Working Up

By Dwayne Phillips

Despite what I have noticed the past couple of years, declaring, “I’m just learning” does not allow us to do whatever we want.

Earlier this year, I wrote about using Emergency Flashers to gain allowance to do whatever I want (not). I’ve noticed something similar with stickers on cars that say something like, “Caution, Student Driver,” or “Student Driver, Please be Patient.”

In Virginia, Driver’s Education is no longer taught in schools. There are private companies that provide on-the-road driver’s ed. These are required for obtaining a license to drive. These private companies put these and other stickers on their vehicles to identify themselves—or something like that.

I was almost smashed by one such car recently. The student driver didn’t know how to turn left when there are several left-turn lanes. Oh well.

I’ve noticed that putting a “Student Driver” sticker on a car allows the driver of that car to do just about anything they wish. Everyone else will just have to abide by that.

Let’s extend this to the workplace and other areas of life. I’ll hang a “Student” lanyard from my neck.

If someone at Starbucks says, “Hey, there is a line here. Get in the back of the line.” I’ll smile and point to my Student lanyard. That will make going to the front of the line okay.

If I crash the computer network at work and everyone loses hours of work, I’ll point to my Student lanyard. That will ease everyone’s angst and make everything okay.

Of course these are silly examples. Being a student at something or other does not make everything okay.

Of course, however, there are cases of people being new to a job and needing some time and space to learn. Now the manager of the work earns their pay. Create learning situations. Create “sandboxes” in which learners can experiment, make major mistakes, and not adversely affect others.

Student drivers exist (I wish there were closed areas for them to learn to drive). Student butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers exist. Mistakes are costly. Let’s be sure to have places where students can make mistakes and learn and minimize the cost.

by Dwayne Phillips

We seem to think that everything will be on the screen and we don’t need to use pieces of paper.

Years ago, we didn’t have the computers we have today. How many years ago? Twenty? Ten? Two?

Years ago, some of us would take great pains to put lots of information on a few pieces of paper that were in our notebooks (three ring binders, not laptop computers called “notebooks”) that we kept with us all the time. These few pieces of paper (two or three at the most) held amazing amounts of information. Little figures and keywords that reminded us what was what and where it was and who was who and … you get the idea.

Well, today we have electronic dashboards. They have all the information.

Not.

The screens that 98.6% of us have are still not big enough to hold the information that a single 8 1/2×11″ piece of paper held. But, but, but … nope. The screen still isn’t big enough. The screen still isn’t clear enough. The screen is much better than it used to be, but it isn’t there, yet.

Use a piece of paper or two. Paper still works well. Paper still works better than screens that aren’t big enough, yet.

by Dwayne Phillips

Accepting poor performance and low-quality products sets a precedent. The longer this lasts, the more difficult it is to change the situation.

Comedian Don Knotts had this routine playing Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show. “Nip it in the bud,” was the punchline that was punched over and over. I still think it is funny whenever I see it.

Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post titled, “Act Early, Act Small.” That post had the same point as this post. Act today. Do something today. Nip it in the bud before it grows and grows and grows. Weeds are easier to pull at 6″ than at 6′. More cliches?

Poor quality products arrive from someone. Well, I’m new here and I don’t want to make an early impression as a grouch or some type of bad person. I’ll let it go for now. I’ll say something later when it is really important and we won’t have time to fix it and we will all look bad and others will suffer and…

Uh, wait. Maybe that isn’t a good strategy. Maybe waiting a long time will produce bad things that are big like that weed that is now six feet tall.

Nip it in the bud—today. “Fellas, this isn’t the most important thing in the world, but let’s start now and improve a little here, today.”

We can do better. Let’s act early while we can still act small.

by Dwayne Phillips

To be flexible enough to do new things, I often need a foundation of fundamentals in place first.

If I am standing on shifting sand, I have to be flexible to adjust my stance and upper body so I don’t fall. Flexibility is required just to stay in place.

If I am standing on a foundation of fundamentals, flexibility allows be to do new things. I can bend, twist, stretch, reach, etc. without falling flat on my face. The foundation of fundamentals is in place first.

But how long do I have to work on building this foundation of fundamentals before I use flexibility to reach out to new things?

The answer is almost always, “Longer than I want.”

Okay, that aside, the answer is, “That depends on what new things I want to attempt.”

A bigger leap requires a firmer foundation of fundamentals.

If I want to write one paragraph of fiction, I need to know something about grammar, punctuation, and such fundamentals. If I want to write a ten-page short story, I need more fundamentals. If I want to write a 500-page novel, and so on.

If I want to change the world with a new type of software, I need a pretty big foundation of fundamentals. The same is needed if I want to build a bridge across the English Channel or a space elevator that lifts me to the moon.

Fundamentals can be boring. Acquiring fundamentals can be boring. If I want to be flexible and try untried things, I need some foundation of fundamentals.

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 going far, far, far in the wrong direction. That moves us in the right direction much quicker and by using far fewer resources.

And we don’t like to do that.

This “little” part kills me. It means I am probably heading in the wrong direction the first couple of days or months or years. It means I can be grossly mistaken. What? Me? I’m not stupid. I can do it! I don’t need you sitting around talking and talking and talking.

