Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We don’t have to “throw away” or discard ideas. We can always put them in a place to visit later.

I have lots of ideas for writing, speaking, and generally contemplating. I don’t always have the time to use the ideas right now. That is fine.

I save them for later, i.e., I put them away in a place to visit later.

This was a difficult concept for me at one time. It plagues many persons. I think of something. I must convey it, right now. It doesn’t matter whether it “fits” with what I am doing now, I must convey it, right now.

There are many places to put away or save an idea. I like 3″x5″ cards. I like notebooks (the paper kind that I write with pens and pencils). I like computers as well, but not as well as the other things. I use Evernote most of the time. I have files in a file cabinet (love those manila folders).

There are days when I flip through all my ideas. There are days when I “need” to write, so I grab an idea somewhere in the stack of cards or pages of a notebook or files in the file cabinet… and I write.

This has been a good habit for me. Put away (for now). Later, maybe, I’ll use that idea from days ago. Perhaps when I retire from one thing I will take up the practice of writing all those papers and books and things.

by Dwayne Phillips

The words “chimney” and “orange” rhyme, well, sort of, maybe not, but they are certainly connected.

In English, there is no word that rhymes with “orange.” At least that is what I have read. I’m not sure about that. I have heard the same about the word “chimney,” but once again I am not sure about that.

Oranges and chimneys, however, are strongly connected. Today, chimneys are decorations, things that give us the picture perfect of a Christmas scene or something like that. At one time, chimneys were essential to warmth in the winter in northern climates. The history of the world—as viewed by those who lived in norther climates—has been determined by those who live in northern climates. Hence, the chimney was essential to world history.

Persons had to keep the inside of chimneys clean of inflammable residue. If not clean, there would be a chimney fire. No one could extinguish that fire, and the home would burn to the ground.

Now enter the humble orange. Take a fresh orange peel, squeeze it gently between thumb and fingers, and out shoots some liquid. Hold a match near that liquid, and it lights. The liquid in the peel of an orange is inflammable. It is oil or sugar or something—I don’t know what it is—that burns. Toss old orange peels into a fireplace and that inflammable liquid will coat the inside of the chimney and one day…poof.

The same is true for most fruits and vegetables. There is something in them that is inflammable. Burn enough of it in the fireplace and poof—chimney fire.

Folks back in the day when chimneys were essential for warmth in northern climates knew all this. They were careful. They knew that even though there was neither a rhyme for “orange” nor “chimney,” those two items were dangerously linked.

All that backstory leads me to a principle of general systems thinking:

There are occasions when the representation of items are not connected, but the actual items are connected and connected in a critical manner.

And that leads to another principle of general systems thinking:

Do not confuse the representation of an item with the item.

Failure to heed this second principle can be disastrous. Human history shows we have failed in this manner and failed often.

by Dwayne Phillips

We sometimes are surprised at what some persons will do. We shouldn’t be.

A recent story reminds us of an oft-repeated story: people will do that. Yes, even that.

The recent story is about how some persons working at Facebook used their inside administrative privileges to “spy” on other persons. There were various excuses for misbehaving, but they did that.

Surprised? I am not, and I believe no one should be. Persons do things they are not supposed to do. They will even do that (fill in “that” with whatever dastardly thing comes to mind).

The Facebook story is just a recent one that was revealed. Other examples? Sure, why not. I cannot cite the references at this time, but some persons at the library sometimes peak at what books some persons are reading, some persons at the Net-plus-dot-streaming service sometimes peak what what movies some persons are watching, some persons at the driver’s license place sometimes peak at the driver’s license photos, and … I could go on for a while. Just consider any place where some persons can observe some other persons.

Horrible? Should persons go to jail? I don’t know about “horrible” and I am not a prosecuting attorney so I don’t know about going to jail.

Human nature? I am not sure what “human nature” is, but if it describes what some persons will do, I guess this is simple human nature. We are curious. Sometimes we are feeling bad and our misfortune leads to misbehaving. That is not a justification, but it is an excuse.

