Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

This is a variation on the question, “What is the difference that makes a difference?” When trying to modify behavior, we must be able to answer the title’s question.

The title of this post is a fundamental science question. You are telling me that factor A is important here. Okay, it seems that factor A is important in many things, so saying it is important here is saying nothing.

When are you going to say something?

This is a variation of “find the difference that makes a difference.”

Our current pandemic is an excellent example of the question. We have been told, “The medically frail should avoid COVID.”

Well, the medically frail should avoid the flu, climbing tall ladders, skateboarding, skydiving, scuba diving, etc. So what is different about COVID? When are you going to tell me something? It is unfortunate, but those advocating the response to COVID that we chose failed to provide that difference in a convincing manner. They expected people to change their behavior “just because I said so.”

So much for the pandemic example. Recall cigarette smoking. Doctors were able to show how cigarette smoking was different from skydiving and other “risky” behaviors. Behavior changed across society. Also consider the example of seat belts in cars. Safety advocates where able to show how outcomes were different when wearing seat belts to when not wearing seat belts. Behavior changed across society.

This is different in this situation.

That is a short statement. That, however, is what changes behavior. Find that differences and state it clearly and briefly (and repeatedly).

by Dwayne Phillips

Have a direction? What did we lose in choosing it? Sorry, we traded something for something else. We lost something.

I am never supposed to write “never” and “always.” And there is always an exception to all rules. Hence, the title of this post.

I have yet to find a perfect solution to any question or any problem. Hence, I write “always” as that covers my experience. Any solution or answer involves trades: I will get this, but not that. Since I like this much more than that, I will choose this solution instead of that solution.

Confused enough by my confusion? Okay. I choose blue coffee cups for the cafeteria. I like blue; some people like red, but since I am choosing, I choose what I like. How about choosing a shipment that includes all the colors of the rainbow? That costs more. I am trading cost for utility. Plus, people will grab the coffee cup in the color they like and eventually will show that I picked an unpopular color. I am choosing my preference over the preference of the crowd. So far, we learn that I like to save money and boost my ego.

Silly example? Maybe. I chose that example. What did I trade off? I could write that example quicker and with less effort. Again, I chose time and effort savings. I lost…well, not sure yet, because I haven’t thought about what I lost.

Trivial? Probably yes. Now consider things of great importance that we sometimes consider. Suppose we have a $10 Billion choice. Now, we should consider the trades. What will this have instead of what that has? We should make a list. We should consider what we are trading away. Are any things on that list things that we should keep? If yes, how can we keep that while still choosing this?

Trade-offs are present. Let’s admit it. Let’s consider what we are forgoing as we choose our direction. Such considerations often keep us from later disaster.

by Dwayne Phillips

Most systems “work” as we intend when enough people want them to. Those people cooperate with the system and one another.

Democracy works because people want it to. There is much freedom in democratic systems. That freedom works because people want it to. People realize the value of the freedom and don’t abuse it. If they stop cooperating and start abusing, the freedom and the democratic system collapses.

Consider driving. There are lines on the roads. There are Stop signs. There are traffic signals. All those things work because we enjoy the mobility that safe driving provides. We “tolerate” stopping and starting per the signs and signals because we value the mobility more than we dislike the frequent inconvenience. Don’t think so? Go to various places on earth where no one heeds any of the signs and signals.

Most of the systems and machines we build work because we want them to work. We cooperate with the machine and the other people because we want the benefits.

Consider, as one counter example, “free speech” on the Internet. There are many persons who are abusing that. They are pushing as far as they can to almost break the trust and destroy the system. Pushing too far, if tolerated, destroys the cooperation and the benefit of the system. That is one reason the Internet and social media and such are having difficulties at this time.

Remove the trust and the system breaks.

It is important to be truthful and trustworthy. Always encourage these attributes with your words and deeds. Please.

by Dwayne Phillips

We are almost always uncertain. That is why we should plan key decision points.

