in Virginia during the days after it hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The mountains and valleys hit by Helene have rivers and creeks and streams and all that. This flowing water occurs in the little valleys between the mountains and hills. Water flows downhill. The streams feed the creeks which feed the rivers which feed the lakes and all that. Water flows downhill. Massive rain for hours and we have floods.

Water flows downhill. It is inevitable. We cannot stop it. We cannot turn off gravity.

If you can help those folks who have been flooded, please do so.

Okay, project managers and other folks who decide things that affect the jobs and livelihoods of others, take heed. There are economic hills. These make economic valleys. Economic water flows downhill just like water in real life. There is no magic to eliminate this.

Take care of those who live in the economic valleys by the river. The water will flood them. We, however, can foresee this and do something. Please, let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Maybe one day I will know what “any good at it” means when applied to writing.

I heard the title used as a line in a movie recently. Yet another young, earnest person was confessing to an acquaintance about how they spent their idle time. They wrote. They were trying to write something great. They had their doubts about their abilities.

They didn’t know if they were any good at writing.

I don’t know what it means to be “good at writing.”

If the definition is “make lots of money doing it” well, I’ve been writing and publishing for 30 years and I’m not any good at it.

Other definitions:

• Some people laugh and smile or cry or think deeply when they read something wrote.
• Some people follow my directions, and they arrive at where they wished.
• Some people follow my instructions, and they do what they wanted to do.
• Some people learn something from what I wrote.

If some of these things apply to some persons at some times, I am good at writing. The trouble is, I don’t know if any of these things happened or not. Well, maybe.

And I suppose there are many other definitions we could list. If I was any good at writing, I would be able to make a longer list. Oh wait, I just added to the above list. If I was any good at writing, I could continue to add to the list. Oh wait…

by Dwayne Phillips

When do you find time to write? Wrong question, at least the wrong question for me.

This past week I was sharing something I was writing with another person. This person told me about how they have wanted for years to write something on a similar topic, but just couldn’t find the time. “How,” they asked, “did I find the time to write?”

For me, that is the wrong question. For me, the right question is, “How did I find the energy to write?”

I have been wanting to write a 50-page piece (long essay or short book) on a topic for several years. I have setup the folders and background materials and all those necessary building blocks, but I haven’t written a single word. I just haven’t found the energy to do it.

I am working on two writing projects currently. I couldn’t start one of them. I had all the folders and background material and such, but I couldn’t write a coherent sentence. Then, I found the time of day when I had the energy needed to write that one piece. Each day, at that time, while I have the energy, I work on that piece for an hour. At the end of the hour, I am drained. I have no more energy for that piece.

I put away that piece and work on the other piece. I have the energy at that time for that other piece of writing.

This is similar to exercising my arms and exercising my legs. While connected, they are separate exercises. I can exercise my arms to exhaustion and have to quit. Then I can immediately exercise my legs to exhaustion.

With my two current writing projects, I have been fortunate to find the energy for them. I have to stick to the schedule, but if I do, the energy is present. Yes, time is involved, but the energy is more important. That is how it works for these projects for me at this point in my life. Find what works for you. Best wishes.

by Dwayne Phillips

We often have the choice of learning now or later. Often we don’t have the time to learn now, so we put it off until it really hurts.

Gosh, we are in a hurry so much of the time. We just can’t pause to think, reflect, and learn at this moment. Some time after now, we will have the time.

Before we rush into something, even before we move into something today, let’s pause and think a while. Will that work? Can we think enough and talk enough to learn a lesson now so we can move in a better direction.

Naw, let’s just do it. We can improve it later.

There is much wisdom in this avoidance of “paralysis by analysis.” Do something, learn, do better, repeat. That is pretty good advice that works in many situations.

One problem with this agile approach, that is the currently popular term for this approach, is that we wait too long between do and the other steps. We wait so long that the “learn” step is quite painful. If we had only paused a little while longer (the term little while being quite subjective), we would have avoided a painful learning period later.

Sigh. How long is long enough? How much pain later is too much pain? How quick is too quick? What is prudent? What is wasteful? Perhaps we could think about this long enough to know the answers. Perhaps we should take a step or two, learn a bit, and repeat. Perhaps we are still in this troublesome area where we don’t know what to do.

We can do better. Let’s pause a little longer, with “little” being subjective.