Now I come to the part of this little blog post where I address managers of work and leaders of persons. If you work in a situation where persons can observe persons and are supposed to respect the privacy of persons (seems like that includes more and more of us each day), take care. Place technical means in the way. That is a start, but realize that technical means are only cracked concrete on the freeway in that they slow persons a little. Trust the persons who do the work. Realize that persons do the work and persons have bad days. Know when a person is having a bad day. Ease their day and ease some of the excuse of doing that.

by Dwayne Phillips

Today’s copy machines make and store digital copies that go somewhere to someone. Carbon paper still makes a copy for safekeeping that goes to only those I designate.

Copiers—”xerox machines” we used to call them—are now digital. When you make a copy, a there is a digital record of the original somewhere. Hence, when I write or draw something with pencil and paper and make a copy for safekeeping, there is a digital copy somewhere that someone can access, and I may not want someone to access it.

How do I make a copy for safekeeping without producing a digital record anywhere?

Carbon paper.

Oh, that is old, several hundred years old. Put a piece of carbon paper between two sheets of paper, write on the top sheet, and the pressure pushes the carbon onto the bottom sheet. Write once and make copy for safekeeping.

During the 1980s (yes, I am that old), we used Engineering or Laboratory Notebooks that made a “carbon copy” that could be removed from the notebook and filed in a manila folder somewhere.

I want a copy of my own. I don’t want to the world to hold a digital copy. Carbon paper. Still exists.

And those carbon copy lab notebooks still exist. Get ’em while you can.

by Dwayne Phillips

I love meetings. They are fun. At least the meetings I attend. Why attend any other kind?

There are many types of gatherings that we call “meetings.” That is a disservice to the English language and to the “meeting.”

My little work group has a daily “meeting.” I love it. I laugh and laugh and laugh. It is great fun.

“Oh, that’s not a meeting, that’s a, well, it must be something else.”

A friend used to hold a meeting every morning at work. He served fresh-baked biscuits, ham, sausage, bacon, eggs, and grits at these daily meetings. His crew loved the meetings.

“Oh, that’s not a meeting, that’s a, well, it must be something else.”

We could go on with examples.

Meetings? If you hate them, if they are a waste of time, why are you doing them?

Instead, have those meetings that must be something else. The kind of “meetings” that people love.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sorry folks, “the algorithm found the answer that I used” is just another excuse. We choose what to do one way or another.

“The computer made me do it!” Well, actually it was the algorithm underlying the software that runs on the computer.

Hmmm. Who built the computer? Who created the algorithm? Who wrote the software?

Oh, that would be us. Someone else attempted to influence me. I chose to do what they wanted instead of thinking about what I would do and choose for myself.

We build the machines. We create the algorithms. We put the algorithms in the machines. We look at the answers produced by our products. We decide what we will do.

Rats. “The computer made me do it” sounded like a convenient excuse.

by Dwayne Phillips

Half the persons in any profession are below average. At what point is a person not allowed in the profession? Where is the floor?

Half of all teachers are below average. Half of all interior painters are below average. Fill in the blank for whatever job there is.

Okay, we know that. Simple statistics. Does that mean that half the teachers are bad teachers and half the interior painters are bad interior painters? They are completely unqualified, should be fired, etc.?

Where is the floor for teachers? Where is the floor for interior painters? Half of them are below average, but if a “painter” puts more paint on the carpet than on the wall, that person won’t be a “painter” for long. They are completely unqualified. Where is the line of “too bad to be a painter or teacher or butcher or baker or candle stick maker?”

That is the important question. At what point do teachers and interior painters tell a would-be teacher or interior painter, “No. You are below the allowed floor. Do something else.”

In a free market, the market tells the person. No one hires the interior painter who does nothing but spill paint. The word eventually “gets around.” It does, however, take time for that to happen. Same with a butcher, baker, and candle stick maker and dentist and computer programmer and …

In restricted markets, and there are many of those and most are associated with public employment, the market does not choose. “The word” eventually “gets around” when other employees notice that someone is performing below the floor, but the event can be years instead of months.

