Working Up

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.

by Dwayne Phillips

This is really good (to someone on some day). And I don’t know who that someone is or when that day is.

This blog post is really good. I felt great when I wrote it. The words flew through my fingers onto the screen and to the Internet. Wow! People will love it.

Blah, blah, blah.

Someone will love this post. They will print it, frame it, and put it on their desk so they see it everyday. It will be the most important thing they read on this day.

My trouble is I don’t know who that someone is. I also don’t know what day this day will be.

I have spoken to hundred of people on dozens of occasions. Some fell asleep. Now and then, someone came to me later and told me how what I said changed their life. The part of my presentation that changed their life was an afterthought that I don’t even remember saying.

I don’t know what “is really good” to some person on some day. I do what I can. I think of things that I think are good and helpful. I spread those things. That is what I can do. The rest is not up to me. Let’s do more spreading of what we think are good and helpful. And then let’s see what happens.

by Dwayne Phillips

Meta understanding is understanding about understanding. This is rarely practiced. That lack of practice is perilous.

I once worked with a man who had a high school diploma and nothing else as far as formal education. Still, this person rose in the ranks of government service to the level of Senior Executive Service. He was competent, and…

He understood what needed to be understood.

Some things on the job are more important than others. Some folks call this, “majoring on the majors and minoring on the minors.” This concept applies to jobs, families, and all endeavors. We look for “the difference that makes a difference.”

Enough cliches’.

This is another example of thinking. Think about the here and know. Also, think at a level of abstraction above that and at a level of abstraction below that. I am not the universe. There are things happening outside my little world. I should try to understand those things.

This is a simple concept that is difficult to apply. We should, however, do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sorry, we (you and me) don’t “know” as often as we like to think.

When I ask a person a question and their eyes look up, that means…

Hah! Silly notion. I know what this means. I know what that means. I know what the other person is doing and thinking and feeling and what they will do next.

Hah! Silly notion. It is silly, however, until I take action that brings great harm to others based on my silly notion of “knowing.”

But, I feel uneasy when that person won’t look me in the eye. My unease is my problem. What am I going to do about my unease? I should not ruin another person’s life because I don’t know what to do with my unease.

By the way, direct eye contact in some cultures is a justification for killing. If I stare into a person’s eyes, I am stealing part of their soul. They are justified in killing me to retrieve their soul. These cultures exist in America, today. Didn’t know that? I didn’t either until one day…

Sorry, I don’t “know” as often as I like to think.

by Dwayne Phillips

Tomorrow America turns 247 years old. Much younger than many places and older than some. We are still trying.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Back in 1776, some folks penned a document and signed their names declaring that this place was independent from that place. Those who signed would all be executed if they whole thing flopped. Somehow, it all held together.

“Things in America aren’t the way they used to be.” Of course they aren’t. Things are different every day. Some things change for the worse; others for the better, and most stay the same.

Waiting for yet another, “No, we aren’t perfect, but we are better than…” essay?

I guess that is still true. We are human and we make lots of mistakes every moment of every day. We try to interpret the words of those folks back in 1776 with what we know today.

Fun fact: people in many other countries want to come to America. They jump on a floating log or walk a thousand miles to do so. They even sneak in and hope to live here long enough so that no one cares about them any longer. I guess that means we have something here that is better than some other places.

And some of us here don’t like it when others sneak in. I guess that means we like what we have. Hmmm, think about that one for a while: we like what we have.

So, once again, we observe a Fourth of July. Maybe we cook hot dogs (from Europe) and shoot fireworks (from Asia). Maybe we watch a baseball game (from here). Those are things that make America what it is. Stuff from there and there and here and all mixed in the way we like it. Not too bad after all.