“We knew what were were doing, right?” asked one of the decision makers after everything collapsed.

“Well, it sounded good when we started,” replied another one of the decision makers after everything collapsed.

No, sorry, we didn’t know what we were doing. We were uncertain. We had pretty good information; we had the best intentions, but there were things we didn’t know at the time.

That is normal.

How do we live with the normal uncertainties? Simple. (Easy? No. Simple. Yes.) We set points in time where we stop, think, look at new information, and decide. Some people call these decision points or key decision points. One place I worked abbreviated these KDPs and have a standard set of them: KDP-A, KDP-B, etc.

The use of these decision points is a candid admission of uncertainty. We will start now. We will spend this much of our resources in the next 30 days. We will stop at that point, consider new information, and decide if we go on to the next decision point. That next decision point has the similar limitations on resources.

This may be called conservative. It may be called prudent. I call it realistic. I recommend the practice.

by Dwayne Phillips

Unfortunate events provide yet another great reason to use a clipboard and a pencil.

My records indicate that this is the fourth blog post I have written about the clipboard and the pencil. The gist is that these old, simple tools are still quite valuable. Hence, we might reconsider a few other old tools from time to time.

Folks in Louisiana recently experienced Hurricane Ida. Power lines were knocked to the ground by the wind and objects hurled by the wind. Folks were without power for … well on the day I write this, it has been three weeks and some folks are still without power.

Computers don’t work well without electric power.

The clipboard and the pencil work just fine without electric power.

Now, the obvious is written and out of the way, let’s move on to more detailed situations. A close acquaintance has a whole-house generator. It runs 24 hours a day and the TV and computer are on (air conditioning, refrigerator, and other more important things, too). Aha! There! Forget the clipboard and pencil. Right? Wrong.

Internet service, TV, and phone (one of those great bundle package things) were out. Generator electricity didn’t help. Those systems—carried by telephone line—were down on the ground. All those cloud computing resources to store information and such were down. No email, no files, no photos, no videos, no this and no that, either.

The cellphone service came back after a week. That was a blessing. Take notes of this call and that call and this repairman and that generator-fuel man? The clipboard and the pencil worked. Nothing else did. The home computer worked with its local data storage, but if the generator ran out of fuel (which it did), the local data storage went down. Use you smartphone as your home computer! That works for somethings, but most of its capabilities are cloud based and…well much of those went down. And smartphones need recharging, which needs electric power, which is out when the generator is out of fuel and so on.

And, by the way, notes written for later blog posts and other history were recorded with the clipboard and the pencil. Simple. Durable. Reliable.

Extreme example? Yes. Lessons to learn? Also, yes. Applications elsewhere? Again, yes. I hope you learn from this extreme and painful example without having to suffer through it yourself or something akin to it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some persons know what they want, but they don’t have the resources to tell me. Perhaps they don’t know what they want. Perhaps they have many other reasons for passing me to another person. Perhaps I should just stay away.

Do you want to know what I want? Talk to Mr. ABC. He has worked with me before. He knows from experience what I want. He will tell you.

I:

1. have not written what it is I want
2. do not have the time to talk to you

There are several messages herein. Probably the most important message is:

Stay away from this person.

I have been in this situation several times. The person even directed me to hire a company as a subcontractor. The ABC company would sit in my offices and day-by-day, little-by-little impart bits of wisdom about “what the boss really wants” in this and that situation.

These situations never worked well. Perhaps they have worked well in other situations with other persons, but that was not my experience.

by Dwayne Phillips

Most “Emergency Operations Centers” function to show that the emergency operations center has electricity. Does that describe yours?

A recent serious weather event caused me to interact with an Emergency Operations Center or EOC. The website for that place proclaimed quite proudly how it was built to withstand such serious weather events. And it did! No doubt this center was built with funds from our Federal government How nice. Free!