The average can be important, but the floor is more important.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes we find a small shiny object that we R E A L L Y want. Then we go about finding problems that it will solve. Yikes.

Here is the traditional or accepted way to solve a problem:

1. State the problem
2. State several solutions to the problem
3. Pick the “best” solution
4. Go back to step 1. and think some more

That is called “problem solving.” We have a problem; we seek a solution.

Then there is “solution probleming.” I was surprised to find that I have not written about this topic before. The phrase comes from the good old book “Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is” by Donald C. Gause and Gerald M. Weinberg.

In solution probleming, we begin with something that we like. We R E A L L Y like it. It may be expensive, but no matter, we R E A L L Y like it. Now we need to justify this thing we R E A L L Y like. We follow a procedure that is something like:

1. See some thing that we R E A L L Y like
2. Find a problem that this thing solves
3. Repeat step 2. a bunch of times

There. We found a solution. Then we found problems. We were “solution probleming.”

The major problem with this method is that sometimes it works. Once in a great while it works and it is spectacular. WOW! We tend to recall that once in a great while event and give it enough weight that we justify this method for just about everything just about everyday.

Sorry. The method doesn’t work often. That means it doesn’t work with the small shiny object I saw this morning and I know it will solve a bunch of problems in my life and give me enough time to list all those problems and build a justification for this and all will be great no matter what the cost and…

Sorry. It doesn’t work.

by Dwayne Phillips

Information at the bottom of an organization usually doesn’t move up to the top.

In the past, I have written about the information thermocline and the authority thermocline. Organizations have levels. Even “flat” organizations—regardless of claims to the contrary—have levels. Information and authority don’t flow down into the lower levels. About half of everything stops at each level.

Today I write of the reverse situation:

Information does not flow up in organizations.

About half of the information at the bottom of an organization stops at each level as it tries to rise to the top. Believe it or not, persons at the top need to know what is happening at the “working level.” Sometimes, persons at the top want to know what is happening at the “working level.”

The CEO of Wendy’s needs to know what is happening with those folks who are pressing hamburger patties to the grill and putting the lettuce and tomato on the buns. The backwards information thermocline, however, is stopping that information flow.

I mention something near and dear to my heart: Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). I first learned of this in 1983. I loved the idea. I wrote in OOP in grad school. I learned much of the concept of OOP. It had great promise.

Sorry, but OOP flOOPped or flopped or something. CEOs heard of OOP. C++ was OOP. Buy Microsoft Visual C++ and do OOP. Buy the Java IDEs and do OOP.

Persons at the bottom recognized that these tools from the major vendors that were bought by the CEOs were not OOP. They were nice tools that enabled some productivity gains, but they were not OOP. Some programmers protested. The information did not rise to the CEOs. The bad tools kept rolling in, and here we are two generations later with, well, pretty much nothing.

Are you “up” in the ladder? Go down a few rungs and have conversations with persons whose information is halved a few times before it reaches you.

You may not like what you hear, until you like that you are hearing it.

by Dwayne Phillips

The skill we should be teaching and learning and using more than any other today is question asking.

We live in a world where all the questions have answers. We just have to find the answers. We have the facts, the data, the everything online in front of us. It is there. We have provided the answers.

“We just have to…” ooops, that phrase is wrong. It should be “We will have great difficulty when we attempt to…” as in:

We will have great difficulty when we attempt to ask the right question that leads us to the answer we desire.

Example: How much did it rain in Tickfaw, Louisiana yesterday? Simple question. Simple-to-find answer. The question, however, doesn’t tell me what I really want to know. I really want to know the trend of rainfall in the region north of Lake Pontchartrain. No, I really want to know that trend since the building of the Atchafalaya Spillway. No, I really want to know how that spillway and the diverting of the Mississippi River has affected the environment in that region in the last 500 years. Well, maybe that last one is the question I want to answer.

The question asking is the difficult part. Sure, finding the right database and reading the right numbers in the right order has its challenges, but those are things we have done before and will do again.

What we haven’t done before is ask this question at this time for this reason.

That is where the difficulty lies. That is our challenge. That is where we should focus education and learning.