Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Questions often accompany learning. Not everyone, however, wants to provide me with opportunities to learn.

I have two grandchildren. They are growing, changing, learning, and questioning everyday. It is a joy to observe and participate.

They ask questions. My granddaughter, ever the good school student, even raises her hand sometimes when she wants to ask me a question. They spur me to ask questions more often. Yes, even at my age, I learn from my grandchildren.

Still, my colleagues are not always thrilled at my questions. Hence, I try to ask questions that:

• make sense
• have answers

Not a good use of time to ask a colleague, “Why do you have errors in your software?” or “Do you have to cough so much?”

I would learn something if my colleagues would answer these questions. Do these questions, however, have answers? Would these questions merely waste time? I could go on and on with the philosophical benefit of causing a mind to churn and such. Still, is it my place to cause others to think they way I want them to think?

Ask questions. And try to ask questions that make sense and have answers.

by Dwayne Phillips

Spending resources is far easier when those resources belong to someone else.

Return on Investment: what comes back from what I spend. That is a tough thing to consider.

Where should I spend my limited resources?

Now consider,

Where should I spend another person’s resources?

Oh, that one is much easier. No pain for me. Just go try something. Why ponder the Return-on-Investment question? It doesn’t matter. Do the easiest thing.

Spend a lot of resources where the return will be small.

That option carries little risk and requires little work on my part. I can spend millions of dollars to save hundreds of dollars. Great stuff, and I will succeed every time.

But, uh, er, no matter. It is someone else’s money. No one will ask what I did. Right?

by Dwayne Phillips

We work in the real world; not in one where what we wish is true. Sometimes we simply need to teach a little.

A: I told these people what to do…and AARGH (pained expression interrupts speech).

B: How did you teach them how to do that?

A: What? What do you mean?

B: That task. Before you told them to do that task, how did you teach them how to do it?

A: Teach? What?

B: You know. They didn’t know how to do what you wanted, so you taught them how before you told them to do it, right?

A: Teach? What?

B: Let me try again. These people didn’t know how to do what you wanted. You taught them how to do it. How did you teach them how to do it?

A: Teach? What? I’m not a teacher.

B: (a least we are making some progress) So you assumed that they knew how to do that task?

A: Assumed? What? Teach? What?

B: You told me last week that your organization did unique things, things no one else could do, that is why you are a leader in the market or something.

A: Right. We are.

B: Well, if what you do is unique, your colleagues couldn’t learn it anywhere else or from anyone except you. Right?

A: silence.

B: They couldn’t learn it in college or elsewhere. So, you have to teach them before they can do it. Right?

A: Teach? What? Of course they know how to do this. They must have learned this somewhere.

B: What did you see or hear to convince you that they already knew how to do this task?

A: See? Hear? Teach? Look, people need to know some stuff to get by here.

B: Yes. I agree. So, what teaching methods did you employ to teach them so they would know some stuff?

A: Teach? What?

B: Who taught you how to teach? Who taught you how to supervise?

A: No one. I just knew.

B: Perhaps that explains the current situation. Perhaps we can start this conversation again.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes we recognize our failures. Then—for some strange reason—we attempt something that will fail an order of magnitude more.

• We have failed to manage our $1 maintenance budget. Let’s correct this by starting a $10 development budget.
• We have failed to communicate in daily operations. Let’s correct this by starting a large project that requires excellent communication.
• I have failed at managing my home. I’ll correct this by becoming a manager at work so I will make more money and can hire a home manager.

Hmmm, realization of failure, followed by uh, well, er something that requires a correction that is much bigger than our past failure. That makes sense. Right?

Wrong.

Learn to walk before trying to run. But that is slow, and I am ready or maybe I am just impatient. The future won’t wait for me to learn to walk, will it? Tomorrow has enough trouble of its own.

Perhaps the path to learning is to learn our own shortcomings and the necessity of time.

by Dwayne Phillips

A reminder of a basic from systems engineering. There are several baselines we use most of the time regardless of intent or realization.

I once worked in an organization that (1) flew machines and (2) practiced systems engineering. One of the favorite phrases of persons there is the title of this post: eye’n fly’n and buy’n.

That quaint phrase was a folksy statement of basic baselines.

fly’n: this is the operational baseline. It describes what we are doing now. If someone steals our laptop or our dropped smartphone breaks into a thousand pieces, we can push a button and be back at work.

buy’n: this is the development baselines. It describes what we are building now. In a few days or years, we will deploy this and it will become the operational baseline.

eye’n: this is the requirements or design baseline (depends on how far into the future we peer). One day, what we do now and what we build now will be outdated. What will we do on that day?

There is more to this baseline concept than three abbreviated and rhyming words, but for the basics, this is sufficient.

by Dwayne Phillips

Another person who had a major influence in my life has passed away.

Author and consultant Jerry Weinberg passed away recently. I had the privilege of reading a dozen or so books written by Jerry. I had the privilege of attending several seminars Jerry led. I learned much from Jerry.

Jerry learned me how to be smarter and happier.

Those words are correct. Jerry didn’t teach; Jerry created situations where others learned. The learning stuck much better than any teaching.

I learned how to be smarter and happier. I suppose the better way to write that is I learned how to learn from just about any situation. I didn’t choose all the situations in life, but I could choose to learn from them.

I wrote a book or two and a bunch of other things after meeting Jerry Weinberg. Perhaps others will learn something by being around me and will be smarter and happier.

by Dwayne Phillips

It is such a good favor when someone shows me one of my mistakes.

I recently taught a class where the group walked through a series of instructions I had written. A stroke of brilliance—I rarely claim that, but in this case I do—came to me. I had a half dozen one-dollar bills with me. I started a quick bug-hunting program.

“If you find an error in what I wrote, I will give you a dollar.” The group found five or six over a two-day period.

It would have taken me many days to find those errors. I claim that as several persons and myself had reviewed the material and found all the errors prior to the class (boy, were we wrong).

I am not always happy when someone shows me one of my mistakes. There, I confessed.

I should be happy when someone shows me one of my mistakes. I should strive to run these bug-hunting exercises more often. A few dollar bills is an amazingly cheap way to improve my products.

by Dwayne Phillips

Brevity and clarity are apt companions.

The trouble is, they aren’t frequent companions.

by Dwayne Phillips

Change can be a nuisance—even change that leads to “better” things.

Stuck in traffic. Hate it. And I have to stay further behind some annoying vehicles for fear of having a rock crack my windshield.

Dump trucks. Everywhere I drove this week there were dump trucks. Up and down the roads. They are heavy; they stop slowly, start slowly, and drive slowly. Why can’t they just go away?

Prosperity Vehicles: Dump trucks are prosperity vehicles. They enter and exit construction sites. Construction sites indicate new houses, new businesses, new jobs, new income, new opportunity. Prosperity. Dump trucks are leading indicators of prosperity.

Why is it that I hate to see prosperity coming? Well, I want prosperity, but I don’t like those things that have to be done before prosperity; those messy things that annoy me and slow my life and cause me to grumble and all those things.

Change can be a nuisance. The agents of change can be annoying. This is true even for, and especially for, change that leads to better things, like prosperity.

Note to self: next time I have a great idea that will improve the lives of all those around me, consider how I may appear to be a big, slow, messy, damaging dump truck.

by Dwayne Phillips

Want to improve the world? Want to make life a little better for a few persons near you?

Let’s keep this simple. Simply try to add a few…

• caring people
• drops of water
• breezes of cool air
• breezes of warm air
• kind words
• soft notes
• smiles

Just a few positive notes usually does the trick.