Maybe. Maybe not this time in this situation. Maybe I—maybe all of us—need a few experiments that are much less expensive and teach valuable lessons.

We can all do better. Let’s try to work a little, learn a little. Set the ego aside. We can do that, right? Let’s set the ego aside for a little while to learn if we can.

by Dwayne Phillips

An apology is just that—an apology. It is neither an explanation nor a justification. Rats!

An apology is simple: I did this wrong. I am sorry for that. I ask your forgiveness.

An apology does not contain an explanation: I was trying to do such-and-such and …

An apology does not contain a justification: The sun was in my eyes and I tripped an such-and-such …

An apology never contains: You have to understand that …

The fewer the words the better in most cases. Apologize and move forward. But apologize.

by Dwayne Phillips

Things are the way they are. But why? An old saying explains much of the reason.

There is an old but little known saying, “Things are the way they are because they got that way.”

Pause to consider. Yes, of course the saying is correct. We are here because everything and everyone who passed through here influenced the situation and made it what it is today.

But, but, but… no buts. Of course the ways of the greater world out there influenced things. There was the election of whatever election we wish to blame. There was the heat wave or cold spell of whenever the year was we wish to blame. We had no control over inflation and we certainly had no control over the pandemic, we just had to go along and we cannot be held responsible.

I suppose the last statement is the big point of all this. Surely we can find someone else to blame for why we have the bad situation we have. If not someone else, some thing else is to blame. We just cannot take the blame on ourselves. After all, we were here, and … and there we have it. We were here then and we did the things that caused us to be here now. If we weren’t here then, we joined at some point, and here we are.

Rats. Surely there is something else to all this. Perhaps not. Perhaps we should simply do better—all of us.

by Dwayne Phillips

Take care with the messages you send job interviewees if you really want to hire someone.

Another job interview, another headache.

Some organizations use this process in a job interview. There are N people sitting around the table. Each person has a sheet with N questions on it. Person #1 reads question #1. The interviewee answers the question while all N people write the answer. Person #2 reads question #2 and on and on until each person has read a question and everyone has written the same thing on paper.

The organization could have given the interviewee the questions ahead of time and let the person write the answers. Well…

What is the meta message? We don’t think often and we often think poorly. Therefore, we use rote techniques so that we act like little cogs in a machine. Does the interviewee want to be another little cog in a machine? Usually not. Sometimes the paycheck is needed so badly that the interviewee will choke on it all and take it.

I once had a job interview where the first two questions were:

• Can you type?
• How many words per minute?

I found this strange as I had a PhD and had written a few books, a thesis, a dissertation, and whatever else came along the way. Drivel.

Another job interview started with, “Have you ever made any mistakes that you’d like to talk about?” Ah! Thought. A good smart person wanting to know something about me.

Let’s consider the meta messages in our job interviews.

by Dwayne Phillips

When we build systems, build them to do and have no more and no less than we intend.

A few pseudo definitions:

• Requirements: what the user wants.
• Intentions: what the builder intends.
• Hazards: when the builder builds more or less than intended.

The users says, “I want a system that does this and that is and like this and that.”

The builders say among themselves, “We can do those things and a little more here and maybe a little less there, but we will provide value for the price.”

Years later if something horrible happens, an observer will say, “The builder put more into the system than they intended. Someone else saw that extra and exploited it.”

This is about the recently neglected field of systems engineering. Requirements are traced to design, build, test, delivery, etc. The builders build what they intend to build: no more and no less. The system doesn’t do more than intended. The system doesn’t do less than intended. Those things would be apparent when the systems engineer(s) trace requirements to the rest of it.

“But if you press these three keys for four seconds and then these four keys for three seconds the system will…” Nope. This is not a movie with heroes and villains and last-second rescues. This is real life. That extra clever thing is a capability built into the system and it wasn’t intended. The cyber security weakness is a capability built into the system and it wasn’t intended.

Let’s do what we intend. No more and no less.

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s do what we can do bring more people into the solution-providing space.

I am going to repeat some things I wrote in a blog post in 2015. In researching today’s post, I found that old post and wondered a bit at how good it was.

Anyway, Linus’ Law is: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” This is from Eric Raymond in his book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” (1999).

If someone wants to come and look at what I am working, I should let them. But it’s not ready to be seen! So what? But, I am embarrassed! So what?

From 2015…

Someone out there knows the answer or knows a different approach that makes the answer available with a little (not a lot of) work.

Some technical “availables” include the ever less expensive:

• computer
• health monitor
• microscope
• telescope
• blog platform
• pencil and paper

All these things put more eyeballs on more problems. Perhaps the cure for cancer is coming from an unexpected (unfunded) source in an unexpected place. Wouldn’t it be great if a 13-year-old in Tibet raised her hand with the answer?

Give that person a second-hand $100 Chromebook and show them how to get a one-month, free-trial of a cloud computing platform. Stand back in wonder.

Have a set of used pots and pans? Someone needs them to discover the next great thing in cooking or chemistry or medicine.

And, have a kind word? Sometimes that is what is needed to expand the set of eyeballs and make the problem so shallow that the solution is provided.