Anyways, I called the EOC and talked to a nice person. It was nice to do so as no other local phones were working due to the weather event. The EOC maintained communications. I told the nice person about the help I needed in arranging aid to locals. I was told to call the commercial providers of such aid. I reminded the nice person at the EOC that the local phones were all out (except, of course, for the EOC). I asked that someone drive out and knock on the door and … “Just call them yourself,” I was told.

Okay, no surprises. In my past, I have encountered this same thing. The EOC’s job is to manage the EOC in case of an E(mergency). Seems the emergency is for everyone else, not the EOC.

And now we reach the part of this blog post where we talk to ourselves. If you are a manager and are charged with COOP (Continuity of OPerations), consider your emergency plans. (1) Are you planning to continue the operations of your emergency operations? (2) Are you planning to provide aid to anyone else?

Questions (1) and (2) above are quite different. Most emergency planning is for (1), not (2). That is a shame. Come on folks, let’s do better.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are tools that help me remember the things I need to remember. They prevent a fall into the Dark Ages.

Define Dark Ages: it isn’t that we forget how to do something, it is that we forget than we once could do that.

Personal Dark Ages: it isn’t that I can’t remember the three-key sequence to do something in an application, it is that I can’t remember that I used to do that.

For example, you can create a book index with Microsoft Word (really, you can).

I don’t remember how to do that, but I do remember that I can do that in Microsoft Word. “All I have to do” is find a reference to it that gives me the specific steps.

This comes down to remembering and forgetting, or something like that, sometimes I forget what I am…

There are tools that help me remember. Files (paper files with pieces of paper in them and ink and pencil lead marks), notebooks (paper notebooks with pencil lead and ink on them), pieces of paper (with pencil lead and ink on them). See the pattern? Paper notes last a long time. They span operating systems and hardware (remember the Z-80 processor? I do, and the notes I took on the processor are not usueble today.), they span the decades (I do have notes that are several decades old).

I know how to use the tools to help me remember. I know how to use the tools that prevent personal Dark Ages. Let’s keep it that way.

by Dwayne Phillips

When you do something, someone will ask you how. Sometimes the explanation works, often it doesn’t.

It seems that once I wrote a book or two and a few dozen magazine articles, I was approached by persons who wanted to write a book or two and a few dozen articles. They wanted to know how I had done that. They wanted to write a book, too.

Well, why not ask me? I must know something from having done something.

Go through just about any list of writers who have succeeded in one of the many ways writers define “succeeding.” At some point these “successful” writers talk about writing or write about writing.

Some writers are good at both writing and writing about writing. Other writers have no interest in the second practice.

And this happens with just about anything. ACME Inc. succeeds in business. After a while, everyone wants Mr. Bigshot from ACME to talk and write about succeeding in business. Same with football, Hollywood, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. You do something. Please tell me how.

It is flattering to be asked. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t.

by Dwayne Phillips

We make rules. Why? Sometimes it is petty and to serve our ego. Pause and think (two pretty good rules about rules).

We make a rule for or over or against the persons we know or our work colleagues. We cannot enforce that rule over all the persons who are supposed to be covered. We can, however, enforce the rule now and then, here and there, on this person or that, but not on everyone.

The poor person on whom we enforce it is in big trouble.

This selective and harsh enforcement appears to be “picking on” someone
or just plain using a silly rule as a way to punish select individuals whom we want
to select and punish.

So when we pass such a rule that is not broadly enforceable, we know that we
are passing it just to give ourselves power to punish individuals that we want
to punish.

It is our ego (WE HAVE THE POWER) not the general good we want to please. Hmmm, that “ego” thing, again. I guess that is a bad thing, huh? Well, maybe this time I will overlook my joy of having power over whom I want and just…

No. Bad idea. Why am I “making rules?” Are they for the good of all or just something else? Pause and think. (Gosh, those are two things I don’t like to do on some days. And did I just make two rules to apply to myself?)