Working Up

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.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes you just lower your head against a wall and push as hard as you can.

Let’s begin this little blog post by noting that I attended LSU—not MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford or any of those places known for producing really smart people. At LSU, we may not be able to spell L-S-U, but we can whip you in football and baseball and a few other things.

One thing we did learn how to spell at LSU is B-F-I, which is short for brute force and ignorance. This brings me to the tale of how I solved an unsolvable problem in super computing and digital signal processing when I didn’t have the credentials (still don’t) for either of those fields.

Another organization, a.k.a., the rich kids, owned a super duper computer on which they were past the leading edge in digital signal processing. The organization I was in, a.k.a., beggars can’t be choosy, owned a super computer, sort of, that cost half of what the rich kids had. The rich kids wrote software that did things us beggars wanted to do. All we had to do was make their software run on our computer to produce the same results to ten significant digits.

I was the lead of the beggars team. I couldn’t spell digital signal processing, but could manage to spell D-S-P (I am still in this situation and still can’t get a job in DSP because beggars can’t be choosy but the rich kids who own those DSP companies can be and still are choosy). The rich kids’ software wasn’t producing the same answers on the beggars’ computer as it did on the rich kids’ computer. The precision wandered off somewhere.

We brought in all manner of assistance. We even brought in the folks who wrote the compilers on the super computers to find the problem. All these folks (who were all paid twice my salary) had all sorts of sophisticated methods of attacking the problem. I, being from L-S-U and only knowing B-F-I, sat in a corner and attacked the problem using the only thing I knew how to do: I ran the software one statement at a time on both computers and compared the answers. I didn’t use any of the super debuggers and other super software tools the smart kids knew how to use. I just stepped through the software one brute-force step at a time.

Three days later, I found it; I found the place where the answers deviated. I solved the problem on the beggars’ computer and we had the same answers to ten significant digits as the rich kids did. For this triumph of brute force and ignorance, I was given what we called a large, round cash award. A large round number, i.e., zero. But that is another story.

Still, sometimes you do the simplest thing one step at a time repeatedly while the rich kids and smart kids use their rich and smart tools. Sometimes that works. Put your head down and push.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is a question we should constantly ask. Try the simplest thing to be, to do, to have.

Several years ago, I posed a question to participants at a conference session I was facilitating. The design problem was about storing information from a business. I wanted a design of a system that would store a year’s worth of information from a business I described.

One team of designers worked for one of the world’s largest commercial database companies (I won’t give the name). They designed an elegant system from their experience in information management systems. The other design teams had similar results.

Most were surprised when I suggested a card table. A basic card table would hold all the paper generated by the business in one year. Many “but, but, but…” questions came. I showed them how the simple card table would meet all the requirements I stated. One person in the room added that a spot on the floor would meet the requirements. Aha! Even simpler!

How simple can we be? Do we need a database? Can a spreadsheet do as well? Can a word processor do as well? Can a clipboard, pencil, and ten sheets of paper do as well? How about ripping the pages out of a calendar and taping them to the wall? But, but, but…

Of course we can use things that are more complex and have a greater ability to expand to greater horizons and all that. Is that necessary? Is that really necessary? Will this problem be here in ten years and fill all those horizons?

In my experience, the answer is no. The problem will go away and a different problem will arise. That grand solution won’t be used. Simple. Inexpensive. Quick. Move on.

At least consider the simple.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is a tried and true method of gathering requirements and specifying systems. Imagine you had a thousand assistants.

There are various methods of gathering requirements and specifying systems. A basic one is to imagine a thousands assistants awaiting your request. If you had a thousand assistants, what would you have them doing?

“Oh,” is how the reply usually begins, “I would tell them to…” And so one flows the requirements and specification.

A system, usually involving a computer and software, is a simulation of a machine. A machine is a device that does what a thousand assistants would do. Hence, a thousand assistants tell us what the computer and software should do.

This is a simple method. I have used it dozens of times. There is something about it that helps people relax, think, and tell system builders what they want. Don’t try so hard. Try something simple.

by Dwayne Phillips

Given histories on the Internet, the good news is that I can find the correct date and event. The bad news is, I no longer have the excuse that, “Maybe I didn’t remember correctly.” That is just lazy.

I am making notes of my life for my children and grandchildren. The sort of, “Did you know I once lived in that place for a few years?”

The easy way to make historical notes is to depend on my memory and just type words. If I put the wrong place and the wrong date, so be it.

The more difficult way to make historical notes is to find the correct place and date on the Internet. That correct information is out there.

In the last several decades, a few Presidents have been caught using the easy way with their past and their boasts. “I remember as a kid these terrible shameful things happening. As President, we will be different.” That is the start of story. The end of the story is that a reporter or two will investigate the history, i.e., look it up online, and find that the President sort of exaggerated as politicians are prone to do. The events of their past never occurred. Ouch. It is tougher to brag about yourself when you can’t just make up history.

Well, even for folks just trying to record some places and dates to bore their grand kids, there is the easy way and there is the more difficult and accurate way. Five minutes of research online brings about the more accurate way. Rats. It was so much fun just to make it up and brag a bit about my past that really didn’t occur. That’s one of the pitfalls of having grandchildren who are so smart and resourceful.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some advice on kids’ sports. This is really good advice. As usual, someone else gave it to me.

Major league baseball is concluding yet another season. The Little League baseball national and international tournaments just concluded (putting all those kids’ games on national TV live was a horrible mistake). What’s one to do with another?

Less than a tenth of one percent of kids playing ball make it to “the big leagues.” Yet, parents conduct the sports as if their kid is in that tiny group.

I played softball and baseball from second grade through high school. I was pretty good sometimes and not really good at all most of the time. While doing this, I played with several fellows who later played football in the NFL. None of my friends made it to major league baseball, but the NFL has its tiny share of kids as well.

Those kids who made it to the NFL were not like the rest of us kids. There were stars playing with me as a kid who never made it past high school. I saw college sports teams where no one made it to the next level.

It just doesn’t happen.

The advice I learned as a parent was, encourage your kids to play enough ball while growing up so that they won’t be embarrassed to join in at the company picnic. If the folks at the company picnic have a game of pick up basketball, my kids would join in and have fun and while not starring in any way, would participate and have fun. Same goes with company picnic softball, soccer, volleyball, Frisbee, and even tether ball (the all-American backyard game).

Help your kids play enough ball to enjoy the company picnic.

Help your kids sing enough to enjoy the company picnic.

Help your kids draw and paint enough to enjoy the company picnic.

The same goes for sewing, quilting, cooking, dancing, and a much longer list than I can recall at this time.